Tremors near the waist, weakness in the limbs, pressure, trembling, warmth, weight or beating in the chest, warm wave from feet upward, quivering of heart, stoppage and then rapid beating of heart, coldness all over followed by heat, dizziness, tingling of toes and fingers, numbness, something rising in throat, smarting of eyes, singing in ears, prickling sensations of face and pressure inside head.

These are but a few of the disquieting physical side effects of embarrassment recorded by British sexologist Havelock Ellis in his 1901 treatise 'The Evolution of Modesty'.¹ Originally a military term meaning to 'block' or 'obstruct', embarrassment is experienced by Ellis's subjects as a form of physical ambush. The work of Belgian artists Jos de Gruyter and Harald Thys elicits a similarly bewildered state of mental anxiety in the viewer. Forcing their audiences to enter a series of claustrophobic interiors and depressingly dilapidated community centres, their films play host to a hoard of ghoulish misfits. Maniacal car mechanics, masked hoodlums, recovering perverts and stock commedia dell'arte characters enact strange rituals of exchange, in which power, violence and loss are present in equal measures. The menacing dramas use a recurring troupe of amateur players - a provisional theatre company composed almost exclusively of the artists' family members - that provides an incestuous twist on the traditional notion of repertory. Badly dressed, the figures sport curious costumes assembled out of the least desirable elements of suburban Flemish fashion. They move awkwardly and are prone to uncomfortable fits of staring. Ill-equipped to fulfil their roles as archetypal heroes and villains of de Gruyter and Thys's contemporary fables, their cringe-worthy performances are exaggerated by the artists' use of painfully long takes. By far the most disconcerting aspect of these bizarre universes is, however, their complete disavowal of the strictures of polite society. Havelock might agree that the viewing experience of de Gruyter and Thys's vignettes falls firmly within the register of embarrassment.

Viewers of these works find themselves in an affective position that is more unusual within the experience of contemporary art than one would think: the stewards of the art world stand on guard against the intrusion of the truly embarrassing. The German sociologist Niklas Luhmann argues that the system of art, much like the zones of enclosure (both physical and psychological) constructed by de Gruyter and Thys, functions according to its own proprietary logic. Carefully regulating its own limits, it excludes from its environment all potentially threatening or destabilising elements. The life of a system is, according to Luhmann, contingent upon its ability to successfully adapt to and enfold the external challenges it encounters. To gain access to art's closed system, cultural practices must first submit to its particular modes of thought and behaviour. Building on the work of evolutionary biologists Humberto Maturana and Francisco Varela, Luhmann uses the term 'autopoiesis' to describe the art system's self-creating, self-referencing and self-organising nature. 'Art participates in society by differentiating itself as a system, [subjecting] art to a logic of operative closure…'² This operative closure is partly possible due to the absolute uniqueness of the system of art. No other system - and art is just one system among many for Luhmann - replicates or encroaches upon its distinct logic. The ability of a system to differentiate itself from its environment and from other systems is, he claims, crucial to its survival. Systems 'constitute and maintain themselves by creating and maintaining a difference from their environment, and they use their boundaries to regulate this difference […] In this sense boundary maintenance is system maintenance.'³

The manner in which individual systems are produced and maintained is a continued preoccupation in the work of de Gruyter and Thys . Drawing attention to the often barbaric ways in which a system will seek to protect itself, de Gruyter and Thys introduce us to an architecture inhabited by fear and surveillance. In the group exhibition 'No Ins and Outs' (2007) at the gallery carlier | gebauer in Berlin, the notion of closed systems and their inability to tolerate outside influence was made physically explicit in the design of the artists' installation. Isolating the viewer from both the gallery space and the other works in the exhibition, de Gruyter and Thys chose to show their videos inside purpose-built metal containers similar to those one might find on a building site. As a result of the physical separation achieved through these individual units, the artists emphasised not only the distinct nature of each system they had created but also the impossibility of correspondence or communication between them. Similarly, when asked to participate in the 5th Berlin Biennial (2008), de Gruyter and Thys transformed the cellar of Kunst-Werke into an eerie viewing chamber that was cut off from the rest of the exhibition spaces by a set of heavy metal doors.

