Work in progress
Barzakh
2024
An opera about the prisons we build and the stories we like to tell about the people who end up there, about the active unseeing that lies hidden behind spectacular staging. With music by Osama Abdulrasol, based on a libretto written together with people incarcerated in the Ghent and Antwerp penitentiaries.
Produced by Opera Ballet Vlaanderen.
Work in progress
The Museum of Human-Hunting / Munich
2025
‘The Museum of Human-Hunting’ is an ever-evolving imaginary institution, unraveling present-day practices of humans hunting other humans within the context of the EU’s border policies. Despite what many recognised citizens would like to believe, in the city of Munich the border is everywhere too. Day after day, it is being erected in offices and university classrooms, in camps and detention centres, on the streets, in metro and train carriages. For its next incarnation, the museum’s existing collection will enter into dialogue with new material co-created in Munich.
Produced by Münchner Kammerspiele.
Previous work
-
The Voice of Fingers
Simple as ABC #7 | 2023
a theatre piece excavating the colonial history and unsettling present of fingerprinting as a technology for controlling human movement
-
The Museum of Human-Hunting | Antwerp
Simple as ABC #6 | 2022
an audio installation, unraveling present-day practices of humans hunting other humans within the context of the EU’s border policies
-
Le contre-musée des libertés individuelles
2022
an exhibition about individual liberties and what it means to be free to decide over one’s own body
-
De bevrijding van het edelhert
2022
a contemporary beast fable for 9-year-old children about the criminalisation of solidarity with non-recognised co-citizens
-
Mobility Management Machine
Simple as ABC #5 | 2021
a lecture-performance about 5 years of encounters with border guards, people smugglers and experts who have been subjected to the EU external border
-
The Museum of Human-Hunting | Tunis
Simple as ABC #4 | 2019
an audio installation, unraveling present-day practices of humans hunting other humans within the context of the EU’s border policies
-
The Wild Hunt
Simple as ABC #3 | 2019
an audio performance, conjuring up a yet-to-be-built museum of human-hunting, curated by experts from around the Mediterranean
-
Domo de Eūropa Historio en Ekzilo
2013-2018
the first international exhibition on life in the former European Union
-
Keep Calm & Validate
Simple as ABC #2 | 2017
an interview-based musical about how the digitisation of border control is reshaping the way EU officials speak about unrecognised citizens
-
Man vs Machine
Simple as ABC #1 | 2016
a theatrical essay about the so-called 'electronic nose' and other border detection technology
-
Aperçu de l'inconnu
2016
a labyrinthine theatre play retracing the steps of the detectives leading the monumentally failed Brabant Killers investigation
-
Memento Park
2015
a reenactment of the Flemish World War I centenary commemoration, exposing the links between nationalism, mass tourism and the war industry
-
De onkreukelbare
2012
a theatrical collage, taking its inspiration from the controversial revolutionary figure Maximilien de Robespierre to examine how rebellions germinate, go off the rails and are commemorated
-
Lethal Inc.
2011
a PowerPoint performance on the rationalisation of the scientific search for supposedly 'humane' execution methods
-
Billy, Sally, Jerry and the .38 Gun
2010
a cabaretesque play, zooming in on a moment in US history when conservative politics, domestic terrorism and the LGTBQI+ rights movement unexpectedly collided
-
Fobbit
2009
an interview-based monologue about Belgian soldiers stationed in Afghanistan
-
Heroes and Villains
2009
-
National Anthem
2009
About Thomas Bellinck
Thomas Bellinck (°1983, Recklinghausen, Germany), is a Brussels-based theatre and exhibition maker. His work focuses on memory politics, state violence, incarceration and international mobility injustice.
After studying Germanic Philology at the University of Leuven, Thomas graduated as a theatre director from the Brussels Royal Institute for Theatre, Cinema and Sound. In 2009, he made the theatre performance ‘Heroes and Villains’ with Ewout D'Hoore and people detained at the Leuven Auxiliary Prison, the rehearsal process of which was captured in the TV series ‘Leuven Hulp’.
Between 2009 and 2015, together with actor Jeroen Van der Ven, Thomas created a series of documentary performances, most of which were produced by the Royal Flemish Theatre in Brussels. In 2013, Thomas built ‘Domo de Eūropa Historio en Ekzilo’, a futuristic-historical museum about life in the former European Union. The immersive installation was selected for the International Film Festival Rotterdam, Wiener Festwochen, The Flemish Theatre Festival, Fast Forward Festival in Athens, Wiesbaden Biennale and Festival de Marseille.
Since 2015, Thomas has been working on ‘Simple as ABC’, a growing series of performances and installations around EU border policies, border thinking and the border gaze. Together with artist-researchers Ahilan Ratnamohan, Sara Oklobdzija and Saddie Choua, Thomas is a member of ROBIN, a Brussels-based production structure supporting socially engaged art practices. He is also a doctoral researcher in the arts at KASK / School of Arts of the University College Gent, where he is part of The School of Speculative Documentary - together with filmmakers An van. Dienderen and Rosine Mbakam, photographers Michiel De Cleene and Max Pinckers, and visual artist Jelena Jureša.