Ictus created a partnership with the University of Ghent as part of the Interfaces project in order to research aspects of production, communication, audience development and audience experience.

Frederik Le Roy, lecturer at the department of Drama of the Royal Academy of Fine Arts (KASK) in Ghent and guest professor at the department of Art History, Musicology and Theatre Studies at Ghent University worked, among with other examples, with the piece “Work/Travail/Arbeid" by Anne Teresa de Keersmacker, a project which explores if a choreography can be performed in the form of an exhibition.

Dancers, musicians and the public were observed in order to explore what forms of spectatorship these projects engender, and ‚what this might tell us about the contemporary dramaturgies of attention and participation that emerge when live art enters the architectural and institutional context of the museum space. 

The background of this presentation was the current institutional desire in the contemporary visual arts world to document, present, and collect works of live art (e.g. performance and sound art, theatre and dance) in the museum. This transposition of works of performance from the black box‚ of theatre to the white cube‚ of the exhibition space questions the historically established temporal and spatial preconditions of the museum experience (e.g. its focus on material objects instead of transitory events). However, it also produces an interaction between the performing arts‚ and the visual arts different codes, rituals, and modes of spectatorship.

The results of the study were presented in the Sound and Participation conference organised by ICTUS and Q-O2 on February 26, 2018.

The Research was also presentated during a research seminar on performance theory in Ghent University.