Unleash Your Senses: A Workshop for Immersive Connection and Play
“I felt like we were creatures… we were no longer humans”. BELONGALONG, at its heart, seeks non-ordinary ways to find playful connection and presence with others. A collective and connective multi-sensorial musical experience, Belongalong invites deep collaborative listening and an expansion of the senses by playing with sounds, images, and space. Participants play the Belongalong instrument composed of 12 touch-sensitive sound-emanating boxes. Their vibrations are felt in the body and immediately participants realise that they themselves are the essential medium of the experience. Nothing comes to life without their collective intention.
Through the use of evocative imagery, music and soundscapes, hosts Leyla de Muynck and Christopher Bowen guide the participants from the discovery of the instrument through a series of visual and sonic pieces creating a relational field that encourages collaborative listening, opening up space for others and a feeling of connection in an otherworldly exploration of community.
October 17th - Thursday of ADE
Space is limited to 12 participants per slot
Duration: 30 minutes
Time-slots: 18:30 & 19:45
Price: 15 EUR
Artist’s Statement
Belongalong is inspired by the language of music and the sense of play that musicians have with each other. There’s a field of feeling that musicians create when performing with other musicians. Each musician contributes to the changing musical flow, experiencing their parts against the others while the resonances of their instruments vibrate against their bodies and into the space around them. It’s a sensation that lets them live in a kind of pre-verbal space with each other, allowing them to connect and communicate on a different, more visceral, level. This particular feeling of collaboration was my inspiration to create a similar field for other groups of people (musical or not) to have this same experience themselves. Visit www.belongalong.com
About the Artist – Christopher Bowen
“I am a sound and visual performance artist, instrument inventor, musician, actor, and composer for film from New York City currently living in Den Haag. My explorations into interactive, immersive theatrical group experiences started in 1991 when I began my decades-long career with the internationally acclaimed and Grammy-nominated Blue Man Group. During this time, I was a Blue Man, Performer Director, Composer, Writer, Drummer, Instrument Creator, and Creative Development Director for the Group. As a film composer, my scores include Cannes Camera d’Or winner 'Jellyfish’, the Annie-nominated stop-motion feature, ‘$9.99’, and the documentary feature, ‘Nathan-ism’, 2023 winner of DocAviv’s Yad Vashem award”.