BREAKFIX

Nada Gambier’s new project BREAKFIX is grounded on the principles of the Japanese art of kintsugi, namely that breakage and repair are part of the history of an object, and should not be disguised. Fundamental questions driving the work are; If breakage is needed to create change, how can we deal with the cruelty of it, which will always be an inherent part of the process? Is the notion of demolition as a pleasurable act only violent or does it have other, more positive, aspects and connotations to it? How is it related to privilege? Does the dysfunctional open space for a kind of freedom and what might be the problem of this perspective? What if we look to hacking and reverse engineering as forms of repair? If we want to move away from the simplification of things as either broken or fixed what words do we use and what expressions can this take (physically, vocally, visually)?

In the process Nada and her team Mark Etchells (performance) and Vic Grevendonck (performance/tech) will use collage, fragmentation and autobiography to speak of the messiness of daily reconstruction and transformation. They will revisit material from past processes, work with noise as resistance, loss/death and happy accidents. They are now working on the trio that will premiere mid-June 2026 during the Almost Summer Festival in Buda, Kortrijk. The complete process of BREAKFIX however extends over four years (2024-28) and consists of a creation phase, a destruction phase and a re-creation phase. Further details will be communicated as the work progresses.