What if we linger a moment with the loss we feel? With our personal and/or collective grief, the grief in our bodies, our political or climate grief? What if we try to listen to our grief together?
What if we try to walk with it? Together, wherever we are? Can we reach each other over different localities in a performative space? Can we begin to stitch a collective narrative?
Walking with Grief is a collective performance that enables participation from different geographies. You can take part from anywhere in the world. Walking with Grief attends to brokenness and loss we carry with us, see around us, are a part of. Walking with Grief seeks – in the face of systematic indifference- resonance and solidarity person to person across different geographical, political and economic realities.
“Grief moves into my joints with each step; no longer a hanging cloud, it seeps into my body. It becomes me. I begin to understand that grief is not something to move through but something that moves with us.”
Ian Nesbitt
Walking with Grief does not take place in a theatre, but when and where we walk, and can become part of your daily rhythm for a week. There are four walks (you can take at the moment of the day they suit your life and the rhythm of where you are) and two listening circles (at a fixed time online). Nine artists, artist duos and collectives share their reflections on grief in the form of nine pieces of audio in the four walks spread over the course of the week. Each of the audios have been translated and respoken into the languages of the other artists, and are available in English, Arabic, Dutch and Italian.
Walking with Grief is performed by everyone who participates in it in a process of listening and storytelling. The walks and the listening circles exist in relation to each other: how are we connected in the different places we are walking in, in the different experiences of grief that we have? Where did you ‘depart from’ and ‘arrive at’? The listening circle space holders speak combinations of the four languages we are working with, and we welcome you to speak in any language you choose. The listening circles explore listening as a transformative collective practice.
“A walk represents our relationship to the surroundings, the way we walk is an expression of how we feel. The posture of the body becomes a monument of what we have been through, how privilege manifests itself, how injustice penetrates us and operates our bodies and movement.”
Dina Mohamed
An invitation at inner pace, making place together: an embrace
The week opens with An Invitation. Find your feet in the walks and ground yourself in your surroundings with audio pieces by Ian Nesbitt and DOTE voices. Walk At Inner Pace on day two or three accompanied by Dina Mohamed and Zeinab Charafeddine charting personal journeys, locating embodied grief; in the evening, enter the tender space of the listening circle. In Making Place on day four and five, Giath Taha and Blitz voice unnamed loss and finding yourself between borders; collective reflection in the listening circles. Together: An Embrace, on day six and seven, brings the week to a close. Anne Gehring & Johan Sonnenschein live, grow and talk through grief; artist duo Aterraterra sense an endless network of living and non-living beings in borderless connection; artist and birth-doula Deirdre Donoghue dwells with us for a moment before we ‘part’.
Walking with Grief is the opening programme in the DOTE Festival year of listening. Go to statement to read more about the year of listening.
ARTISTS AUDIO WALKS Giath Taha, Deirdre Donoghue, Dina Mohamed, Ian Nesbitt, Zeinab Charafeddine, Anne Gehring & Johan Sonnenschein, Aterraterra (Fabio Aranzulla & Luca Cinquemani), Blitz (Giorgia Mirto, Angelo Sicurlla, Giulia Crisci, Margherita Ortolani, Vito Bartucca), Natasja van ‘t Westende, Agnes Matthews, Lina Issa. TRANSLATORS Lore Baeten, Margo van de Linde, Atef Farah, Emmanuel Farah, Marta Bellingreri, Agnes Matthews, Zeinab Charafeddine, Richard Brodie, Elisa Palm, Sara Ismail. VOICING ARTISTS Antonella Sgobbo, Emmanuel Farah, Eleonora Lombardo, Irene Lentile, Giuseppe di Bernardo, Giorgia Mirto, Luca Venezia, Chris Keulemans, Jorn Heijdenrijk, Wael Kadlo, Lana Nasser, Mustafa Alkar, Mazen Alashkar, Nagham Assaf, Lennert de Vroey, Soula Notos, Marta Bellingreri, Natasja van ‘t Westende, Sara Ismail, Lina Issa. LISTENING CIRCLE FACILITATORS Wael Kaldo, Ian Nesbitt, Lana Nasser, Fariborz Karimi, Dina Mohamed, Giulia Crisci, Lina Issa, Natasja van ’t Westende, Agnes Matthews, Mazen Alashkar. SOUND EDITING Bart Majoor. PROMPTS Deirde Donoghue. DOCUMENTATION Anastasis Sarakatsanos. CREATED BY DANCING ON THE EDGE CREW Natasja van ‘t Westende, Fazle Shairmahomed, Mazen Alakshar, Agnes Matthews, Fatma Bulaz, Lina Issa.
