PSR Nebula by Vania Vaneau

Vania Vaneau entered the second cycle of the Creative Crossroads programme through the support of  ICI-CCN Montpellier.

STUK offered a coproduction of 3.500 euro, as well as the presentation of her upcoming creation Nebula. Vania’s work had been on the radar of STUK, but Nebula was the first work was presented in  Leuven.
Due to the rescheduling of the renovation works at STUK, an outdoor in situ dance programme was developed for the spring 2022. This provided a great context to present the outdoor version of Vania’s new creation. Several sites in the forests surrounding Leuven were prospected. The forest agencies however unfortunately did not grant the authorization to present the performance there. An alternative location was found in the old amphitheatre of the Provincial Domain in Kessel-Lo.
A relatively small, but very attentive and intergenerational audience, of 46 attended the performance. This allowed for informal exchanges between the artist and some of the audience members after the performance.

In Nebula, Vania Vaneau approaches the human body-nature relationship as the meeting of force fields in a post-apocalyptic context. In a kind of archaeology of the future, Nebula questions what other relationships to time, craft, soil, and chimaeras could emerge to draw a new cosmogony. What mutations and hybridizations could come out of chaos?
With the collaboration of visual artist and scenographer Célia Gondol, Vania Vaneau centres her research on the relation between metamorphosis, apparitions, materials, and gestures, that are at once archaic and telluric. It is about revealing the original state of the elements, creating healing rituals, fertilising the space, and exploring notions of catharsis and ecstasy.
Nebula is also a crossing into the unknown, a moment of eclipse to glimpse at other possible worlds. Here, the future and the past meet, time flows in a spiral leading us to a “prehistoric science-fiction”.

Through the tour of Nebula, Vania Vaneau and her company Arrangement Provisoire financially support associations that protect the Amazon and its indigenous people. STUK added a small contribution through its fee.

Performance Situation Room

Preceding the presentation of the performance a 3-day laboratory was organised within the context of the Performance Situation Rooms. During this lab, Vania Vaneau shared the research at the base of the creation Nebula. During 3 days, she worked both inside and outside with the participants, relating the body with a local natural landscape. Artists were invited to share their own practices/rituals individually and as a group in that particular space. The work was about care, transformation, land art, meetings, handcraft and activation of relations between human and non-human beings and materials.

Artists from the Brussels and Leuven dance, performance and visual arts community, interested in sharing their practice, were reached out to. The timing of the workshop unfortunately appeared a challenge for availabilities. Of the 3 enrolled participants, 2 could only participate 1 day, allowing however for a indepth artistic exchange between Vania Vaneau, Kevin Fay and photographer David Lebrun, who also documented the laboratory.