Artists Sylvie Zijlmans and Hewald Jongenelis joined forces in 1993 when they presented their “Contributions to a Unified Europe”, an art project on the far-reaching consequences of fading internal European borders. Since then they realized many projects, installations and exhibitions. Next to using cinematographic elements in their installations and projects they also produced a number of short movies as “The Insurrectionists Progression”, “Black Drip” and “The Idea of Freedom”.

In 2015 the artists, together with a hundred inhabitants of the North of Amsterdam, developed theatrical actions around social issues and performed them on location. For each theme an avatar was created: a contemporary mythological figure. Hiding under aluminum masks these modern gods do nothing, but their presence encourages people to take action: block roads by putting cars much too close together when “De Dichter” is present (“Dichter” has a double meaning in Dutch: “poet” and “put close together”), throw people out of their houses when “De Verdrijver” is nearby (The Skidder) or deny an overloaded boat access to the city when “De Overloper” appears (in Dutch his name means both “overflowing” as “defect”).