The conversation: a performer and a mentalist

David Bauwens (45) was once completely taken by the world of poetry but currently he’s creating unconventional performances with his theatre collective Ontroerend Goed. Kurt Demey (45) from Rode Boom was once upon a long time ago active in the visual arts, but while wandering from street theatre to circus, he came upon magic and mentalism. The two of them met in a yurt which belongs to Kurt, and their ensuing, often political conversation began with ‘where are the biscuits they promised us?’ Then it continued…

Kurt Demey (left) and David Bauwens (c) Joke Van den Heuvel

David: “You don’t make the typical circus performances that people expect, nor do we make the type of theatre that people expect.”
Kurt: “The first I heard of you was back in 2003, when I was working with some friends on ‘de poëziekeuken’ (the poetry kitchen).
David: “Ontroerend Goed began as a professional company in 2001. As students we were obsessed with poetry.”
Kurt: “But you had studied theatre?”
David: “No, actually we hadn’t. We all came out of the University of Ghent. During our studies we started up a literary collective, just as a hobby. For a few years we spent a lot of energy putting together volumes of poetry, and we often had requests to present those poems on stage. How do you do that, bring poetry live to the stage? The standard practice of just reading out loud wasn’t really our thing, so we started looking for other ways to transform the poetry into a performance. As we continued we began to realise that the poetry was becoming more of a hindrance than a help, and that our strength was actually in the making of the performances themselves. So we decided to start up a performance-collective, and that’s how it all began.”
Kurt: “Around that time I also started making theatre in which poetry played an important role. Together with some friends I started making poetic performances. That was fantastic, but I had no idea how to reach an audience. We got most of our support from the circus and street theatre sector. Fabien Audooren (one of the pioneers of the Gentse Feesten, red.) was one of those people who helped us out and gave us advice, which we initially ignored, pig-headed as we were. As a result a lot of doors remained closed to us and we never made the step towards becoming a professional company, even if at the time I was working full-time as an artist.”
David: “Our situation was also pretty nuts. Alexander (Devriendt, co-founder of Ontroerend Goed, red.) and I both had a university degree in our back pocket. The question was: ‘now what’? The decision to establish Ontroerend Goed as a company was a tough one. We spent those initial years just learning how to do it. When we won the prize in 2003 for young work at Theater aan Zee, it gave us an opportunity to set up a professional structure, for which we’ve now received structural funding since 2006. Before that we always relied on project grants.”
Kurt: “In circus that’s only been possible since 2008. Before then I made a lot of performances that went in all directions, but I was completely unorganised. For a brief time I set up a little business, together with a partner, in which we did make an attempt to organise things, albeit in a cowboy sort of fashion. That was really fun, very educational, and ultimately it also went bust.”
David: “That prize money from Theater aan Zee gave us the space to write funding applications. For us that was fundamental. Doing everything with your own money somewhere in an attic doesn’t get you anywhere.”

Kurt: “I’ve developed very slowly and I see that as something positive. At that time funding for circus was at a completely different level than for other art forms, but it did give my company and others a chance to substantially grow and develop, all at once. That has been the situation for the last ten years, resulting in a lot of very successful performances, but behind the facade there’s still a lot of amateurism holding it all together. I’m not only responsible for the artistic side of Rode Boom, but for the administration of the company as well. That is certainly not my specialty and I feel like I am pretty much at my limit as far as that side of the work goes. We’ve now reached a turning point with the new Circus decree, and for the first time there’s the possibility to apply for structural funding. I dream of one day taking someone on as business director for Rode Boom, so that we can professionalise things from the inside out. But the idea also scares me, because it means becoming an ‘employer’, and I have seen the amount of stress which comes with that title.”
David: “The first years are the most difficult, the situation you step into is the great unknown, and the way the system now works, you always start out with far too little money. That’s where the stress comes in. For instance, you often can’t say how much work you can offer people, how many people you can take on or for how long. It’s important to remember that the process is a positive one, and that you are in charge of how you want to grow. You have to be sure to work with the right people. In a small organisation you have to get along with your colleagues, have to talk through any conflicts which may arise, and take affirmative action when it’s necessary. If we talk about funding, to my mind there’s been a complete about-face. In the beginning they made it very clear — and I fully followed that — that the money was not a gift for the artists themselves. It was meant to help keep our work affordable for the public, so that nobody would be excluded. In the U.S. that impulse barely exists, and you see that only a small portion of society can afford to go to the theatre. Here the politics are such that the chance of getting funding is offered to as many organisations as possible. That approach has led to an enormous expansion. Now they’ve begun to whittle away at the amount of money given to each of those organisations, with the argument that we should be able to accomplish the same things with fewer means. And then you start to get strange comments like: ‘you can always ask a little more at the box office…’ But that was the whole point of funding in the first place! Politicians seem to suffer from very short term memory. The argument has been twisted, then delivered to that part of the population who are inclined to believe it, and the result is a new reality in which funding is a gift to the artists.”
Kurt: “I could agree that sometimes the system wasn’t working, that funding was also being used to pay artists’ salaries and other real costs, which meant that there was less left over to invest in the art that was being created.”

