The multi-day festival You Can Do It!, named after the song of the same name by Canadian producer Caribou, reminds us of the mantra that has come to dominate our lives over the past decades: we can achieve anything as long as we work hard enough for it. But at what cost? A striking number of people struggle with stress disorders, anxiety and burn-out. Together with Tom Struyf, Marina Otero, Collectif Faire-Part, György Kurtág and Marian Donner, DE SINGEL reflects for four days on our performance-driven society.
In search of answers and ways out, we find ourselves with Argentine choreographer Marina Otero and her explosive dance production Fuck Me. Thirty years as a dancer on stage and a major back surgery have taken their toll. Otero herself can no longer dance, but she presents five naked, muscular men as an extension of herself.
In Finding Willard, theater maker Tom Struyf takes a historical look at our mental health. He traveled several times to Willard, a small village in the United States near the border with Canada. He discovered the ruins of a psychiatric institution there that shows strong similarities to the hospital in Geel.
House artist Collectif Faire-Part curates a short film program. How do filmmakers from different regions around the world make the subject of mental health part of the public debate?
Together with Opera Ballet Vlaanderen, we present the Belgian premiere of Fin de Partie, the first and only opera by György Kurtág based on the play Endgame by Samuel Beckett. In this masterpiece, Kurtág and Beckett seem to settle accounts with man's ambition to always want to go further and more.
Finally, we talk with writer Marian Donner (Zelfverwoestingsboek, 2019) about social and mental health and the success (or failure) of the self-help industry.
IN CONVERSATION WITH
Curator Michiel Vandevelde:
"Everyone works themselves to the bone to be better than the other and to distinguish themselves from the abundance"
"We want to make the conversation about mental health collective again"