A Day is a Hundred Years
Friday 19.05 / Damaged Goods, Toneelhuis, Jozef Wouters
Does space always need to be built? Can you just hum a window? Whistle a door? A Day is a Hundred Years is a temporary garden made of light sketches, quick builds and short poems that seek to remember and pass on experience.
"A few years ago, I happened to meet a man restoring the city. I spoke to him while he was replacing a vandalised swing. He took me to the warehouse full of spare parts he uses to patch up public spaces. Since then, I have run into him everywhere. In subways and parks and even in other cities, I see his work." Jozef Wouters
The Japanese book Sakuteiki, Visions of the secret garden is almost a thousand years old. It compiles knowledge and experience, passed down orally for centuries, on the construction of gardens in the Heian era. "Follow your first idea/ and then/ for all that flows out of that/ follow your heart". Yet it is not a manual. Instead of sketches and diagrams, the book contains only text: stories, poems and mystical instructions on how to ward off dragons, tigers and ghosts.
With A Day is a Hundred Years, Jozef Wouters continues to build on this book. At Decoratelier in Molenbeek, together with technicians, musicians and poets, he gives shape to a world of fragile structures consisting mainly of care and devotion. Does space always have to be built? Can you just hum a window? Whistle a door? A Day is a Hundred Years is a temporary garden made of light sketches, quick constructions and short poems that seek to remember and pass on experience.
In early May (after the publication of our newsletter in your mailbox), you can book a ticket here via Move.