Privacy

Actors Wine Dierickx and Ward Weemhoff perform together in Privacy. Dierickx is a member of the Flemish-Dutch theatre ensemble Wunderbaum, Weemhoff is an actor with Dutch collective De Warme Winkel. In real life they are a couple, which is what inspired them to create a performance bordering between fiction and reality, focused on the central question 'how much intimacy can we take'?

'Privacy is an outdated social norm,' Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg once famously said. In their piece Privacy, Wine Dierickx and Ward Weemhoff explore the radical change our notions of privacy have undergone in recent decades. 

We used to keep our private images, thoughts and experiences for our family and close friends; protectingour privacy was sacred to us. But the emergence of social media has allowed us all to share our most personal pictures, stories, videos and opinions with the rest of the world. The boundaries between the private and the public domain have never been as blurred as they are today. To some people this situation is unacceptable, others love it. Masses of people surrender to the non-stop orgy of exhibitionist posts. Where one person draws the line, someone else's freedom starts. In our modern society, digital exhibitionism and voyeurism seem to have become the most popular activities to spend our spare time. 

From the art world, we also get conflicting messages: the Chinese artist Ai Weiwei utilises the publication of private material to criticise social repression in China, while Hito Steyerl created his video How not to be seen to discuss how difficult it is these days to escape the gaze of others. 

This conflict between the lovers and haters of what Richard Sennett has called the tyranny of intimacy led the acting couple Dierickx and Weemhoff to create Privacy, which is inspired by art works exploring the boundaries between the public and the private when this was still relatively new. They include Tracey Emin's dirty sheets and cigarette stubs, the birth of Stan Brakhage's baby, Andy Warhol's sleeping lover, Nan Goldin's bedroom snapshots, John Lennon and Yoko Ono's bed-in and Marina Abramović and Ulay's naked performances. Looking back at them, these images all seem rather sensual, dating from a time when it wasn't banal to flaunt your private life. Dierickx and Weemhoff examine what has happened to our notion of privacy since. In their messy apartment full of personal effects – an unmade bed, an open wardrobe, a kitchen table, a full fridge, a lost cigarette stub – they shuttle between the lovers Wine and Ward and the actors Dierickx and Weemhoff. The historical images they evoke still suggest something mysterious and erotic in their intimacy. At the same time, their intimate form of theatre provokes a feeling of discomfort in the viewer.