Diederik Peeters - Mirages

For this residency, Diederik brings light-designer Henri-Emmanuel Doublier. Together they will conduct tests and experiments for Mirages, the performance they will present at Playground Festival in November. They will also start developing the light-dramaturgy for Diederik’s new project Confabulations (premiere November 2025). The main sparking point for this project is Peeters’ long-standing fascination with the history of psychiatry, and with some specific neuropsychiatric ‘disorders’. Some questions that sprout from this fascination: what is the difference between what we perceive, believe and feel? Where and why do we call it 'reality'? And how is this perception fuelled by our shared fears and desires? From when and with what (scientific) authority is our perception considered 'pathological'? And what reference points do we have for considering someone 'normal'? How do those reference points shift throughout history, and how can we imagine them in the future?

TEAM / CREDITS

Diederik Peeters in close collaboration with Henri-Emmanuel Doublier (light design)

Despite a degree in visual arts, Peeters quickly got lost in the performing arts. He popped up in the work of fellow artists, cunningly disguised as actor, performer or even advisor (Miet Warlop, Superamas, Sarah & Charles, Grand Magasin...). But above all, he insists on brewing his own artistic concoctions, sometimes in collaboration with carefully chosen cronies. He mostly makes performances, but has also been caught writing texts, devising installations, videos, podcasts.... Peeters has a pathological preference for confusion. In his work, the notion of a solid and unchanging reality is stubbornly sabotaged to reveal a universe where everything transforms and nothing ever remains what it seems.