Average Happiness

Average Happiness is a visual trip in which logic slowly tilts toward emotion. What begins as a neat PowerPoint presentation full of graphs and linear equations slowly gets stuck. Slides start to stutter, a glitch flickers across the screen, and a cracking sound tears the presentation open. From that white grid, something new grows: a spreadsheet called ‘Reality.xlsx’. A hyper-rational alter ego of Bas Vanderschoot leads the audience through the self-built tabs of his life. With LED screens, projections, and cardboard diagrams, he builds a new landscape each time — each with its own logic, its own inhabitant, its own madness. In this digital dream, he meets figures who guide or mislead him: a talking paperclip, a cynical crypto-miner, the imaginary number 5i, and even the search history of his late father. In seemingly philosophical conversations, they search for a foothold together, but Bas’ own vulnerability and sadness seep to the surface again and again. The more tabs he opens, the more complex and darker the world becomes. The empty desert turns into a city of numbers: graphs rise like skyscrapers, arrows swing like vines, data points swarm like birds. What began as a rational presentation degenerates into a fever dream of data in which the boundary between human and number blurs. A journey through the chart of darkness: a universe where logic and emotion, control and chaos, data and loss intersect. The performance is inspired by the film of the same name by the Swiss animation filmmaker Maja Gehrig. Extra Overdag we let ourselves be inspired by Average Happiness and organize an extra event in the context of Open House.