Biography

Marieke Breyne holds degrees from Ghent University (Licentiate in Educational Sciences, 2008, and Initial Academic Teacher Training in the Sciences of Pedagogy, 2009) and the University of Antwerp (Advanced Master in Theatre Sciences, 2010). She also studied Visual Arts and Performance at the School of Arts in Ghent.

Marieke works as a sensorial and physical performer in an international context, with places such as: C!RCA (Australia), Unima S-A (South Africa), Teatro de Los Sentidos (S), Arno Nollen (NL), Schauspielhaus Dusseldorf (D), Theaterhaus Dschungel (AU), Carte Blanche Theatre (DK), Raymundo Théâtre and Théâtre de l’Instant (FR). Additionally, she is active in three international companies she founded herself:

• Motschnik, Verein für feine Kunst; a Belgian-Austrian theatre company based in Vienna that creates poetic visual theatre for young audiences.
• Oortocht; a young collective based in Ghent that explores the possibilities of incorporating the audience into visual performances.
• The Hatchery; a Danish-Dutch-Belgian group that investigates the integration of a sensorial theatre language, acquired via diverse sensorial theatre experiences, in the public realm.

Since mid-2014 Marieke combines this practice with part-time doctoral research in the Department of Art, Music and Theatre Studies at Ghent University. She is employed on a bilateral research project directed by Prof. Dr. Christel Stalpaert (Ghent University), which also involves the partner institutions the University of Stellenbosch, the University of Leeds and the School of Arts Ghent. Her collaborator on this NRF-FWO-funded research project, titled “Masks, Puppets and Performative Objects in Relation to Trauma, Reconciliation and Performance in South Africa,” is fellow PhD student Sofie de Smet.

Marieke approaches this research from her background as a performer. Studies in the design and performance art  acknowledge a transformative power inherent to performative objects. Marieke questions how much this power can be a guideline in creating new performative encounters: meetings between an unpsychologized performative body and an audience member. Therefore she explores the possibilities to internally objectify oneself as a performer. How can a body act as a mirror for the individual visitor and function as a performative object? Equally, she investigates the possibilities to move the body as an object in public space. Can one mediate the space by objectifying oneself and by doing so mediate the people who experience the space?

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