The Meetingbureau was an artistic research to the existence of prejudice.
In this installation you are welcomed by Amy or Andre, workers of The Meetingbureau. They take you to a house in the city and let you investigate the inside of this house for 15 minutes. The inhabitants aren’t at home and it is up to you to figure out what kind of person lives here.
At the end of this 15 minutes you fill in a questionaire about the inhabitant.
Together with the workers of The Meetingbureau you discuss the results.
At the end of your visit to The Meetingbureau you will find out the workers have made a character reference about you as well based on your short face-to-face meeting of 5 minutes.
When there is a lack of a visual image of the other person, It’s a well known fact that the human being defines the other person based on other aspects.
For example the voice we hear through the telephone, someone’s occupation, favorite music, hobbies or the way we write a motivation letter. Even when we do know someone’s face but these other aspects are unknown, we start filling in the blanks.
In general we have the tendency to define the other person as much as we can. Sometimes it is accurate but most of the time these are projections coming from our own references.
concept, directing Merel Smitt scenography Simone Eggen performers Andre Dongelmans, Amy van der Weerden in co-production with Festival Karavaan photo Salih Kilic