U Raging Standstill

*U (you) only exists in your head, U (you) do not know who you are living..."

U are in your head - U are playing a game there - U don't know who you experience. The visitor of U becomes the protagonist in his own story. A story where he partly loses himself and eventually finds himself almost physically. In this narrative by Saskia De Coster the central themes are regression, dementia and the loss of self. Equipped with videogoggles and headphones, the protagonist walks out of the memory of himself... BBC4 (Andrew Hynd) on U Raging Standstill: "...They play with your mind...A very strange experience but thorougly worthwhile. Is this theatre? Is it contemporary dance or choreography? Is it videowork, is it performance art? I think the answer is that it is al of these in a way that I never experienced them before. And I have to say that this is a totally unique experience.

During a residency in 2005 with Het Productiehuis at the Rotterdamse Schouwburg, new technological configurations were performed. The difference in the configuration with the predecessor Crash is the mobility of the spectator. Walking through the virtual image he feels physically 'there'.
The premiere of U Raging Standstill was during the Artefact Festival 2006 in Leuven, Belgium. The immersive performance takes one spectator at a time. Once encapsulated in the technology the borders between reality and virtuality, time and space, fade. The computer, omnidirectional cameras, and immersive video take control of and manipulate the senses.

This technology was developed at the Expertisecentre for Digital Media (EDM), a research laboratory which is part of the university of Hasselt. Philippe Beckaert (EDM & CREW) and Dr. Kurt Vanhoutte (University of Antwerp) provided technological and arthistorical input.