U.LOSS

U.LOSS is a programme for artists in which ritual creator Barbara Raes – who has been using art since 2015 to help people share their unacknowledged grief – channels her expertise into collective intelligence.

How do we give form to loss that often remains invisible? In her practice, Beyond the Spoken, Barbara Raes has been developing new, contemporary rituals since 2015 for loss that has no place within our traditional frameworks. Art is a meaningful link in this process: her practice is situated precisely at the point where art and ritual meet as catalysts for transition.

In U.LOSS, Raes shares this practice with (inter)national artists from various disciplines and transforms her individual expertise into collective intelligence. Through participatory formats, intimate one-to-one rituals and spatial performances, U.LOSS explores how we can give meaning and form to grief that is rarely recognised (disenfranchised grief).

Over the course of an intensive three- to four-week programme, the participating artists immerse themselves in the universe of Beyond the Spoken and in the architecture of the theatre itself. Theatres are haunted houses: they bear the traces of everything that has ever been performed there. Within these charged spaces, each artist designs their own personal ritual, sometimes in dialogue with that monumental architecture, sometimes in direct contrast to it.

At the end of this process, the whole is shared with an audience: spectators become participants, not forced but voluntarily supportive. In that in-between space, the transformative power of the ritual is given free rein. Here, to perform means to enact. Together, these rituals form a single performative installation that embraces the entire theatre. The seats are removed,  and the open space becomes a contemporary temple.

U.LOSS has already travelled to Berlin (Hebbel Am Ufer), Brussels (Kaaitheater), Antwerp (deSingel), and Dublin (Dublin Theatre Festival), each time with a new group of artists, a new venue, and a new set of rituals. Now it is Ghent’s turn, with NTGent’s Schouwburg serving as the starting point for the creations.

U.LOSS is not a one-off ‘event’. It is precisely in repetition and shared participation that the power of the ritual lies.