SILENT TABLE

MAKERS

Beyond the Spoken / Barbara Raes

SYNOPSIS

The ritual The Silent Table  starts with an one-one intake conversation between Barbara and the participant of the ritual. Together, they look into the grief of the fatigue caused by all what is unborn in them. It can be the highest silence or deepest emptiness. The participant is welcome to bring what the unborn means to them, in the literal or more symbolic sense: non-parenting, a lost father’s heart, a mother’s heart without a child, grief over their inner child or their lost childhood, grief over an ambition that might not be fulfilled, a desire that brings more restlessness than joy. Perhaps this is what keeps a fatigue, this uninvited and recurring guest, roaming around them, staying for longer than agreed, taking up more and more space. What is it that needs to be let go of, so that there can finally be some rest?

After the private talk with Barbara, the participant will take some time to make space for the unborn around the silent table. It is invited to sit there comfortably, take some time, be seen, linger with their and other people’s stories. No words are needed now.

Then everyone gathers again around the table, time together with everyone else who takes part in the ritual. It is a moment to say goodbye to what needs to be let go of and the loss is collectively grieved.

BIOGRAPHY

The Flemish performing arts curator Barbara Raes, currently one of the artistic leaders of the leading Belgian city theatre NTGent, decided to reorient her professional career and practice in the arts in 2014. She went to the UK to train as funeral celebrant, where she observed and analyzed more than eighty funerals, using her experience in the performing arts to better understand the dramaturgy of these rituals. At NTGent, Raes brings in the artistic line Art, Care & Rituals.

When Raes returned to Belgium, she obtained a research position at KASK arts college in Ghent and developed the project Open End (2015-2018), in which architecture and healthcare students worked together to design ‘new mental and physical spaces for farewell rituals’. To complement this more theoretical research, Raes founded the organization Beyond the Spoken, a workspace for unacknowledged loss.

Raes has curated a series of projects and festivals that explore how art and rituals can address the topic of grief and care. They include the 2019 amen & beyond program for the Arts Centre Vooruit in Ghent, the research block unfolding fields of interaction with health, life, loss and death for DASarts in Amsterdam (2016), and U-Loss for HAU Berlin (2018 and 2020), Kaaitheater Brussels (2019), Dublin Theater Festival (2021) and deSingel Antwerp (2022). Raes also curated the festival Theater Aan Zee in 2018 for which she designed the performance ritual Golden Child.

CONTACT

❔ Are you interested in programming this performance? Please contact Floria Lomme, performance sales employee at NTGent:
✉: floria.lomme@ntgent.be
☎: +32 472 66 66 79