The limits of what systems can tolerate and their methods for preserving closure is a recurring thematic refrain within the works themselves. Through their chosen settings of basements and windowless rooms, de Gruyter and Thys highlight the circularity of logic that is often at play within these hermetic environments - monistic, closed spaces that expunge difference for fear of its destabilising potential. The videos' suffocating interiors are consistently monochrome and Spartan: beige, grey or a depressing brand of institutional blue. The works also feature a number of devices to encase the human body. In several videos the characters wear masks and hoods to buffer the outside world and to conceal their identities while they act, effectively, as vigilantes. Others less fortunate are immured within basement prisons or held captive in wooden boxes.

The tension that exists between the division of 'inside' and 'outside' constructed by de Gruyter and Thys is often alluded to in their characters' speech. The utter inability of the subjects of these crippled kingdoms to comprehend a logic outside their own reveals itself on the rare occasions that they struggle to transcend the limits of their enclosed environments. In the film The Yellow of Ghent (2005), a father and son cooped up for what seems an eternity in a blandly decorated hotel room discuss the possibility of seeing the world beyond the heavily frosted windows that obscure their vision. 'Why are you looking outside?' the son asks his father. 'There is nothing to see there.' 'Have you ever seen anything?' the father responds. 'I haven't you know - nothing' is the son's disheartening answer. A similarly demoralising exchange occurs in The Spinning Wheel (2002), in which two boys and their mother live out an apparently interminable existence trapped inside the confines of a small wooden cabin. When one boy finally decides to leave and see the world, his journey takes only a few seconds and appears uneventful. 'Did you see everything?' his family ask upon his return. 'Yeah, I think I saw everything.' Rare intrusions by outside influences into these closed spaces have inevitably violent results. The sovereignty of the family home in The Spinning Wheel is threatened when the three attempt to mount an in-house theatrical production. An unruly interloper (a thug dressed in dirty jeans and a green hoodie) appears at the door of the cabin and demands to participate in the family drama. Taking on the central role of the 'Sun King', he fails to obey their directions and quickly suffers the consequences - the threesome turn on him and strangle him to death.

This impromptu staging of a children's play that ultimately leads to bloodshed is but one example of de Gruyter and Thys's persistent fixation on the symbols and mechanics of the theatre. The conspicuous presence of the dramatic within the artists' work runs counter to the inhospitable reception theatre has often received in the recent history of art. The animosity of modern art to all things theatrical could hardly be more explicit than in the assault waged in Michael Fried's 1967 essay 'Art and Objecthood', in which he declares: 'The success, even the survival, of the arts has come increasingly to depend on their ability to defeat theatre.' He adds, as if to reinforce his point: 'Art degenerates as it approaches the condition of theatre.'⁴ Humiliated by visual art's reliance on durational and narrative qualities borrowed from an outside discipline, Fried petitioned for the autonomy of the art object and the absolute expulsion of dramaturgy from the system of art.

De Gruyter and Thys force theatre back into art's purview, often with toe-curling results that produce more than a hint of sympathy for Fried's reservations. Through a combination of makeshift costumes and shoddy sets that excruciatingly display the most unappealing aspects of amateur dramatics, the artists use theatre against themselves and against their audience. A former arts space turned community centre in Brussels serves as the backdrop for the film Ten Weyngaert (2007). The atmosphere is one of resentment and brooding aggression as a series of seemingly disconnected events unfolds. A sexual deviant who has a propensity for suffocating mice in his trouser pockets stares blankly as the participants of a group therapy session wait for him to recount the intimate details of his obsession. Local hard men called Tim and Tom set upon a pair of innocent bystanders, lamely pushing and shoving their victims in a half-hearted attempt to mark their territory. The unnerving quality of both of these scenes is further amplified by the sudden outburst of a theatrical performance, featuring an unlikely ensemble cobbled together from well-known stage and cinema iconography. This cast of politically incorrect characters includes a ponytailed, yellow-faced 'Chinaman' and an equally wince-inducing figure in blackface. They proceed to carry out a clumsy pantomime signifying nothing. At first glance the combination of bleak settings, lonely dejectedness and clownish humour present in the works of de Gruyter and Thys would seem to beg comparisons to the theatrical pieces of Samuel Beckett (the connection is further encouraged by what appear to be a number of visual allusions - one example being a nod to the iconic ladder and window from Endgame in one of the artists' photographs). Yet too easily characterising de Gruyter and Thys's work as a Beckettian project would be a mistake. If there is a reference to the writer here, it occurs as a form of critique. Despite all of its aspirations, modernist theatre seems woefully incapable of producing meaning in the hands of these amateur players. If Beckett's undertaking constituted an exercise in precision and restraint, then de Gruyter and Thys's muddled stagecraft is in many ways its antithesis.

