Yves Degryse / BERLIN & ntgent // Sonder

How long can a grieving spouse continue imaginary conversations? Can artificial intelligence reunite a widower and his dear wife, physically in the here and now? What does technology do to our most intimate experiences? Visual artist Kaat Pype unexpectedly lost her mother. From the bond with her father, and their shared grief, she developed a photography project. She photographed him in the houses of single women of his generation, interiors where someone is also missed, as if he had been living there for twenty years. Regisseur Yves Degryse filmed these encounters and made a making-of documentary. Kaat, her father, and Yves are on stage together with musician Berlinde Deman. On stage, he talks to his deceased wife. Every night again. Every night different. In Sonder the boundary between life and death is temporarily lifted by artificial intelligence. Waar Orpheus in the Greek myth enters the underworld to retrieve his beloved Eurydice, Sonder uses technology to summon the voice, the presence, and even the physical appearance of a deceased woman again. The performance thus puts forward a contemporary variant of an ancient motif: the attempt to keep the dead close. The technology in Sonder is not a miracle cure, but an opening. An opening through which love can breathe for a while longer, before the silence overtakes it again.