About
Cusk is the cocreation collective of creators and performers Jenna Vergeynst, Kristien Doumen, Alex Smith, Ellen Jacobs and Rúben Borges. Our mission as a collective is to translate scientific knowledge about non-human life into new artistic creations, and to shine a light onto ecological subjects from both a musical as a scientific perspective. Through this, they aim to trigger connection and empathy with our non-human neighbours.
Cocreation lies at the heart of our working proces. We start the development of a performance with a research period in which we collect knowledge and materials, and then we work with it in intense creation periods through improvisation. Our first performance “Ear to Sea” originated during residencies at Pilar, Walpurgis, WARP, De Koer, PostX, kleinVerhaal & O.666. This performance premiered on 15 May 2023 in Pilar and was subsequently performed at the UWE:festival in Munich. In summer 2024, we premièred a family version of “Ear to Sea” in Arca Theatre, and in season 2024-2025 we will play it for Jeunesse Musicale in Walloon schools and cultural centres and during the science festival WiseNight.
As part of our new project “Ear to Earth”, we were selected for the TalentLAB residency at the Grand Théatre de Luxembourg, where we went through a first phase of experimentation and research in June 2024.
Jenna Vergeynst is a harpist and violinist, a graduate of the Royal Conservatory of Antwerp, with a passion for new music, creation and music theatre, and a deep fascination for ecology and non-human beings. In addition to being a freelance musician, she is Gangmaker Ecology in music centre De Bijloke in Ghent. Before starting her music studies, she completed a PhD in bioengineering on fish migration at Ghent University.
Kristien Doumen studied singing at the Royal Conservatory of Antwerp and is currently combining her singing career with a PhD in applied economic sciences at the University of Antwerp, where she contributes to making the insurance industry more sustainable.
Ellen Jacobs is an Antwerp-based composer, a graduate of KASK & Conservatory in Ghent where she studied with Daan Janssens. In her practice as a composer, Ellen wonders how intensely we experience the sound around us and what the boundary is between the sounds that surround us on the one hand and music on the other. She tries to answer these questions by zooming in on sound and re-contextualising it. She explores the boundary between electronic and acoustic music and uses both to shape her sound world.
Alex Smith is a British percussionist, a graduate of the Royal Northern College of Music (UK) and the Royal Conservatory of Antwerp, and currently active as a freelancer in Belgium. He unleashes his musical creativity on projects with slam poet Sefora Sam, among others.
Rúben Borges is a Portuguese composer, performer and multidisciplinary artist, with a master of composition from the Royal Conservatory of Antwerp and a master-after-master in contemporary music from the Royal Conservatory of Ghent. He lives in Belgium, but his music can be heard all over Europe and he is active internationally in cocreation projects.