David: “I’ve always experienced the art world as a very efficient sector with a low overhead. It’s often said that artists are the victims in the equation, because whenever there is a lack of funds they are the ones who get squeezed. But administrators and salespeople in the cultural sector also end up tightening their belts, cutting corners and generally working as cheaply as they can. The reality is completely different to the perception of a sector out to ‘fill its pockets’. Besides, there isn’t enough money out there to fill your pockets.”
Kurt: “More than ever, we see how the perception of funding and how it works is at odds with reality in the sector.”
David: “As a result of the ideological attack that the right is making on civil society, there is a solidarity emerging within ranks of the sector that I’ve never witnessed before. When I started out twenty years ago, I experienced the cultural sector as hard and merciless. Now we’re more aware of each other’s misery, communicating with each other and growing closer as a result. I hope we don’t lose that mentality, whatever happens in the political landscape. In the end the political direction changes every five years.”
Kurt: “But it will take quite some time to repair what’s now being destroyed.”
David: “That’s typical. Whenever the political colours change, existing initiatives get knocked down. What is remarkable this time around is the impatience with which the N-VA (political party in Flanders, red.) has taken on civil society, how desperate they seem to lead the attack. They want to change everything in two months time, but we are talking here about engagements that have been agreed upon within the framework of decrees spanning several years. Why is it so impossible to allow those engagements to take their course? I see what that party is aiming for, and it will never be my ideology, but at least do it with a bit more dignity for god’s sake! If I may say one positive thing about minister Jambon, it is that he dares to say what he wants. What you see is what you get. He seems willing to listen, but adds that he will not change his point of view. That candour is striking and confronting, but I prefer it to those who tell you what you want to hear and afterwards betray you.”

Kurt: “I’m occupationally deformed, so as a mentalist I always search for the strategy behind the action, the techniques of manipulation which are being put to use. When I heard about the 60% cuts to project funding, I thought: this is an intentional exaggeration. ‘First we get everyone worked up, then we go silent for a while, and allow things to come to a boil. Then we begin negotiations, but now from a much stronger position than we would have had, so the inevitable compromise will be a much better result for us’. Except that now it seems like they are not going to change that initial draconian proposal (meanwhile, the initial proposal is changed, red.). Which makes you wonder what’s behind this tactic. It appears to be a conscious attempt to destabilise the left. And the fact that all of these actions seem to enjoy the support of a large part of the population, honestly makes me think of Germany before WWII. I realise that sounds like a distortion of the facts, and I don’t want to compare the current situation in Flanders to naziism, but I do see a link in the propaganda strategies from then and now. How do you get the mob behind your disruptive plans? The only other interpretation is to chalk it all up to ‘coincidence’.”
David: “I don’t think that much that happens in politics is coincidental. People can make mistakes, a decision can misfire, but it is always taken with a conscious goal in mind, even when it’s not quite clear what that goal might be. This current battering of civil society only reveals their belief in a very extreme form of liberalism, comparable to the England of Thatcher in the 80’s of the last century. They believe that government support interferes more than it helps. At the same time they are also trying to stake claim to the Flemish soul, canonising Flemish arts and building an official Museum of Flanders. This new Flemish movement seems to want to create an archive of Flemish history based on dead art, while the essence of the Flemish soul is of course to be found in the living arts.”
Kurt: “The arguments they propose for a Flemish canon seem to be appealing to a lot of people. Sometimes I’m no longer sure which of us has lost touch with reality: they or I? Because I accept the notion that artistic freedom and the right to culture is unequivocal, I believe that they are the ones out of touch. But they think that I am, precisely for that reason, believing that the function of art is purely aesthetic. It shocks me to hear it, but there are a lot of people who feel that way. Then the politicians say that tax money should not go to people who go naked on stage. Are they making those kind of statements to appeal to their base, or do they actually misunderstand the essence of art to such an extent?”
David: “I have the feeling that their goal is to polarise. They’re asking you to stand up and be counted: are you for or against money for naked people on stage? What they don’t tell you is that the taxpayer gives almost nothing to the free arts, even when that art aims to talk about all of our lives. This week I read a survey where people were interviewed and it turns out that a quarter of the artistic cultural audience in Flanders sympathises with the N-VA. That’s much larger than the ‘leftist’ portion of the audience. So the person sitting next to you in the theatre may easily be your political adversary, and even if your discussion with them at the bar afterwards ends in disagreement, the chances are pretty good that you will not come to blows. In the political arena things are always formulated as sharply as possible, with the sole aim of gaining advantage.”
Kurt: “Yes, in the interest of personal publicity, of course.”

