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The Soft Layer

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The Soft Layer

Jozef Wouters / Decoratelier

© Dream City Tunis

What remains of a place when its past becomes its only future? Voices, memories, and stories come together to form a collective “soft layer” over a historic building – a poetic performance about perception, community, and the interplay of space and time.This performance is a continuation of “The Soft Layer” (Tunis), a site-specific work that took place from 2017 to 2019 in the historic building of Dar Bairam Turki in Tunis, as part of “Dream City”. Over several years artist and scenographer Jozef Wouters collected memories, stories and ideas from local residents who live and work around the building and its surroundings. Inside its courtyard a group formed of young architects, neighbors, actors and one science fiction writer. Together, they undertook the renovation of the beautiful 17th century Ottoman palace. A different kind of renovation, one that doesn’t remove but adds a layer—a soft and temporary layer made of collective memories, stories and opinions about the building. Part of the work was a text that turns the building into a score, to be read at sunset as an act of care and a collective meditation on a building. If the past is the only imaginable future, then where are we now?Two years later, after invitations in Palermo, Brussels, Ghent and Ostend, Jozef Wouters continues to restage the text of “The Soft Layer” in different courtyards in various cities in Europe. This time in Berlin, in the courtyard of HAU3: four local actors come together and, using the score created in Tunis, and retell the story of Dar Bairam Turki and its renovation. In doing so, they explore the question of how much spaces, walls, and buildings remember—and what stories they can tell.Jozef Wouters on the project:“In response to an invitation from Dream City – the Tunis Biennial for Contemporary Art – I took residence in the historic building of Dar Bairam Turki and asked the residents of the Medina which visions they had for it. One thing almost everyone seemed to agree on: the future of the Medina and of Dar Bairam Turki is a restored version of itself. But which version of the past should we select to be the new future and how do we make that choice? If the only imaginable future is the past, then where are we now?Together with Vladimir Miller I gathered these conflicting ideas around restoration in a process that added layers to this building instead of peeling them off. Together with the Tunisian artists Amira Chebli, Hichem Chebli and Fatma Ben Saïdane we performed this ephemeral Soft Layer in order to temporarily restore the collective histories, imaginations and visions that make up the nostalgic territory of architecture. Adding layers, stories, copies and visions to the courtyard of Dar Bairam Turki, we wondered how many versions of itself a building can hold before it bursts.”

50 mins.

Artists/Collaborators: Jozef Wouters (Text), Jeroen Peeters (Textredaktion), NN (Performance), teilweise während mit Fatma Ben Saïdane (“The Soft Layer” (Tunis)), Amira Chebli (“The Soft Layer” (Tunis)), Hichem Chebli und Vladimir Miller entwickelt. (“The Soft Layer” (Tunis))

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