EXHAUST / Kris Verdonck, A Two Dogs Company

EXHAUST, by artist and director Kris Verdonck, celebrates the public execution of an internal combustion engine: carried in a long procession, the engine is revved up until it finally explodes. The combustion engine is one of the most important and influential inventions of the last centuries: its benefits are enormous, but so are the environmental costs of its widespread use. This must stop: we have to change – and this change requires sacrifice.

EXHAUST recreates the format of a medieval execution. The accused – in this case the internal combustion engine – is dragged through the city at the head of a procession that begins at the OASIE Transart in Via Dante. After reading out the crimes, such as the broken promises of endless progress and growth, the sentence is carried out. The performance follows the methods of Greek tragedy, Japanese Nō theatre or Shakespeare: the mythological sacrifice as a violent ritual to resolve conflict – brutal violence as a purifying force.