Mélété Thanatou
An eco- poetic monologue pamphlet turning half-way into a guided group meditation. An exercise about death and learning to live with this future that is ours. Rooted in three years of eco-anxiety, passionate mobilisation, desilusion and longing for purpose, the performance is an attempt at collectively coming to terms with having to cohabit with the desaster. An ode to joy in times of collapse.
Audience members sit together in a semi-wild location (urban forest, park, feral wasteland, …). They wear wireless headphones which enable them to hear the voice of the performer greeting them in the distance. They will no longer see him after this initial moment. Only his sounds still suggest his movements as he walks through the bushes, climbs over hedges or crosses path with animals and humans passers-by. The voice in the headphones tells personal anecdotes about the state of our world and about the legtimate fear one could have when looking into the future. There is anger, there is sadness, there is determination. Although the performer remains out of sight, one remains in close contact through the intimacy of the headphones. At times the sounds of the forest fade out until the voice is left alone in a strange atemporal void. At times, the sounds emerge from the background, reopening onto the landscape as we walk along. A slow walk through difficult thoughts and visions. It is good to be together on that path. We close our eyes. The voice guides us further, but it has now become an inward journey. There is no performer anymore, just a soft voice ushering us through the forest and the bushes of our own relationship to the world and to its future; foraging for the love, the beauty and the courage we need; for that from which strength can be harvested…
conception, writing & performance: Christophe Meierhans, 2022
production: ReEDOcate Me festival, Berlin
performances:
2022 — ReEDOcate Me festival, Floating University, Berlin
2023 — Demain festival, Mons | Ecopolis, Buda, Kortrijk