L’art pour l’art

Jos Houben is an internationally renowned and award winning Belgian performance artist. We were asked by Original Editions to develop a digital piece that would celebrate Jos as an original thinker and innovator. Part of a planned series that will feature similar ‘original editions’ across a variety of sectors covering the arts, business and sport.

Together with photographer Phil Adams we met with Jos to get a feel for his personality and his work with no preconceived ideas as to what we were going to do. What we discovered was a man for whom physical theatre is a science. Who in that initial meeting at the table of a small London cafe, took us on a journey through the art of performance, made us laugh and generally had us mesmerised for the whole afternoon.

When we returned a couple of months later with Phil and videographer Liam Prior we had decided to try and capture some of the multi-faceted aspects of Jos’ personality and performance. A whole day spent at the fantastic Haig Club in Crouchend, much of it spent improvising , yielded some of the most engaging work we could have hoped for.

The end result, a real team effort, is an intimate portrait of Jos and a revealing insight into the whole creative process.