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CAN I TELL AN ENTIRE STORY ABOUT MYSELF WITHOUT LOOKING LIKE A COMPLETE SELF-OBSESSED IDIOT WHO THINKS HE CAN DO WHATEVER AND STAY RELEVANT?

My current project: it exists of multiple layers, mediums and approaches. Petite Diva and XL BIG BOY are the characters that started the whole project: two inflatable tents. They can perform whilst also function as an installation. I like to consider them costumes, costumes with no need to be worn. They wear themselves and play their role independently. When shown under their own names, this is how they exist.

I also perform with them. The performance is called ‘Charrette et Janet’. I am the ‘Janet’, A Belgian insult for gay men. The ‘Charrette’ is the moving house/wardrobe I made. This element functions as a way to change characters on stage. The performance also stars Petite Diva and XL BIG BOY. Most of the time they just lie there, only for a few minutes they inflate. I ask the public to think about their relationships with these characters. Most of the time they are not asking your attention, but maybe you do give them some.

Lastly, I am also working on yet another approach to the whole project. In ‘Petite Diva et le Janet’, I try to interact with Petite Diva through the medium of video. The whole thing looks like an installation but could also be considered a performance. This version of the project will try to combine all the elements in one thing.

CAN I TELL AN ENTIRE STORY ABOUT MYSELF WITHOUT LOOKING LIKE A COMPLETE SELF-OBSESSED IDIOT WHO THINKS HE CAN DO WHATEVER AND STAY RELEVANT?

That is the question I have been asking myself the last few weeks. Through all these different varieties, it is still my story. It is about me, but how can you as a spectator relate to it then? This is the struggle I have been facing, but I feel like it is an important and necessary one. How can I make work that is more than therapy for myself? At what point does an outsider considers it arrogance or self-obsession. I don’t want to push myself onto other people, though maybe this is part of being an artist. You ask people to perceive the things you do. Most of the time it is not a mutual relationship, you don’t necessarily ask your spectator to show something of themselves to you.

I also don’t know whether my story (= gay man growing up in a conservative small town, being bullied for how I am and struggling with all of this throughout adolescence and grown-up life) is still relevant for others, maybe we face different problems that are more urgent. I don’t want to diminish myself or my feelings, but I also don’t want to pretend I am the most important problem in the world. I am privileged on a lot of things, so I must figure out how my privilege communicates with parts of my story that are truly hurtful to myself or to others. I do believe in the power of intersectional feminism or intersectional activism. Maybe my work or my story could also inhabit parts of other people’s stories or feelings. Maybe two different stories of discrimination have similar elements that together could function as a more general approach to these issues.