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Elke Van Campenhout

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Elke Van Campenhout has passed through a rather peculiar course. Every stage of it seeming ostensibly unrelated to the other. She failed at her entrance exam at the theatre conservatory, and took up singing at the Jazz Academy in Antwerp. After three years, and having played in a handful of mediocre but made to fit jazz, rock and punk bands, she decided to enroll in Philosophy at the University of Leuven. After finishing this study, she received a scholarship to study Theatre Studies at the University of London. Which, regrettably, didn't have Theatre Studies on its program. She thus pursued to enlist in Postcolonial Studies, did some research on the female representation in contemporary performance, and worked in the Zazou club. After this she returned to Belgium, only to take a few years leave of the cultural sector. Working as a companion on a youth-project to Santiago de Compostella, running a temp agency for a couple of months, travelling through South-East Asia en Europe, en basically discovering all the negative aspects of working in the hierarchical corporate business philosophy of the daily business world. Returning to the cultural sector, she started working as a production manager for music theatre company Transparant. After which, she took up a job as a free lance dance critic for the classical radio station Klara. Later on she started writing for the daily newspaper De Standaard. She now publishes in a variety of art and theatre magazines.

• Elke Van Campenhout contributed as her poetics the following essay: Ik zeg. Ik spuw tegen de wind in.