What if you would stop thinking ahead?
What if past, present and future are allhere and all the same? What if your connection to a place is more important than following the structure of time?

With these questions theatermakers Britt Bakker and Marjolein Roeleveld will pull you in the world of Everywhen to trigger your time perception.

In a nutshell (but what a nut!)

Everywhen, challenging time is a unique art project.

In this theatre project on location we will challenge the concept of time as you know it, leave our lineair time structure for a minute ;) and see what happens if you make PLACE more important than TIME. So thát you meet someone is more important than whén you meet. The bus will not leave on time, but when it's full... Come and ride with us!

The project takes place in the railway station of Tilburg in a glass space on platform 1. A place where clocktime is very tangible and lots of people will pass by. We will be present there for 5 weeks. In this space we will work on a performance that you can see growing everyday and that we will perform in the last week of our stay from 2 -7 april (You notice how almost every sentence I type consists of time related words?)

Inside there's also an art installation: SONGLINE. You will enter a little time bubble when you step in. Inside you'll find an image of a map of Tilburg where you can point out a place of value for you and you can leave a story linked to this specific place. Maybe it’s a story about the one time you forgot time… or the one time that time stood still, or there’s a place in Tilburg in time that’s of big importance to you and you want to share it. This map will fill up with the stories visitors leave behind. With these ingrediënts and other stories, we'll create the performance. With the performance and our presence we want to make people aware of ‘everywhen’. The Songline will be visible in town too. You'll find it in public spaces and you can also leave a story online. This map with dots will be projected on the front of the station, so everybody is able to see how the map with stories grows. It's our goal to involve as many citizens and visitors of Tilburg as possible.

Scroll down for more info about the performance, the installation and the meaning of Everywhen! It's important to us to meet you. To give space to experiment. So we invite you to get of your phone, take out your earplugs and look around you on the station of Tilburg.

Why do we need your help?

We aim to reach a diverse and large group of people who's time perspective we want to trigger. Travelers who are in a hurry; families on a daytrip; students who sit in front of the station; people who come to the railway restaurant to drink a coffee. Everybody in and around the railway station will experience (a small piece of) Everywhen. Our reach is quite broad. That's the power of the project. However, the consequence is: the majority of our audience is non-paying. So we depend more on voluntary contributions, gifts and sponsorship than with our previous shows. Therefore we need your help!
Make a donation to create this unique Everywhen-time bubble in the railway station of Tilburg!

What's the drive behind this project?

It all began when Marjolein travelled to Australia. She was fascinated by and tired of the hastiness and continues 'flow' of her city Amsterdam, and wanted to explore alternatives – other ways of experiencing time. In 2015 the Amsterdam Fund of Arts gave her a scholarship for her research 'TIME'.
With this support she interviewed citizens of Tokyo (the city that never sleeps) and travelled to North Australia to stay 1,5 month in the bush in an Aboriginal community in Yilpara. She discovered that there was no word for 'time', it just doesn't exist. What she experienced was so different than what she was used to in Amsterdam (see next chapter).
In the meanwhile she corresponded with Britt who was in Congo. Where 'lobi' means both 'yesterday' and 'tomorrow'. During this research and correspondence we both developed a huge fascination for 'everywhen'. From then it didn't stop triggering us.

What is Everywhen?

It's a space-time-perception known in the Australian aboriginal culture. In the Netherlands we tend to follow a lineair time structure. We see time as a line from A to Z. The aboriginees see time as a pond. You can swim in it to all sides. Which means that for them present, past and future all come together as one in the here (and now). They don’t talk about time and place separately, but about events that happen on specific locations. Its not ‘When did this happen?, but ‘How does this event relate to other events’? Time doesn't matter. Everything that ever happened still exists and exists simultaneously. Death is not the end. The spiritual world and the world as 'we know it' is the same. Heaven and earth are not separated. A place defines the importance of a certain event.
Even a slight look into this perception makes you wonder... what if we would see time differently? How would this effect us? And the world around us?
This is an experience we want to give to our audience. Our goal is to push clocktime to the background and see what happens if you give attention to the place where you are. And through everywhen get to know a new way of sensing time and things around you.
Everywhen’s meaning seems difficult to grasp. It’s such a rich and beautiful perception thatwe want to make it tangible and shape it for our audience. Cause that's the best way to serve its meaning. We will do this in the Songline installation and in the performance.

