Brothers, rise up to freedom asks questions about the future of labor and resistance. What purpose does our working body still serve today?
In his latest work Brothers, Rise to Freedom, theater maker and visual artist Dries Verhoeven portrays humanity as a stowaway in a global distribution center.
The industrialist has moved his production to low-wage countries. The asparagus farmer replaces Dutch workers with labor migrants from Eastern Europe and dreams of further reducing the human factor. Jobs are taken over by robots, and at tech giants, algorithms search 24/7 for the highest possible profit margin. Can we still reverse our impending uselessness? Is a revival of the labor movement on the horizon? Or should we resign ourselves to the inevitable and all-encompassing automation?
Dries Verhoeven’s installations explore the boundary between theater and visual art. With his interventions in the public domain, museums, and theaters, he disrupts the way we think about our political and social status quo. His haunted house Phobiarama, about the politics of fear, was presented in 2017 at the Holland Festival and SPRING in Autumn. In 2018, Verhoeven suggested a construction site for a monument to the end of Western hegemony, Sic transit gloria mundi, shown during SPRING Performing Arts Festival on Utrecht’s Neude square. And last year, he presented Happiness, a pharmacy where a humanoid talked about drugs and other synthetic forms of joy.
Broeders verheft u ter vrijheid is a co-production by Studio Dries Verhoeven with SPRING Performing Arts Festival and visual arts institution West Den Haag and will be performed in several theaters in the Netherlands. To attend, visitors book a time slot after which they can move freely through the theater space as in a museum. The exhibition spaces of art institution West Den Haag function as living quarters for the workers, and through the eyes of the artist, the audience gains deeper insight into the daily routine of a labor migrant.
Broeders verheft u ter vrijheid is a collaboration between Concordia and Schouwburg Hengelo, where the installation and performance will be presented in the main theater hall.