Thomas Verstraeten

Wanderlust Warenhaus (2024)
Performance

Thomas Verstraeten creates an immersive experience in Graz’s largest fashion store, inviting the audience to embark on an excursion and contemplate the paradoxes of modern consumerism and its appropriation of nature.

Drawing upon the store’s design elements, Verstraeten transforms it into a fictitious mountain landscape. Visitors navigate the mazelike structure surrounded by a soundscape of natural sounds recorded in and around Graz. In this artificial wilderness, birdsong accompanies browsing for shoes, a babbling brook echoes through the perfume department, while reaching the top floor becomes a hike to a summit.

After the store has closed, a group of performers spreads all over it and inhabits the wilderness, enacting scenes reminiscent of everyday hikes and playfully engaging with the actual space as well as with the fictitious landscape. Along this parcours, the boundaries between reality and illusion, nature and commerce are blurred, while the performance challenges the romanticized nostalgia for nature and its role in national identity–building.

Thomas Verstraeten (1986, Antwerp, Belgium) is a theater-maker, actor, and visual artist. As a member of the theater company FC Bergman, he is a regular guest at the most renowned international theater festivals. Verstraeten also works independently on an art practice that straddles the performing and visual arts. He spins narratives out of the movements of the city and its inhabitants, out of their visible and hidden stories and lives. In his videos, installations, and often participatory performances, the ordinary is theatricalized into the extraordinary. He lives in Antwerp.

Commissioned and produced by steirischer herbst ’24

In cooperation with Kastner & Öhler

With the kind support of the Government of Flanders

11.10., 20:00 and 21:30
12.10., 19:00

Kastner & Öhler
Sackstraße 7–13
8010 Graz

18/14 euros

For ages 14 and up

Duration: ca. 75 min.
(Walking time: ca. 60 min., numerous stairs)

The performance’s soundscape can already be heard at Kastner & Öhler in the week leading up to the premiere:
5.10.–10.10., 12:00–13:00 and 17:00–18:00
11.10., 14:00–18:30
12.10., 9:30–18:00

Concept, direction: Thomas Verstraeten
Sound design: Senjan Jansen
Artistic assistance: Renée Faveere
Costume and prop assistance: Fiona Gamper

With: Paul Connert, Sebastian Egger, Bernadette Felber, Lukas Ganster, Thomas Gössler, Lia Helena Grabmüller, Alma Haas, Anna Paola Hauer, Ingo Hauer, Jan Friedolin Hauer, Konstantin Emanuel Hauer, Marie Luz Hauer, Nicole Heigenhauser, Bernadette Hirschmugl, Luzia Johow, Nora Köhler, Jakob Kolb, Josef Koller, Markus Perner, Peter Pikl, Michaela Purgstaller, Sandra Schitter, Marlene Schwar, Eva Schweighofer, Anna Schweighofer, Irmgard Schweighofer, Hermann Schweighofer, Beatrix Somweber-Rah, Florian Strasser, Trio Zwoadreivier (Eva Maria Hois, Rosmarie Krainz, Elisabeth Glavic), Stephan Trippl, Aurelia Volkmann

Commissioned and produced by steirischer herbst ’24

In cooperation with Kastner & Öhler

With the kind support of the Government of Flanders