Compositions

Endless Shift is a performance for three cyclists and electronics, premiered during Nacht van de Verbeelding in October 2025, presented through a collaboration between the SMAK and GUM museums in Ghent.

The work takes its initial inspiration from The Cyclist (Bicycleran, 1987) by Iranian filmmaker Mohsen Makhmalbaf. In the film, an Afghan refugee is forced to cycle continuously for seven days in order to earn enough money to pay for his wife's medical treatment. While the piece originates from this narrative, it gradually moves beyond the story itself to reflect on repetition as a universal human condition.

Many aspects of contemporary life unfold through cycles that seem impossible to escape. We repeat routines, habits, responsibilities, and forms of labour that are never entirely identical, yet they gradually shape our bodies and minds. Repetition can create resilience, but it can also become a source of physical exhaustion and psychological erosion. Despite this tension, we continue to move, often because stopping is not an option.

In Endless Shift, the bicycle becomes more than a means of transportation; it functions as a body in continuous negotiation with movement, balance, and endurance. The three cyclists perform interconnected circular trajectories that continuously overlap, creating shifting relationships between individual and collective motion.

The choreography is inspired by vintage music and dance boxes, where multiple rotational mechanisms operate simultaneously. While the performers collectively trace a larger circle, each cyclist also generates smaller circular movements within it. These layered rotations produce an image of endless circulation, where movement is constantly transformed but never truly escapes its own cycle.

Electronic sound extends this physical choreography into the sonic domain, reinforcing the sensation of perpetual motion and blurring the boundary between mechanical repetition and human presence. Rather than presenting repetition as purely oppressive or purely liberating, Endless Shift invites the audience to inhabit the ambiguity of cycles that simultaneously sustain, exhaust, and define our everyday lives.