Biography
With the multidisciplinary young collective NOON we created a series of performative installations that arise from questions about other ways of being together in the spaces we share. The collective is interested in events of entanglement between human and non-human actors, in a mixing of bodies, and in creating or rather discovering a kind of symbiosis.
The collective is a living body, shaped by the many collaborations over the years. Today NOON consists of Janka De Waele, Joram De Cocker, Judith Dhondt, Iris Donders & Delphine Mertens.
In residentie And now the beginning is somewhere else
15.12.2024 – 21.12.2024
And now the beginning is somewhere else is a new work that is being developed as a performative installation that functions as an ecosystem. Materials, bodies, thoughts, poetics, visitors, sounds, collective events, moments to rest, to dance but also places to hide will coexist – creating a playground where each visitor can find their own pace and gently explore this universe can discover.
Our desire is to create an installation that nourishes different types of encounters and emphasizes the porosity of our beings with playfulness and softness, where a different kind of physical consciousness can arise.
In residentie NOON Days
05.05.2026 – 22.05.2026
‘NOON days’ (worktitle) is an invitation to spend time together inside a shared research space, made of foam, water, polypropylene, bodies and shared questions. A space that invites to become porous to one another and to our surroundings, and to rethink how distinctions between life and non-life are produced and maintained, while also experimenting with collective methodologies of working together.
Building on the performative installation ‘And now the beginning is somewhere else’ (2025), NOON days transforms the residency space into a living environment composed of foam, water, polypropylene, bodies, and questions. This evolving installation is not a static backdrop but an active participant – hosting, shaping, and transforming the practices that unfold within it.
The investigation of life/non-life is rooted in Elizabeth Povinelli’s ‘Geontologies’ and her three figures: the Desert, the Animist, and the Virus. Following an initial research period focused on the Virus, this residency turns toward the figure of the Animist. Within a desert-like foam landscape, the animist is approached as a mode of being-with: relational rather than autonomous, attentive rather than extractive. It invites an openness to the agencies of materials, atmospheres, and the presences that inhabit the in-between, working with ephemeral and immaterial media, light, sound and music, as well as with body based practice.
In resonance with Povinelli’s critique of late liberal capitalism – where value is continuously extracted and assigned in order to circulate and commodify – this research also seeks to attend to what resists capture, what cannot be easily measured, owned, or sold. It explores how such dynamics can inform collective presence, co-existence, and artistic practice.
