Kaufhaus Inferno
Kaufhaus Inferno is based on La Divina Comedia, written by Dante in 1314. It consists of and connects a newspaper comic (in De Morgen), an interactive website, a live performance, a book and an exposition.
During the performance, Virgil (Gène Bervoets) takes us and Dante (impersonated by a Power PC G3) along on a hallucinating trip through the virtual reality of a shopping mall. A fast food restaurant, a disco, a fitness club full of worked out bodies... this enchanting consumer paradise turns out to be an infernal universe that has been carefully designed to seduce and deceive its visitors. Kaufhaus diagnoses a society that finds itself in a terminal condition; there is no final purge.
The audience is invited to take a seat in a 'cave', surrounded by projection screens, in order to immerse into the insane Kaufhaus universe. The blend of text, projections and sound creates an impressive and sometimes even disturbing experience that confronts us with our own role of passive consumer.