Jozef Wouters, The Soft Layer (2022)

A performance text by Jozef Wouters, The Soft Layer traces and proposes visions and words that enfold the historic building of Dar Bairam Turki in Tunis like a cloak. How can we imagine possible futures for such a place and the community inhabiting it, beyond nostalgia and the spectres of the past?

Several voices muse in three languages (Tunisian, French and English) on renovation and history, destruction and cleansing, the limits of science-fiction and the soothing quality of aloe vera.

Jozef Wouters is a Brussels-based scenographer and theatre-maker who develops work in collaboration with his Decoratelier. A workplace for set designers and artists, Decoratelier also provides room for cross-disciplinary ventures and social experiment.

Published by Varamo Press in the essay series Gestures.