Saskia De Coster sets up camp at KMSKA
Belgian author Saskia De Coster has taken on a significant challenge in February, and it has everything to do with the Antwerp museum for fine arts (KMSKA).
“The biggest challenge of my writing career.” That’s how De Coster announced her one-month stay at the KMSKA on social media. Called The Author is Present, the performance – as the museum calls it – involves De Coster working, writing, living and sleeping in the museum.
More specifically, she will be writing a novel about how we as humans deals with inaccessibility, loss and the search for connection. The circumstances in which she will be putting herself seem ideal for such a topic!
She will do all of this behind a transparent wall, for everyone to see. Such a setup is, in a way, a return to the source for Saskia De Coster, as she started out her writing career in a small garden shed, in isolation. At KMSKA, she is isolating herself again.
The performance seeks to explore how the writing process evolves when one is cut off from “today’s media society” and when all forms of communication are banned.
De Coster published her first novel, Vrije Val (“Free fall”) in 2002, aged 26, and has published many more since then, including the bestseller Wij en Ik (“We and Me”).
She is also no stranger to performing arts, having collaborated with the likes of Arne Quinze, Inne Eysmans and Ief Spincemaille.
We wish her the best of luck with this exciting project!