Reach

In the autumn of 2022, Van Laere attended a six-hour operation at St. Antonius Hospital in Nieuwegein. He witnessed surgeons using laparoscopic instruments to make, among other things, incisions in the body. In the heat of the moment, crucial decisions were taken: the doctors, bent over the body, conferred with one another to decide how much tissue should be removed. This vital improvisation haunted Van Laere afterwards and takes centre stage in his multimedia sound performance Reach.

Van Laere now works live with the same laparoscopic instruments, producing sound by connecting audio cables. Together with two surgeons or medical specialists (in training), he constructs and deconstructs a sound artwork. For his performance at Playground, he also incorporates a composition of personal field recordings collected over the past months. In Reach, as in the rest of his oeuvre, Van Laere gives a central role to the human body—playful, and always subject to the situation in which it finds itself at any given moment.

Reach is a live performance where precise movement, sound, and visual aesthetics converge. The work explores the intersections of art and surgical expertise, inspired by the focus, precision, and choreography of real operations. The artist perceives strong parallels between surgery and performance art: both demand control, concentration, and meticulous care. This performance brings those worlds together on stage.