Anatomie van pijn NTGent

Lies Pauwels (Het Hamiltoncomplex) directs a performance about a life with pain and pain in life. Pain as symphony, as solitary experiment, as painful blunder, eternal or acute, as demon or as relief, as label or as portent of doom. Pain is not an isolated matter, it is sometimes a way of being. This performance builds on the experiences of people who suffer from pain, both physically as well as mentally. Together with four performing artists they analyse pain and its metaphors.

"In this performance, artists in excellent health share the stage with people who are chronically ill. This collaboration is enormously inspiring," Pauwels says, "While we pretend that the world is manageable, chronically ill people know the human gut. They incarnate the sensitivity and weltschmerz that can be found in many classics. I call them (after Diane Arbus) the 'aristocrats of the gut feeling'. They know things that we close our eyes to and that's what I'm looking for. The artists are a metaphor for the theme on which I want to make a performance. What condition is the world in? How do we cope with the stumbling sides? Do we ignore them? What about our vulnerability?"

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