Shattered Dreams

In Shattered Dreams Niko Raes/Bodyrefuse faces and tests his limit in an extreme, open and honest manner, naked and exposed. The duration of the piece is between 20 and 40 minutes, depending on the endurance of the body of the artist.

About Bodyrefuse and Niko Raes:

Niko Raes is a young Belgian body-based artist, whose work is strongly connected to the radical work of Ron Athey, Franko b, etc. As much as he is a live artist and performer, he also works with mediums as photography, video, installation and sculptures. In all of these, he uses his own body and flesh as his material. "It’s the clay of the sculptor, the paint of the painter, the ink of a writer", he says.

He studied photography at the Royal College of Arts in Antwerp, where he searched the limits of beauty in life and in art, inspired by Greek myths. Missing reality and honesty in his work, he made the step to performing arts, dropping the shell of mythology and searched for pure beauty and emotion in his physically strong work, as he still does today. His live performances can be seen as a combination of body-performance, physical dance and endurance performance. All of his performances last just as long as his body can take it. You might say he really walks the physical borders.

"I show an ugly beauty, a body in distress, because people need mutation to be remembered that they too have a body, fragile and carnal. Using my own body, flesh and blood, I try to bring beautiful images. And at the same time, questioning that same beauty", Niko Raes says.

Some of his performances are: Between Heaven and Earth, Puppetmaster, Shattered Dreams, Sweet Sorrow and We’re all...

Niko Raes explains his work like this:
"I work in an honest and realistic way: naked and open. My work, as so my body, are a mirror that I put in front of the audience. Questioning them as their touch with reality. Some are shocked, others moved, but all have been touched one way or another."

Shattered Dreams was presented during Extreme, a weekend with performance, installations and concerts arranged at and by BIT Teatergarasjen the autumn of 2004.

Sources:

BIT Teatergarasjen, autumn program 2004. 16.11.2010: http://www.bit-teatergarasjen.no

BIT Teatergarasjen, performance program, the autumn of 2004.