MOVEDBYMATTER / Kasper Vandenberghe

Biography

MOVEDBYMATTER is a transdisciplinary art organization led by performance artist Kasper Vandenberghe. For each project, MOVEDBYMATTER starts from an open-minded investigation into the relationship between performer, audience and matter. The organization is driven by the irrepressible desire to master that relationship, but at the same time it searches for the fatal point at which that mastery will inevitably fail. The performer sets matter in motion, but is ultimately also moved by it. This borderline experience is always translated in a distinctly visual, physical and ritual way.

This method brings MOVEDBYMATTER to various art disciplines, subjects, places, audiences and collaborations: from circus to video art, from ‘What exactly lies the power of vulnerability?’ to ‘What does the concept of ‘masculinity’ mean for children today?’, from black box from circus tent to viaduct, from families to teenagers to a seasoned theater audience. For MOVEDBYMATTER, wonder is central, as is the ambition to create artistically challenging and layered pieces that remain accessible to a wide audience.

Kasper Vandenberghe searches for the relationship between the flow of the masses and the willpower of the individual, but also for the physical translation of our constant streams of thoughts. Individuals often play a central role in a world determined by others, without considering what they actually desire.

In 2004 he started in Theater Class Dora van der Groen, and in the early stages of his career he worked for the renowned Dutch company Zuidelijk Toneel (Talkshow House, Crying Yellow Tears – 2018), Miet Warlop (Springville – 2012), and the Ghent theater collective Ontroerend Goed (The Smile Off Your Face – 2010).

In the past ten years, Kasper has mainly been on stage as a performer with Troubleyn/Jan Fabre. Since 2013 he has been teaching at the Teaching Group Jan Fabre in Antwerp. In 2018, Vandenberghe founded the company MOVEDBYMATTER, in which he takes on a varying role of performer and coach. Kasper was recently an actor in the cast of the fiction series Beau Séjour and Onder Vuur.

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MOVEDBYMATTER

Photo: Jan Fabre

In residentie DAR

A large industrial space. Course runners who move in repetitive patterns. A drone that floats menacingly and playfully above that scene and keeps everything in its sights. That drone enters into a dancing dialogue with a child. These are the basic elements for DAR, a new transdisciplinary work by MOVEDBYMATTER/Kasper Vandenberghe. The glue between all these elements is a self-questioning investigation into what it means to be human as a man. This constantly evolving theme forms the basis for this project and will form a common thread in the work of MOVEDBYMATTER in the future. As always, Vandenberghe and his team continue to look for recognizable and socially relevant themes that take shape in grand physical images. Together with DAR, they wonder whether violence and war are really male phenomena.

project details