Crash Test

Crash Test is a transdisciplinary interactive performance installation aimed at children and families. A project that brings drawing, sound and movement into dialogue with a combination of old and new media. A project for families in which children aged between 9 and 12 also participate.

Crash test is the second project for which visual artist Line Boogaerts and music and performance maker Ine Claes collaborate. Crash test has a long history, building on Line and Ine’s performance ‘Interval Wiper Switch’ but taking a different approach.

In Crash test, Line draws on a large glass plate with large (and small) gestures. Using a large overhead, the drawings are projected onto a projection screen hanging in the room. Children are part of a ‘tableaux vivant’ as they move around the space on a course marked out for them on the floor/playground. The children move with objects and costumes, their movements and poses forming shadows on the screen. In this way, the children’s shadows merge with Line’s drawings and the two layers form a poetic whole. Parents and children can watch from the other side of the screen. They see the 2 layers merge on the screen.

The project refers to driving in a car and evokes a specific way of attention: alienation. You drive past strange buildings. Shapes and palisades pop up along the side of the road. Did you see that flash of light in the window? Did you see that figure by the side of the road? Did you see someone standing there behind that window? Half asleep, half dreaming on the back seat, the street lights, the trees,… into strange figures… . The alternation of meanings is a constant in the work. Concrete objects, bodies and visual aspects are reshaped into a dreamlike work in which memory and subjectivity are central. Ine and Line will have interviews with children, asking them questions related to the theme of the work and the theme of traveling, remembering. These will inspire the images they create. Fragments of the interviews will also be used by Ine in her musical composition that supports the performance.

The music Ine will create starts from the idea of the bizarre in-between world you find yourself in when you travel. She will focus on the boundary between concrete and imagination you find yourself in when traveling as a child. Being half asleep distorts the sounds you hear. The songs Mama sings play in your head, the hum of the car is distorted in your dreams.