Fopsa'23
The Festival of Poetry-Shaped Art had its second edition on May 27th 2023. It was held at the Untited Cowboys arthouse in Eindhoven, The Netherlands. On this page you find photos of the event (by Brendy Wijdeven) and descriptions of the participants.
Sarah Prescimone - Temper
Sarah is a Sicilian choreographer, dancer, and performer. Her affinity with movement reaches out to many realms and genres, including Butoh, Experimental, and Urban styles. She found an interest in the functionality and intelligence of the Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu movement practice, which she integrates in her work - thus developing a new movement language in her own personal laboratory of movements. At Fopsa'23 she performed Temper, a solo based on the four classical tempers (sanguine, choleric, melancholic and phlegmatic), investigating the psychological grounds from which we humans communicate. Temper combines movement, spoken text, facial expressions and body language. It thus demonstrates the complicated relationship between verbal and non-verbal language.
link to Sarah's website
Toine Horvers - Rotation 5
Toine is an artist working with movement, expressed in performances and descriptive writings. At Fopsa'23 he performed Rotation 5, a conceptual piece with the names of the wind directions in 65 languages, while rotating slowly and addressing each wind direction in turn. By doing so the performance connects the elementary human concepts of space, time, and language.
link to Toine's website
Jürgen Smit - asemic works
Jürgen is a poet and visual artist. At Fopsa'23 a selection of Jürgen's asemic works was exhibited. These included asemic writings, drawings, and collages.
link to Jürgen's facebook page
Sofia Kaloterakis - MOON WATERS
Sofia is a researcher, writer and poet based in the Netherlands. At Fopsa'23 she performed MOON WATERS, a poetic landscape that layers abstract sounds with spoken-word for sonic immersion. It is based on the idea that our bodies are made by 70% of water, which is a sound conductor. Water on the surface of the earth also absorbs vibrations from cosmic movement like the moon tides and stores them. This performance creates an experience that brings the performer and the audience in touch with water -as our inner listener, the element that allows memory.
link to Sofia's website
Rohiet Tjon Poen Gie - Tao of the T - V
Rohiet is an experimental Hip Hop dancer who is known for his individualistic style of dancing and uses styles as breaking and popping supplemented by other influences. At Fopsa'23 he performed a physical interpretation of a poem by A.H.J. Dautzenberg. It was written when Dautzenberg was poet laureate of the city of Tilburg, and wrote poems only consisting of the letter T.
link to Rohiet's instagram
Monique Hendriks - Magical (!) Bath-book & hoodie performance
Monique is a performing poet, scientist, theatre writer and performer, poetry-video creator. At Fopsa'23 Monique did a poetic performance with hoodies and on top of that presented 'Bobbie gaat in bad' a Magical (!) Bath-book for adults. Poetry is an art that uses language, a medium we also use for communication. Other artforms easily appeal to the audience's experience, but poetry is hindered by the urge to understand the creator's intention. Monique used to circumvent this urge by not presenting her poetry on paper, but only on stage. When Corona took away that stage, she looked for other ways. An association with childish exploration of the senses led to the idea of experimenting with poetry and toys.
link to Monique's website
Team Human Augmentation Research & Technology TU/e - Haptic Language
HART is a team of students from the Netherlands who, supported by the Eindhoven University of Technology, are looking to bring human augmentation into our daily lives. The team team is researching the possibility of communicating information via haptic feedback. For this they designed a wearable sleeve that creates distinct vibrational patterns that are felt on the forearm. Each of these patterns holds a specific meaning so that virtually any type of information that can be transformed into a sequence of vibrations can be transferred to the user by the sleeve. At Fopsa'23 they demonstrated how their sleeve translates human language into vibrational patterns.
link to Team HART's website
Bound Verse Collective - Shibari & Poetry
The Bound Verse Collective is a group of photograpers, models, and shibari riggers. They create scenes using ropes and human bodies based on the contents and structure of quotations and poetry-forms. At Fopsa'23 they presented their work-in-progress, which includes shibari sonnets as well as work based on quotations by -among others- William Shakespeare and Allen Ginsberg.
