Johannes Bellinkx on site visit – Reverse

In the summer 2019, Johannes Bellinkx will bring his performative backwards walk REVERSE to Copenhagen. During his first site-visit in Copenhagen, Johannes told us about his concept and let us in on why it is interesting to walk backwards:

 

Maybe you remember Johannes Bellinkx from his binocular installation FRAMING presented as part of Metropolis 2017. Read more about FRAMING here.


ABOUT REVERSE

In this audio walk, the spectators are invited to let go of their everyday habits and submit to a different way of moving: walking backwards. During the walk, a visual and audio composition unfolds, contributing to a completely new physical experience, in which looking forwards makes way for looking back, and focussing on goals gives way for the unexpected.

This ensures that other senses are appealed to and challenged. The viewer’s attention and consciousness lose their focus, and so their familiar footholds. The images that form on the periphery (unexpected new elements appear from the sides) assist in this de-focussing. 

Reverse therefore does the opposite of Bellinkx’s previous work, Framing: it de-frames and de-fragments. The field of vision becomes wide-screen. The spectator is confronted by his inability to focus on everything and maintain an overview.

It takes a lot of concentration to be led by the auditory, the tactile and the sensory. This forces the spectators to be present in their bodies in a completely different way. 

In many Eastern and African cultures, there is no ‘past’ or ‘future’: a principle that replaces the linear, Western concept of time with simultaneity. What would our existence mean without the goal we constantly take as our measure – if past, present and future made up a single entity?

You can experience REVERSE in Copenhagen in the summer 2019.