‘Disco Inferno’ is an industrial monster with an insatiable appetite for its own products. Forty years of artistic research, experimentation and incessant output inform this Gesamtkunstwerk, which can be read as a self-portrait of Van Lieshout as obsessive system builder, seer, inventor, architect, maker of machine sculptures, engineer and shifter of boundaries.

Like all AVL works, ‘Disco Inferno’ is an exercise in self-sufficiency. It is a self-sustaining universe – a labyrinth of countless sculptures, handmade machines, hybrid engines, furniture, other artists’ work, utopias and dystopias – “all stemming from the hammer, the ultimate instrument of change”. The industrial monster is composed of giant, in-house designed and built machines, a spaghetti mash of generators, pumps and shredders, all propelled by a bizarre range of sculpted engines that can run on almost anything (vegetable oil, butter or homemade pyrolysis oil). It is a spectacle of industry and its potential in never-ending motion, yet the work’s only real purpose is to keep going – and to heat the jacuzzi in ‘The Happy End of Everything Spa’. Accompanied by the bubbling and pounding of all these machines, “as long as we have oil or waste plastic, we can keep dancing on the edge of the volcano”. JVL

With ‘Disco Inferno’, Van Lieshout continues to sculpt a new material vocabulary. Atelier Van Lieshout gained international recognition for living sculptural installations that function to assert or question independence; inventing objects, structures, machines and thematic bodies of work that annihilate the boundaries between art, architecture and design. In Van Lieshout’s distinctive language, everything is an experiment in what “could be”. AVL’s transgressive practice dissects and invents systems to flirt with power, autarky, politics, fertility, life, sex and death.

Exhibited on the Cranium:
Impressions (2017)
Visual artist Kevin van Braak traced the role of his Indonesian grandfather in the Dutch colonial military action – known in The Netherlands as police actions and in Indonesia as Dutch military aggressions – and his subsequent imprisonment by the Japanese during the Second World War. After extensive archival research and interviews with survivors and their relatives, Van Braak traveled in the footsteps of his grandfather to Singapore, Thailand, Cambodia, Vietnam and Indonesia. One of the works that resulted from this is Impressions, a series of batiks – a traditional Indonesian technique – on silk and paper.

History is made of different shades of gray (2009-present)
History is made of different shades of grey plays with feelings and associations we get from being confronted with loaded objects. Kevin van Braak reconstructed eight desks once owned by notorious world leaders: Stalin, Tito, Mussolini, Franco, Hitler, Mao, Nixon and Suharto. The works are covered in a grey rubber coating, giving them a uniform appearance. The desks featured in this exhibition resemble the ones that once belonged to Franco, Mussolini, Stalin and Tito.

Once the realization dawns as to whom these objects originally belonged, they are no longer neutral - instead becoming intrinsically linked to the actions of their owners.

The globe from lead and metal is based on the original in Hitler’s office in the New Reich Chancellery. This globe gained notoriety when Charlie Chaplin famously used it in The Great Dictator (1940), turning it into a giant beach ball to mock Hitler’s pursuit of world domination.

Rivoluzione Fascista (2010-2025)
The nineteen letters of Rivoluzione Fascista are part of a series by Kevin van Braak exploring fascist architecture in Italy. They derive from the longer phrase Mostra della Rivoluzione Fascista, which appeared on the façade of a 1932 exhibition celebrating Mussolini’s so-called fascist revolution. The dictator frequently constructed decors for propaganda purposes. Van Braak’s wooden letters replicate the typographic style used in the 1930s. Positioned within Disco Inferno, these letters stand ready to be mobilized should fascism re-emerge. The work suggests a hidden threat, waiting on the edges of the world stage—one that could return sooner than we might expect.

For almost a decade, artist Petr Davydtchenko (1986) has lived in a decentralized, semi-autonomous way, on the margins of the global economic system. He devised methods of sourcing free, protein-rich food, surviving for three years solely on roadkill — society’s discarded byproduct, the residue of capitalism. Later, he turned his attention to rat infestations, reimagining vermin as a resource and presenting them as a plentiful, locally available source of sustenance. The pictures in the exhibition ‘Body as Currency’ in Brutus Base show part of this process.

Petr Davydtchenko: ‘One day, I found a rabbit the size of a pig, lying dead on the road. Its back was covered in conical lumps, and its bloody snout was protruding yellow front teeth. As a moving vehicle symbolises progress, any primitive life form crossing its path is destroyed. By making my life depend on this accidental death, I have made myself dependent on progress itself. For three years, I lived only on roadkill, scavenging the casualties of car crashes. Each animal was inspected, prepared, stored, consumed. The incidental deaths by progress became my sustenance — transformed into recipes, philosophy, and a counter-economy.’

Another example in which the artist questions economic power structures, took place during the COVID-19 pandemic. While pharmaceutical companies were in control of immunity, Davydtchenko turned to the most direct method of gaining antibodies: ingesting a live bat in front of the European Parliament. If the pandemic was the ultimate expression of progress obliterating life, the artist chose to follow the natural path. Framed as an alternative vaccine, this act rejected monopolised medicine and the financial exploitation of fear. His body was the currency — a laboratory experiment, turning risk into a alternative form of continuity.

For Davydtchenko, the process operates like a viral algorithm. A virus does not destroy the host system outright; it enters silently, hijacks its code and forces it to produce unexpected results. Using the same approach, the artist is infiltrating the existing order — the roads with ‘Go and Stop Progress’, the pandemic with ‘PERFTORAN’ — and altering their function.