“With each step, it becomes increasingly clear that The Lab is primarily an intense, yet intimate journey to your own core and foundation. And for those who want it, it can also be a reflection of a society where darkness demands all the attention and the future becomes uncertain.”
An exercise in wandering
The Lab is an immersive, sensory installation inspired by the labyrinth and all its myths, in which sound, light, space, and movement distort perception. By moving through a scenographically designed environment covering approximately 2,100 square meters, you are immersed in a new world.
A world that swallows and encloses you, where getting lost seems inevitable, and your senses are disrupted and tested. In this in-between space, you break free from existing walls, transform from spectator to protagonist, and break with rules and expectations. You examine your own way of thinking, ultimately posing the collective question: Where are we going?
The Lab is a production by Body of Art/Annemijn Rijk in collaboration with Theun Mosk. The Lab is a work that breaks free from cultural codes, including those of museums and theaters, and will be presented at various locations.
Where are we going?
In a world where truth is increasingly being reduced to a malleable concept that can be used as a tool of power, we lack direction. In the long, consequential fall, we reach around in search of something to hold on to, something we already know: order, extremes, traditional values, certainty. The Lab is an antidote to this conceptual chaos. The work isn’t there to offer answers or new guidance, but to teach us to cope with uncertainty and directionlessness.
In The Lab, we engage with the (future) question: Where are we going? The work is there to pose that question, not to provide the answer. Nevertheless, The Lab, through its diverse approaches and components, can provide a diagnosis of our humanity in this day and age. We live in a world full of planning, control, and efficiency. What happens to us, what insights emerge, when we are given the time and space to temporarily abandon the pace of daily life and the rigidity of our thinking?
The Lab isn’t here to change everyone’s direction, we don’t preach a better future, but to create space for what’s happening (within us) right now: The climate crisis is now, the humanitarian crisis is now, the future is now, the disagreement about the ‘truth’ is now, our lives are now. Thus, a question about the future ultimately brings us closer to ourselves.
The purpose of wandering isn’t to find your way again, but The Lab offers an opportunity to grapple with this wandering. Paradoxically, it is precisely this state of being, this embodied not-knowing that we believe can lead to a new relationship with the self or the world around us. We therefore deliberately chose the title “The Lab”: It’s an abbreviation for both Labyrinth and Laboratory. Through a sensory experience, the experience of wandering and movement, The Lab poses the question of where we are going, now that our decades-old point on the horizon is slowly evaporating. The answer lies within the audience’s body. The audience is the protagonist in this work, but equally a “lab rat” who, as they wander through The Lab, brings new insights back with them.
#wegetlost
#radicalmovement
#sensoryart
The Lab is a comprehensive experience that includes appropriate audience guidance and preparation, as part of the artistic whole. The Lab is suitable for everyone aged 12 and over.
The Lab works with disorientation and absolute darkness. If you have hypersensitivity to light or severe claustrophobia, we advise against visiting the installation.
Credits The Lab
Artistic director, echo-maker, philosopher– Annemijn Rijk
Echo-maker – Theun Mosk
Composer – Aura Bouw
Guides – Sofie Porro, Niels van Heijningen, Daria Titova, Mats Lodenstijn, Susy Steijn, Sebastian van der Born, Frann Schollaert, Annemijn Rijk
Technical producer – Cedric van Daalen, Stage-Mate
Technical team – Bendert van Dijk, Gijs Feskens, Jurre Pöpping
Stagehands – Bo Jamon, Maarten van Burken, Tijmen van Burken
Creative technical development – Cas Dekker
Social designer – Tessa Meeus
Philosopher and context – Dr. Max van der Heijden
Costume design – Annemarije van Harten
Production manager– Melany De Graaff
Marketing, pr & campagne – Marieke Josselet
Business manager – Milou Vogels
Image desginers – Marieke Josselet en Maarten van Maanen
Videographer for trailer – Thorsten Alofs
The Lab had been made possible with support of: Dutch Performing Arts Fund, The municipality of Tilburg, The municipality of Breda, The Province of Noord-Brabant, ASML x Brabant C, Theater de Nieuwe Vorst, Podium Bloos and Koelhuis Eindhoven.
In the Anthropocene, wandering is a permanent condition with an uncertain outcome. Our task is not to find a way out of the labyrinth of existence, but to learn to cope with this wandering. – René Ten Bos, Professor of Philosophy