“ARDOR” transforms the act of writing into a collective experience, where intimacy is exposed and constructed in real time.
Maël Keppenne
“ARDOR” is a performance of writing projected in real time. The performer stands facing the audience while the words typed on the computer appear behind him, constituting the sole mode of communication. The voice is absent; language circulates through light, the screen and the gaze. This device creates a tension between physical presence and displaced speech, between the visible body and the text that extends it.
As the performance progresses, the writing gradually shifts towards an erotic realm. The text addresses the audience, designates, imagines and constructs scenes of desire involving the audience. This shift towards a more direct and sensual style of writing brings into play the dynamics of gaze, exposure and fantasy, to the point of bordering on the sexual.
The spectator is invited to participate in the circulation of pleasure, to read, to desire, to be read. The act of writing becomes an erotic act: a written masturbation where the keyboard serves as a mediator between the performer’s body and that of the audience.
Maël Keppenne (he/him) is a queer artist and author born in Brussels. His work questions the construction of erotic imaginaries and the way language shapes our bodily experiences. A final-year student in Creative Writing at La Cambre, where he is writing his novel, he presented Corps calibré Corps désiré at the Trouble festival (2025) and co-created the DJ show L’Amour dans le même bermuda (2025). He is currently working on a video, text and sound performance based on mainstream pornographic images.
Infos
| DATE | CONTENU |
|---|---|
| 2026/04/252230 |
25.04.2026 22:30 Studio Thor, Saint-Josse-ten-Noode Réservations |
Note: sexually explicit content