Rebecca Lenaerts (Brussels)
The artist
Rebecca Lenaerts is a versatile artist. She studied Theater Sciences at the University of Ghent, Belgium and the FU Berlin, Germany. After this principlally theoretical approach she switched to the performance side when she studied Drama at the Dutch Theatreschool of Brussels (RITS) an the UDK Berlin.
Her home city of Brussels, renowned for its complicated language situation, offered a fertile environment for Lenaerts to develop her thinking on language and art. Her language workshops are in high demand and she works as a freelance storyteller for Art Basics for Children (ABC).
Lenaerts' main artistic explorations revolve around how radio and podcasting can be sculpted into a theatrical medium and a platform for audio creations. She created audio plays live on stage in collaboration with musicians and djs. She describes her most recent project, In Arcadia, as 'an auditory passage into a different world': ten famous paintings triggered an imaginary exploration of the universe behind the well-known image.
Cities are a recurrent source of inspiration in Lenaerts'work. In autumn 2007 Lenaerts made a series of audio stories about Brussels for podcasts and blogsites and under the name Devrouwdie (TheWomanWho) she creates her own, sometimes grotesque, city stories. Rebecca Lenaerts visited Sheffield from 26 March till 8 April 2011.
Citybooks
Apart from soaking up the Sheffield atmosphere and finding inspiriation for her citybook, Lenaerts shared her talents as a storyteller and a creative workshop organiser. In collaboration with Germanic Studies students she offered a workshop as part of the SOMLAL Outreach activities for a group of GCSE students from Havelock Academy, Grimsby.
'Lost in Translation' was the theme of a second theatre workshop, this time for Sheffield students of Dutch. Two intensive days of writing and rehearsals culminated in a public performance on 4 April 2011. The audience experienced how movement can becomes text, spoken word become sound. This workshop was supported by the Flemish Representation in the UK. The short film was made by Heleen Vanschoenwinkel.