‘Average Happiness’ is a visual journey in which logic gradually gives way to emotion. What begins as a neat PowerPoint presentation full of graphs and linear equations slowly grinds to a halt. Slides start to stutter, a glitch flickers across the screen, and a crackling sound tears the presentation apart. From that white grid, something new emerges: a spreadsheet called ‘Reality.xlsx’.  

A hyper-rational alter ego of Bas Vanderschoot guides the audience through the self-constructed tabs of his life. Using LED screens, projections and cardboard diagrams, he builds a new landscape each time — each with its own logic, its own inhabitant, its own madness. In this digital dream, he encounters figures who guide or mislead him: a talking paperclip, a cynical crypto-miner, the imaginary number 5i, and even his late father’s search history. In seemingly philosophical conversations, they search together for a foothold, but time and again Bas’s own vulnerability and grief seep to the surface.  

The more tabs he opens, the more complex and darker the world becomes. The empty desert transforms into a city of numbers: graphs rise like skyscrapers, arrows swing like vines, data points swarm like birds. What began as a rational presentation descends into a feverish dream of data in which the boundary between human and number blurs. A journey through ‘The Chart of Darkness’: a universe where logic and emotion, control and chaos, data and loss intersect.  

The performance is inspired by the film of the same name by the Swiss animator Maja Gehrig.