United Cowboys immerses Natlab in their whirlwind world of art

Interview by Rosalien Manderscheid

For three days, the live art collective United Cowboys will transform Natlab in Eindhoven into a world of artistic surprises featuring dance, video, music, performance, audio, photography, and even circus elements. The work is neither narrative nor language-dependent, so no Dutch is required. Eindhovenaren in all their (international) diversity are welcome.

On the first evening, visitors can (re)experience the most iconic works from the United Cowboys’ repertoire, including their Glass Performance, which has been in demand from here to Canada. On days two and three, the next generation of performers take the stage with works selected by the Cowboys. With this festival, the company is curating the work of other artists outside their own studio for the first time. 

In this interview, we speak with the two artistic directors, Pauline Roelants and Maarten van der Put. For more than thirty years, they have been collaborating on performances characterized by a physical exploration of contrasts; between vulnerability and strength, and between the celebration of individual freedom and group connection. 

For this conversation, we have coffee at their studio and performance space, Art House in Eindhoven.

Performance art in a movie theater: how did you come up with that?

Pauline: “We’ve known Jan van der Putten, for a very long time and appreciate him for his passion for the arts. When he became interim director at Natlab, we came together to create a vision. We thought it was a shame that the first film space they have is actually a beautiful theater auditorium, which was rarely used like that.”

Maarten: “This is how we came up with a three-day festival, where visitors can choose from evening one and two, or evening one and three, so that we can keep it somewhat intimate and guide them through the experience.” 

Pauline: “Because we show our own work on the first evening, it provides a kind of basis for the artistic vision with which we compose the work of others on the other evenings.” 

What is your shared vision as curators?

Pauline: "This work is actually a continuation of our Seasonings series that has been going on for twelve years now, where we give emerging artists a stage every quarter year in our Art House. In it we show multiple performances, without creating a main or supporting act. It is ultimately about the magic of how the performances give a specific stream of impressions together. So not a program with separate parts, but a world with different elements within it, where there are no full-stops but everything is a comma until the next thing appears." 

Maarten: "We combine multidisciplinary and diverse work. We turn that loose mince into one sausage, because every performance carries the same truthfulness. It is important that the audience can feel that someone is sincere and powerful in their vulnerability on stage." 

Pauline: "During rehearsals for our own artistic work, it only really becomes interesting for us when a performer has already pulled out all the tricks and doesn’t know its next move. Then the real person emerges and the mask falls away. If you dare to persevere at this point, you can end up in a momentum of timelessness. That is exactly what we want to achieve." 

That feeling of timelessness is recognizable in more of your work.

Maarten: “That started with the desire to no longer make a completely new performance every time. It is actually much more fun to keep building on what you have made and keep evolving.” 

Pauline: “During our collaboration with Theaterfestival Boulevard in Den Bosch, we were able to build in a different space every year on the concept of a performance as a biotope, a unique environment that the audience can visit again and again. With our performances like Match and Burn this created that sense of infinity or timelessness. We took this with us into our collaborations abroad, where we worked intensively with local performers towards a hypnotic biotope of live art that visitors could walk through themselves. We want to keep that same atmosphere in this current new structure we developed under the title What U.C. Is What You Get.” 

Who is this mini-festival for? 

Maarten: “For everyone; for performance enthusiasts and for people who have no clue whatsoever. We do not compromise on our artistic approaches, such as the use of nudity, but we are not aiming to shock.” 

Pauline: “By involving everyone in the flow of the evening, we can open the door to a world full of surprises in an accessible way.” 

Maarten: “We hope that the audience actively absorbs everything, but there are no difficult questions to ponder or unexpected audience participation requests. As a reviewer of our work, Rinus van der Heijden, once put it: ‘Open your eyes, disconnect your consciousness and just let the experience wash over you.’”