THE RED BOX

A collaboration by Olivia Lennon and Jan van Schaik.

Introduction

The Red Box is a global and collaborative installation and performance project by artists Olivia Lennon & Jan van Schaik.

Act 1 (April 2024)

In Act 1 Lennon and van Schaik created a combined installation and performance piece which showed L’Escaut in April 2024 and was listed with the Art Brussels 2024 OFF Programme.

The installation was a series of built forms which remade, but inverted, parts of the residency space within itself at full scale – including ceiling elements rotated 180 degrees around the horizon and re-made as scalloped bench, ceiling elements inverted and remade as ceiling baffles, and beams and column capitals inverted and remade as a decorative room divider.

In this set Lennon and van Schaik designed and directed the performance of five costumed characters engaged in an improvisational response to the space and its inverted elements.

The installation has remained installed in the space since April 2024 during which time Lennon and van Schaik and L’Escaut invited other artists to produce and install exhibitions of their own in response to the installation. These artists are: Leonor Gomez and Arthur Jules, Darren Roshier, Lisa Hoffmann, Marco Schröder, and Gérard Béthume.

Act 2 (April 2025)

In Act 2 Lennon and van Schaik return to L’Escaut in April 2025 as part of the Art Brussels 2025 OFF Programme.

In this iteration Lennon and van Schaik will make a series of human-size maquettes to be installed in the original set.

The figures will transform everyday building materials into sculptural reflections on spatial orientation, architectural form, and the personality of objects.

Exhibition dates 25 – 27 APRIL, 11am – 7pm Opening event 25 APRIL, 6pm – 9pm

L’Escaut Artist in Residency Space
Rue de l'Escaut 60,
B-1080 Molenbeek-Saint-Jean

THE RED BOX. Photograph by Albert Comper

Click here for a short essay by Jan van Schaik and scroll down for event poster — and details on the set, caharacters, performance, project team, and suppoters.

Set

The set treats the built form of the L’Escaut building as if a found object. Its architectural elements are sampled, and then remade up side down, back to front, and mirrored.

Together the existing building and the remade components work to create a space of multiple architectural and elemental realities.

Photographs by Fabien Silvestre Suzor and Johan Poezevara

Characters

The characters are a response to the set’s desire to be occupied.

Their invention arises from a sampling of the emotional, political, social, and cultural conditions of the set’s location, seen through the antipodean lens worn by the artists whose practices are based on the opposite side of the globe.

Photographs by Fabien Silvestre Suzor and Johan Poezevara

Peformance

The performance is a part-improvised part-rehearssed activation of the characters within the physical and conceptual space of the set performed over a 90 minute period.

Performed at L’Escaut for the Art Brussels OFF Programme, 28 April 2024.