Barbara T'Jonck
For Fieldwork III, Barbara explores the fantasy of a collective rural home. For some time now, she has felt the desire to live a secluded life in the countryside, and she is not alone in this. Her dream resonates with many others, but neither she nor (most) of those others have ever taken concrete steps away from the city and their lives there. When it does happen, the desire for the countryside tends to take the form of a private second home rather than a collective good where a different way of life is practised. The absence of fundamental action suggests that a whole host of other desires and fears underlie this fantasy. In this project, Barbara shines a critical light on the collective rural fantasy. She transforms it into a practical reality by performing (the bumpy road to) a rural community.
BIO
Barbara T’Jonck is a theatre maker with a background in philosophy. She is active across a broad spectrum (from performer to dramaturg, from writer to facilitator) and in various fields (from social-artistic work to documentary theatre, from smartphone choreography to opera). Several themes recur frequently in her own work: (fictional) collectivity, the dramaturgical significance of a voice, and strategies that stage an activating or critical setting. Together with Martha Balthazar, Mats Vandroogenbroeck and Jana De Kockere, she creates documentary theatre around social bottlenecks and junctions today and has collaborated with Dan Mussett, Salomé Mooij, Berten Vanderbruggen, Donia Jourabchi, among others. In 2019, she co-founded the artist-run organisation Platform In De Maak, which promotes the position of emerging creators in the performing arts.