David: “Sometimes it’s so depressing. Watching ‘De zevende dag’ (tv-show on politics, red.) on a Sunday morning…”
Kurt: “It’s quite a puppet show, isn’t it?”
David: “Yes, but unfortunately they are puppets without strings. All Pinocchios in fact. If their noses grew every time they told a lie, they wouldn’t fit anymore in the room.”
Kurt: “Trying to get in as many one-liners as they can… while they’re supposed to be running the country.”
David: “There used to be serious discussions at a party level about the big problems facing society. Now it’s always the smaller problems which get put in our path, keeping us from getting to the real challenges we are facing. The discussion is not about the climate, but about whether you are allowed to skip school to protest. The problems of immigration are a trifle compared to the problem of immense social inequality. But they use it to make us forget about that social inequality. The party that one day stands up and clearly identifies the real problems we are facing, will get everyone on board.”
Kurt: “Didn’t you make a play about the way that people vote?”
David: “Yes. Fight Night. That piece is indeed a criticism of what I just talked about, where it’s not about content, but about form. There are people sitting on stage who want to be elected by the audience. The spectators all have a box with which they can vote. The first round of voting happens before the candidates have said anything. Even with our very modest knowledge of mentalism, we know that it’s the pretty girl who will win the first round. However as soon as she opens her mouth, she loses the majority. None of the candidates actually say what they stand for. They just say, in hundreds of different ways: ‘vote for me’. That gives some insight into how voting can be influenced and manipulated. We always manage to get a good share of the audience to give up their right to vote by the end of the performance. One candidate proposes the idea, and he receives a lot of support, especially from the young people. They give their voting boxes back and subsequently get voted out of the theatre by the others. It’s all very playful but at the same very revealing.”

Kurt: “My piece Cerebro is about similar things.”
David: “Cerebro, the computer from ‘The X-men’?”
Kurt: “Is that its name? I didn’t know that. My play is about indoctrination, and I use illusion techniques to indoctrinate the audience, which makes them rather uncomfortable. That was immediately the most difficult aspect of my play, because people who choose for an evening of ‘circus’ believe they are entitled to a good time. What we actually do is create a sect in the course of the performance, and I play a motivation speaker who offers workshops to help people feel better, better prepared to face stress and better understand the world. It begins with a demonisation of the outside world, the world that wants to convince you that nothing is possible. My character is there to open your eyes, calls you a winner and proves it by choosing a volunteer from the audience who subsequently succeeds in everything they undertake on stage. There are mentalist tricks behind it all, but the audience doesn’t realise that. They believe the story they are being told and halfway through the performance they fill in a list of questions, in which they can also sign up for 6000€ worth of workshops. From that point on the play gets much colder. The audience receives instructions on how they can follow the workshops, and also how if they can persuade others to sign up they can win a percentage of the take. All recognised manipulation techniques used by sects in real life. At some point my character gets overwhelmed by his own techniques and he completely loses it. Everyone is pretty ill at ease by then. Only during the discussion after the performance is it possible for the audience to start to enjoy, to some extent, the experience they just had. During the premiere in Aalst it all went terribly wrong and half of the audience walked out in anger. That’s fantastic, because if you imagine that Cerebro was a real sect, then at least that portion of the audience would not have fallen for it. They did shout and throw things, but also tried to convince the rest of the audience not to be misled. I’ve been criticised more than once because the performance breaks so many theatre codes.”
David: “We often get the remark that what we do is not real theatre. The only correct answer to that is: ‘so?’”

This article was published in Dutch in Circusmagazine #61 – December 2019 // Author: Tom Permentier // Translation: Craig Weston // Copyright: Circuscentrum – please contact maarten[at]circuscentrum.be for more information