Secret Gardens, Ritualistic Renovations and Modernist Failures: On the out loud building of scenographies by Decoratelier

Abstract

Surveying four projects by DECORATELIER, All Problems Can Never Be Solved (2012), INFINI 1-15 (2015-16), Underneath Which Rivers Flow (2019) and The Soft Layer (2019), this text explores how Belgian scenographer Jozef Wouters revisits, with his scenographic practice, the aesthetics and poetics of stage machinery and theatre technology in order to explore the potentiality of intervening by means of scenography in abandoned and forgotten urban sites.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

I gratefully thank Jozef Wouters and Jeroen Peeters for answering all my questions in relation to the above-mentioned projects by Decoratelier. Many thanks to Damaged Goods for providing unedited footage of Underneath Which Rivers Flow. Credit to Guy Gypens because this contribution is fuelled by his reflections on Underneath

Which Rivers Flow. A heartfelt thank you to Kristof van Baarle, Annelies van Assche and Tessa Vannieuwenhuyze for their generous commentary on the first version of this contribution.