Holland Festival – Everything must go – Dries Verhoeven

Civil disobedience

Is stealing and plundering the future? In his latest 'living installation,' Dries Verhoeven investigates shoplifting. A late capitalist man tries to survive in a system that has lost its lustre without any prospect of an alternative in the meantime. Everything has to go but in favour of what?

At a time when we like to showcase our good behaviour, Verhoeven focuses on the socially undesirable. How exemplary are we when we imagine ourselves unobserved, for example, at the self-checkout? Verhoeven talked to more and less well-off people who occasionally 'forget' to pay something, with thieves in detention, and with those who consider theft a form of resistance.

He invited the proletarian shoppers and self-proclaimed Robin Hoods to self-examination. The result is a grim depiction of the dark depths of our moral actions. Everything Must Go will premiere during the Holland Festival.