Liberate the Madness

It started with a graffiti with the text 'Bevrijd de waanzin' (Liberate the madness) I encountered during a walk around the corner of the  STUK. Probably there since the 70's and named after a local movement influenced by Antonin Artaud's ideas (cf. Theater of Cruelty), it seemed to express the basics of Anti -Psychiatry: a proclamation for not seeking to heal the patient. It later turned out that one of the founders of Anti-psychiatry, Ronald Laing, came to Leuven around that period for a conference. He was precisely defending madness as a demand made to a system itself alienated. The wish expressed in a publication (Impasse, het psychopathologisch syndroom van de normale mens, Antwerpen, 1975) first published by one of the founders of the influencial Anti - Psychiatry movement in Belgium, Prof. Steven De Batselier (University of Leuven), to leave the institution and analyze the "normal" people outside, was an interesting startingpoint to question to what extend the 'madness' can be liberated inside and outside the institution.

'Bevrijd de waanzin' initiated the moment of theatricality by erecting a small stage in front of the graffiti, which unavoidable makes all passers-by unwitting actors on this stage and the graffiti itself the defining motto of their actions. The stage could also be interpreted as a kind of socle for the text and expose the slogan temporary as monumental gesture for a moment in the history of Leuven.

I invited Eric Van Hove to make an performance / intervention in Leuven. Abreaction, the intervention of van Hove invites an revelation of emotional tension, possible effect according to Aristotle of tragedy on the audience (Poetics, VI and VIII). Through an artificial linguistic conflict, the work call for interpretation and let the viewer speculate on what the "real" intentions of the artist might be, revealing his own secret desires (désirs refoulés). The choice for the language here was French, in an effort to put in perspective the long-lasting conflict between the French-speaking Walloon community and the Dutch - speaking Flemish community. Van Hove wrote for one and a half hour an improvised text with white chalk on the streets in Leuven.  In STUK there was a video registration of the performance exhibited.

Madness, in the margins of liberation and censorship Together with Sabine Hillen a research has been developed in the context of the project on the 'unconscious speech' expressed by language in the city. Can this language show us what has to remain hidden? Is it able to it reveal the symptoms of our inability to live our desires and dreams? I made a  compilation of images (over 150) of my archive Theatrum orbis Terrarum relating to the text written by Sabine Hillen. We gave simultaneous a lecture with projected images and text.

Tussen kunst en medium (NL) Essay by Lieke de Bree about the project.