Whose birthday is it today? (performance/ conversation/ multimedia - 2020)
I seize this moment of ‘being 25 and 26’, to start a project about something that until now has happened yearly and will, no matter how life turns, always return in my (and probably some other) agenda(s).Something in which I, and we all effortlessly build up experience. It is very common, yet very complex. Festive and fraught and above all unavoidable and directly granted to you at the day you were born.
I am talking about the birthday.
Even though I rather pretend it not to be a ‘thing’at all, I now, after some years of experience, honestly, want to know why the birthday is such a ‘thing’ to me. And, moreover, why it is such a ‘thing’ to (almost) all of us, to society. It makes me suspicious about what the layers of the cake conceal or the words on a birthday-cards whisper.
Besides cultural and personal differences in the experience of the birthday, does it count, in numerous ways, as a guidance for our social existence from birth to death. The birthday cannot be dissected from the subject. As long as you live, it lives with you.
Thus, hereby, I warmly invite everyone to discuss, gossip, analyse, clear your heart, chat about (your/mine/someones/the) birhtday with me; ‘the birthday therapist’.
