Part of the Gouvernement at Vooruit residency programme
Supported by Vooruit and Stad Gent / Cultuur Gent
Besides guiding Zinnema under his leadership towards a promising future, Jan Wallyn is also a devoted performance artist and very outspoken about gender and queer issues. Aware of how mainstream society can easily and sometimes even ignorantly alienate and isolate queer people, he not only fully embraces his genderqueer body and mind but also accepts and embodies the loneliness that often results from homophobic incidents.
In the music and light performance ‘Hottest Chick in Town’, Wallyn coalesces those feelings and experiences with support by Samuel Vekeman (in charge of mixing and sound coaching) and Steven Brys (light design). Both an exploration and celebration of queer seclusion, the performance encompasses a 60-minutes-long soundtrack originally produced by Wallyn and inspired by the G note, also known as ‘sol’ (which immediately evokes the word ‘solitude’). The audience is invited to seperately take a seat on stage and undergo the musical experience in solitude. Between the lounge chairs, curtains are sporadically hung from the ceiling, thus increasing the intimacy. Each viewer decides its own relation to the happening: either relaxing, or getting up and going bonkers on the beat.
During his public moment, he shows his first public try-out of the project.