You’ll Never Walk Alone

You’ll Never Walk Alone was premiered during the exhibition “The Choice of Jan Fabre”, Gallery Indian Caps, Antwerp. The installation has won the TENT Academy Award ’09, and also the René Coelho Price 2009 (NIMK).

Witte van Hulzen & Sander Breure stayed for three months in Uganda while working on and recording You’ll Never Walk Alone. It is an abstract, poetic narration of young men’s lives in Uganda. None of the people in the movie have any experience as actors.

We see young African men in various scenes that – even when one has never been to Africa – because of the knowledge acquired through media, don’t seem particularly unusual. A lonely cowboy character walking through a shopping mall in Kampala, or some shotgun-armed security guards standing in an empty nightclub don’t appear very strange at first sight. But through the introduction of alienating actions and objects that somehow don’t fit in the context, a feeling of cultural estrangement is provoked.

This awareness is fomented once it is noticed no actor ever speaks in the movie, although it might take awhile before the absence of language is noticed when watching the impressive visual and sonic compositions. At the end of the story it is not so clear anymore where the story has taken place.

Witte van Hulzen & Sander Breure have worked together for over three years on the production of primarily video work & performances. Remarkable is the way they are able to give each other, and the other people they work with, an equal amount of space. Their attention to this social aspect of their art is also present in the content of their work. In the case of You’ll Never Walk Alone this is seen in the sensitivity with which they treat the complex subject of cultural identity & representation. [Andree v/d Kerckhove]