an installation performance by Pieter Desmet, 2018

 

She's as red as her urges.

He's as white as his mechanism fighting.

She's as blue as her thoughts wandering around.

They're as beautiful as the timeless dreams they share.

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Desolate Dreams is an installation performance that investigates solitary and isolated identities. Does the individual still create an identity when they are alone?

 

A person's identity is partly shaped by the outside world: parents, siblings, friends all play a role in the evolution of one's identity. So what happens when there is no one to shape yours? Desolate Dreams poses this hypothetical question to its performers and its audience. 

 

The three performers each embody one of the three personality aspects analyzed by Freud: the id, the ego and the superego. They ask themselves whether the superego, which depends mainly on external, social factors, still has a reason to exist within a lonely identity. 

 

In addition to the formation of one's identity, Pieter also poses the question of how time is perceived when one is alone in relation to how it is perceived collectively with others. Does it move at a slower or faster pace? Would the concept of time and the understanding of its passage still exist? 

 

The work creates a distinct aesthetic atmosphere conveyed by the performers, the scenography and the absence of sound. The viewer is taken into a desolate dream world in search of who they really are. 

 

Desolate Dreams was created for and performed at the MoMeNT Festival in Tongeren, Belgium.

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