A DAY IS A HUNDRED YEARS
artistic collaborator
2022-2023A project by Jozef Wouters
In collaboration with Barry Ahmad Talib, Enzo Smits, Michiel Soete, Marie Umuhoza, Menno Vandevelde et al.
Production Damaged Goods
Coproduction Toneelhuis
Premiere: 18-20 May 2023
“A few years ago, I bumped into a man who repairs the city. I spoke with him as he replaced a ruined swing. He took me to the warehouse full of spare parts he uses to fix the public space. Ever since I’ve been seeing him everywhere. In subway stations and parks and even in other cities, I see his work.” Jozef Wouters
The Japanese book Sakuteiki, Visions of the secret garden is almost a thousand years old. It gathers knowledge and experience that has been retold for ages, about garden landscaping in the Heian age. “Follow your first idea/ and then/ for all that flows out of that/ follow your heart”. Still, it’s not a manual. Instead of sketches and diagrams, the book contains only text: stories, poems, and mystical instructions on how to fend off dragons, tigers and ghosts.
With A Day is a Hundred Years Jozef Wouters builds on this book. In Decoratelier in Molenbeek, he gathers technicians, musicians and poems to shape a world of fragile structures, that consist primarily of care and devotion. Should space always be built? Can you hum a window? Whistle a door? A Day is a Hundred Years is a temporary garden, made from light sketches, quick constructions and short poems that seek to remember and pass on experience.