‘ A Day is a Hundred Years coincides with an interesting moment in the development of Decoratelier,’ says Jozef Wouters. A Day is a Hundred Years is a new step in Jozef’s parcours, an ongoing investigation: how can you answer the questions that a space asks you without making a site-specific piece? Still, Jozef Wouters considers A Day is a Hundred Years as his debut in a way: mid-career, this is the first major piece he signs with his own name. Globe Aroma) – and where he invites others to create their own space via artist residencies, socially engaged projects, performance and nightlife. through creations such as Underneath Which Rivers Flows (2019 i.s.m. Since a few years Decoratelier (Ultima podiumkunsten 2019) is a physical space in a former factory in Brussels, from which Jozef creates his worlds – a.o. In his long-term research INFINI (2016-now) he asks artists from different disciplines what images they want to show in the theater, and translates these to scenography together with Decoratelier, the alliance of builders, technicians, materials and skills around his practice. A scenography that sees us more than we see it.Īs a scenographer and theater maker Jozef Wouters initiates projects that are often connected to a specific location, engaging in a dialogue between spaces, social processes and storytelling. An infinitely mutable and negotiable space which trades the central perspective for a multitude of gazes. With a turning stage and a scenography that spans both the theater and Decoratelier in different layers, shadows and stories, Jozef and his team create a kind of planetarium within the theater machine. A Day is a Hundred Years is Jozef Wouters’ most personal work to date. Together with a group of builders, musicians, performers and poets, they construct a world between night and day, temporality and future, visibility and invisibility. Out of those sessions, they weave a tissue of stories and sounds, and eventually, a piece. During the long winter months, they gather to cut thousands of leaves out of fabric, for Barry’s tree sculptures. Since 2019 Jozef Wouters has shared his Decoratelier in Brussels with Barry Ahmad Talib, an artist from Sagale (Guinee-Conakry).

Compulsion by Claudy Conn