Marshalling the energy of the amateur has been one of recent art's most persistent pursuits. A history of the system of art's recuperation of quotidian aesthetics could be traced from the precedents of Dada, Arte Povera and Fluxus to contemporary examples, such as Thomas Hirschhorn and Spartacus Chetwynd. There is a redemptive gesture at work in each of these instances; the amateur is permitted inside the borders of art proper, though only by way of a transformative process. The skilful touch of the artist unlocks the hidden potential dormant in the everyday and thereby purges the amateur of its embarrassing qualities. Not so in the work of de Gruyter and Thys. Here the amateur is presented as amateur, with all his or her ineptitude intact and with no such act of salvation. De Gruyter and Thys confront head on what may, in the end, be the greatest embarrassment of all - art in the hands of the common man. For, despite all of its democratic proclamations, there is nothing that rubs the system of art the wrong way quite like the incompetence of amateur creativity. In their most recent video Der Schlamm von Branst (literally The Clay from Branst, 2008), a group of hobbyist artists are confined to a dank clay studio. Almost completely oblivious to the actions of their fellow sculptors, one man scrapes a horse's head with disturbing intensity while another is transfixed by his own attempts at self-portraiture. A woman groans ceaselessly in the corner and two other individuals poke holes in a poorly constructed clay figure that is prostrate on a table. In the back of the room stands a structure that has been designated to house the products of this group's communal artistic efforts. Each shelf is meticulously labelled 'Mon', 'Tues', 'Wed', etc., as if to indicate the infinite and irrepressible supply of such forms of lamentable creativity.

Unlike Dada and Fluxus, which pry colloquial aesthetics out of and away from their ignoble points of origin, de Gruyter and Thys remain within the tatty community centres, dreary evening classes and workshops from which their cast is drawn. Their unflinching depictions are not portraits of untapped potential, but could better be described as sustained documentations of failure. The sad figures in their videos are incapable of communicating to each other in any purposeful way, resorting instead to petty physical intimidations, pathetic sexual advances and, most often, speechless staring matches. The systems of language available to the denizens of these institutional settings appear broken, impotent and dysfunctional. The symbols and conventions of avant-garde theatre, the characters and tropes of traditional folk tales and the forms and techniques of the plastic arts are all shown to be embarrassingly inadequate meaning structures for expressing or alleviating the underlying anguish and frustration simmering in these worlds.

Luhmann has a name for those things that linger around the borders of the system of art without being granted full admittance - he calls them irritants. It would seems an apt term for de Gruyter and Thys's constant reminders that many distressing aspects of the world fall outside of art's attention. The particularly off-putting nature of the viewing experience that results might go some way toward explaining why their work is only now, after some twenty years of collaborative practice, achieving a measure of deserved international recognition. The films are challenging in a way that is truly difficult to stomach, a rarity in an art system where so much energy is spent transforming the embarrassing into the palatable.

Yet, de Gruyter and Thys give the impression that they are neither mocking nor revelling in all of the systemic and communicative failures they assemble. While undoubtedly embarrassing, there is also something courageous about the relentless attempts of the film's everyday people at meaning production. Despite the shortcomings of the image and language systems they have at their disposal, these hapless characters nevertheless stumble towards some form of connection. Their perseverance prevents them from fully crossing over into the terrain of hopelessness. A stubborn trace of Beckett remains in these exhibitions of determination, as if the artists were, at least in part, motivated by the Irish writer's mantra: 'Try again. Fail again. Fail better.'

— Judith Wilkinson