Art Happens

World premiere
18 January 2024
Toneelhuis Antwerp

The infinity of the universe swallows us up. Science searches, but our imagination is absolute. The largest and most sophisticated space telescope allows us to look far and deep into the universe, but also in the past. What fascinates Benjamin Abel Meirhaeghe even more than the discovery of this telescope, is the capacity of human beings to rise above themselves and the universe in their thoughts. Their capacity for invention. In this show, Meirhaeghe links the high tech of a telescope to the primitiveness of handcraft and manual techniques.

Benjamin’s travel companion on this trip beyond the boundaries of the body and time is the Italian composer Caterina Barbieri. Barbieri makes electronic music that is potentially ‘transformative and mind-expanding’. To the sounds of the hypnotic ‘Fantas’ (from the magisterial 2019 album Ecstatic Computation), the performers, singers and dancers give themselves over to the inexplicable and indescribable.

Shelly Shonk Fiffit promises to be an intense and ecstatic visual and musical trip through our inner world and the remote corners of the cosmos. Fiffit!