The performance

The performance Everywhen, challenging time tries to suck people in a different time-experience. In the performance two actrices will shake the audience up with an up-side-down perspective, stand-up philosophy, circulair time perception, australian aboriginals and their dedication to the land, time phenomena in nature, a pilot flying against time, images that will mess with your memory only to suddenly bring you back to the chair you’re sitting on.
It's a collage on location. Humour, physical energy and poetry alternate in our attempt to unrafel ‘everywhen’ when we genuinely try to imagine and give shape to what it means when place is more important than time.

The SONGLINE installation

SONGLINE?
The history of the aboriginal culture is captured in their dreamtime stories, the time that country came into being. This time is the past, present and the future in one.
Songlines are songs that give a description of the country, like a line on a map. With this song you can find your way on the land. Young men are traditionally send on walk-about to sing their way into country with only the songline to guide them. The special thing about the songline is that its written in meter and hasn’t changed for thousands of years. Thats why aboriginal people have a great knowledge of the land. For example a fresh waterwell that used to be on land, but over time got hidden in the sea. These songlines and stories are captured in paintings by using dots: dotpaintings.
The difference between australian aboriginals and western people is that the last one moves through time and that the aboriginal moves through space. Aboriginal stories, about life ánd about dreamtime, focus on place and space descriptions. Not on a determination of time like: when, before or after. These descriptions of space are captured in ‘dots’.

In the SONGLINE installation we will slowly create an aboriginal dotpainting, a songline of Tilburg, consisting of dots that contain your stories. On our location you will find the installation that you can enter. Inside, clocktime will not be relevant anymore... You are invited to put a dot on a blanc canvas and leave your story about a point in time and space in Tilburg that’s of importance to you.

The installation is an interactive art-installation in which we combine the aboriginal perspective on time and place with the everyday life on the platform of the station. We want to hear you story, your songline! After two months the canvas might look like this:

Meet us…

Marjolein Roeleveld studied at the Mime School at the Amsterdam School of Arts. She performed for TG Oostpool, Mime Theatre Group Golden Palace, Kassys, Afslag Eindhoven, Feikes Huis and several visual artists. She made her show Objectofilia for the Amsterdam Over t IJ Festival and directed Lovers and other Strangers on the Oerol Festival. She’s currently busy with Everywhen and her solo performance SLEEP.

Britt Bakker studied at KASK School of Arts in Ghent and works as an actress/theatremaker in both Belgium and Holland. Currently she works for Ontroerend Goed and 4Hoog. In the past she worked for/with Station Noord, de Peergroup, mightysociety, Compagnie Dakar, de Bonte Hond, het Amsterdamse Bos, Grand Theatre, KC nOna and others.

Together we made different performances. Our theatre signature can best be described as performative and visual theatre, in which the urgence of being present and the fysicality of the performers stands out. It expresses itself through a transparant way of performing. We feel connected to mime. By being on stage without judgement but at thesame time stressing a subject very clearly we make our audience part of a proces that takes place right in front of you. The attempt is visible. We often make our work outside of the theatre on a location that triggers us. We start from an empty space. Our work can be capricious, and absurd by zooming in on every day details and stretching time.

Crew

Stichting Volle Grond
Performers/makers Marjolein Roeleveld and Britt Bakker
Director Maarten Lok
Project Coordinator Joeri de Vos
Production Marijke Castellijns
Technician Erik Gramberg
Songline John Lippens, Koen Huijs, Siddhartha Gautam

Thanks to: NS, BNG Bank, Gemeente Tilburg, Art Fact, Riet Mellink, Iona Hogendoorn, Annelieke Roeleveld, Nieuwe Vorst, DansBrabant, senior citizens participating in performance.