In All Watched Over by Machines of Loving Grace, Ezra Veldhuis and Bosse Provoost explore freedom and unfreedom in relation to technology, by staging Richard Brautigan’s 1967 poem of the same name.

Machines, medicine, algorithms: much new technology seems to be (labour) disciplining or aimed at social control rather than giving us new forms of freedom. Does this mean Brautigan’s dream is dead? Are we already living in a totally perverted realisation of it? Or does the freedom promised in his dream still contain potential?

During the residency at C-takt, together with Nathan Ooms, Estefanía Álvarez Ramírez, Jayson Batut, Benne Dousselaere, Carly Rae Heathcote and Wim Bernaers, they will put the finishing touches to the structure, performative material, light, sound, scenogaphy and costumes. After the residency at C-takt, they will do a try-out at Murf/murw in Tilburg, after which they will immediately enter their finishing period.

The premiere of All Watched Over by Machines of Loving Grace will take place on 11 October at CAMPO (Ghent).