This curated Beckett evening presents a surprising mix of forms: a monologue by Johan Leysen; a video lecture by philosopher and mathematician Jean Paul Van Bendegem; and a performative scenography as a possible landscape for a Beckett text. Through this combination, Kris Verdonck explores a fascination that he shares with Beckett, namely technology and the increasing conflict between humans and machines.

In the late 1920s, Nâzım Hikmet introduced free verse to Turkish poetry, and he was thus the first modern Turkish poet. He wrote the majority of Human Landscapes, his magnum opus, while in prison. The five hundred-page epic was only published posthumously, divided into five ‘books’. Michiel Vandevelde staged Book I last year, commissioned by steierische herbst. Book II now follows.

How does dance think through Eleanor Bauer and how does Eleanor Bauer think through dance? In this solo, the American choreographer and performer Eleanor Bauer embraces the particularity of dance-thought as synthetic, complex, change-oriented, fantastical, and multi-faceted. She works with the frictions, collisions, translations, love affairs and gaps between dance and language.

In Museum of Lungs, author and performer Stacy Hardy talks about her life with TBC, about the years before the diagnosis, and about her treatments since. She combines intimate, personal testimonies with historical archival materials. Together with musicians Neo Muyanga and Nancy Mounir, director Laila Soliman and Hardy also show how vulnerability and disease can initiate resistance and change.

Five figures form a portrait of humanity in the insane twentieth century, awaiting the inevitable catastrophe. Wars, simmering conflicts, terrorism, ecological disasters… an ever-greater number of possible endings present themselves. Despite the shock, they continue to talk, perform, and play music.