EKG - Of love and The Low Countries I

A literary cardiogram by Igor Malijevský and Jaroslav Rudiš.

Guests:  actor and writer Pieter De Buysser, writers Esther Gerritsen and Auke Hulst, visual artist Zdeňka Morávková and Czech writer Markéta Pilátová.

Music by Dutch singer, musician and visual artist Sonja van Hamel with her band. The concert will also feature screenings of their cartoon animation.

Pieter de Buysser
Pieter de Buysser was born in 1972 in Chapels, close to Antwerp. He began writing at a young age and studied philosophy in Antwerp (UFSIA) and Paris. In September 2012 his first novel De Keisnijders (Cutting the Stone) was published by De Geus.
He was nominated for the Taalunie Playwriting Prize and the Flemish Culture Prize for Performing Arts. De Buysser has received the Émile Zola Prize, the Dwarse Denker Trophy and the Kleine Marie Hartman Pen. His texts are published and/or performed in English, Dutch, French, Polish and Italian.
Whether De Buysser is writing, philosophizing or making a film, he creates space. He is a conduit, a gap, an interval. In each of his mediums –film, prose, drama, essay, political talks and actions  – De Buysser paves new ground. ... he makes way.

Esther Gerritsen
(Žízeň, Argo, 2014)
Since her debut in 2000 Bevoorrecht bewustzijn, (Privileged Consciousness), Esther Gerritsen (b. 1972) has been considered one of the best new authors in the Netherlands. Both De kleine miezerige god (2008, The Sorry Little God) and Superduif (2010, Superpigeon) were nominated for literary prizes. Her 2012 novel Dorst (Craving) was short­listed for four.
In 2014 she was awarded the Frans Kellendonk Prize for her body of work. Gerritsen excels at writing fast, humorous dialogue, she uses to capture the lack of understanding between people, the ways they deliberately talk at cross purposes so as to edge around each other’s problems. Her novel Craving is a harrowing story about the impossibility of loving and truly making contact with others, written so drily and pointedly that you regularly laugh out loud as you read.

Auke Hulst
Auke Hulst (b. 1975) found a wide audience with his fourth, highly acclaimed autobiographical book Kinderen van het ruige land (2012, Children of the Savage Land), which was nominated for the BNG Literature Prize and was awarded the Cutting Edge Award and the prize for Best Book from Groningen.  In January 2015 his ambitious novel Slaap zacht, Johnny Idaho (Sleep tight, Johnny Idaho) will be published, a dystopian work that deals with current themes like economic apartheid, surveillance and identity, but also with themes of vengeance, love and death.
As a literary critic, journalist and essayist he writes for both Dutch and Belgian newspapers and magazines, most notably NRC Handelsblad. His work has been compared to Murakami's (whom Hulst interviewed in 2013), David Mitchell's and Jack Kerouac's, blending these influences into his own unique voice. In his spare time he is the frontman of the band De Meisjes (The Girls).
 

ABOUT EKG
EKG is a literary musical show, which in collaboration with Archa Theatre has been headed by Igor Malijevský and Jaroslav Rudiš since the start of 2007. EKG is today the largest Czech scene for live literature and aims to cross over genres and generations. The protagonists are always on the border of literary reading, musical evening and theatrical cabaret; each show is a premiere and a final performance at the same time. Improvisation, communication with the audience and authorial recitals of new texts by contemporary Czech writers all feature prominently in the performance.