VAN EYCK DIAGRAMS – a chantefable
Doppelgangers, unspeakable love, inaudible sound: this is how the enigmatic art historian Gerard Van den Acker summarised his visionary study of Jan Van Eyck.
Björn Schmelzer and graindelavoix dig around in the mysterious life and work of their loyal friend Van den Acker, whose untimely death brought a promising and sensational study of Van Eyck to an abrupt end.
VAN EYCK DIAGRAMS is a music-theatre séance and a tribute to a frenetic genius, but also a re-enactment of his incomplete life’s work.
Van den Acker’s impenetrable Van Eyck archive will be unlocked in presence of the audience: his endless series of plans and sketches, the obsessive commentaries on the smallest and vaguest details, Van Eyck’s iconoclastic ratification of the beginning and the end of art according to Van den Acker.
The nocturnal conversations, the countless silent but no less musical hours in the study of this unique art historian are relived right up to the catastrophic end: Van den Acker’s desperate visit to Hubert van Eyck’s grave in Ghent. According to Van den Acker, the world of Van Eyck can be recreated not in pictures but in a parallel, musical world.
Singers/performers: Andrew Hallock, Albert Riera, Marius Peterson, Arnout Malfliet, Margarida Garcia, Björn Schmelzer
Concept, scenography and artistic direction: Björn Schmelzer
Dramaturgy: Margarida Garcia
Theatrical supervision: Marius Peterson
Live electronics: Lee Patterson
Lighting: Caspar Langhoff
Sound: Alex Fostier
Image: Bert Timmermans, Margarida Garcia
Libretto English adaptation: Clodagh Kinsella
UPCOMING PERFORMANCES
CANCELLED/POSTPONED 18 December 2020 | 8 pm | Bijloke Ghent
CANCELLED/POSTPONED 19 December 2020 | 8 pm | Bijloke Ghent
19 May 2021 | 7.30 pm | KunstFestSpiele Herrenhausen (premiere)
21 May 2021 | 9.15 pm | Muziekgebouw aan ‘t IJ Amsterdam
18 June 2021 | 8 pm | Bijloke Ghent
Coproduction Music Centre De Bijloke Ghent and KunstFestSpiele Herrenhausen.
This production came about as part of OMG! Van Eyck was here/Van Eyck 2020 and with the support of the city of Ghent.