Collective Container

Collective Container (2021)

An interactive performance about constructing and deconstructing space.

filmed by Thomas Caarls

'By making us relate collectively to materials, the environment and each other, Vrij's performance seems to envision a rehabilitation of that physical world. Assembling, maneuvering across the terrain and the process of disassembly require concentration and precision, wordlessly Rietman conducts this exercise. Thus, as a participant, you soon feel responsible for the object, for each other and for the performance as a whole.'

- Sander Janssens, De Theaterkrant

One performer and four audience members carrying a marine blue plank while stepping through a series of white upstanding squares, at the terrain of Over het IJ festival.

Collective Container was developed for the shipping container program of Over het IJ Festival. I was fascinated by the container as an enclosure of a space and asked Ben Weir to design a frame that would fit exactly inside the shipping container.

Under the guidance of performer Ylva Rietman, an audience of nine people removed the frame from the container, its shell. Together, they carried this empty space across the festival grounds before disassembling it into a spatial drawing. During this process the audience became a performer, and the casual passerby became an audience. They completes the composition and stood awaiting the next group, who arrived, unwittingly poised to perform the same task in reverse.

gefilmd door Thomas Caarls

A person from their waist until their feet, standing in the middle of a white and blue scenography.

picture by Tomas Mutsaers

A performer dressed in a white overall, crouching while drawing a line in chalk on a concrete floor, next to a marine blue beam. On the right three pairs of legs standing a diagonal.

picture by Tomas Mutsaers

A performer in the middle of an art installation that consists of white and marine blue beams and shapes. Surrounded by eight audience members in front and on the left side.

foto door Tomas Mutsaers

Nine people enclosed by and pushing a white and blue, container shaped art installation in the middle of a roofed terrace at Over het IJ Festival.

picture by Tomas Mutsaers

A hand putting a blue rod into a white case, which already holds two other blue rods.

picture by Tomas Mutsaers

Six people puting a blue and white frame in a blue shipping container of almost the same dimensions.

foto door Tomas Mutsaers

Hands of three audience members putting together a blue and white scenography during performance Collective Container.

picture by Tomas Mutsaers

A marine blue lino print on a grid paper. It shows abstract, construction like elements in different sizes, as though something is being dismantled or put together.

Direction & campaign image: Rosa Vrij | Scenography: Ben Weir | Performer: Ylva Rietman | Producer: Over het IJ Festival | Thanks to the Master in Theater (Toneelacademie Maastricht)

HUIS III

HUIS II