Spill your Guts

#chronicconditions #invisibledisability #gutfeelings #neverenough

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A damaged, clap-mouth doll shits as unabashedly as she dines. She has her ventriloquist firmly in her grip. As the embodiment of his chronic inflammatory bowel disease, she has only one thing on her mind: make him bleed! The unequal duo sparks a relationship thriller about undigested leftovers, fires up the stammering about outrageous stories of illness and plunges into a shitstorm about their work in the theater.

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For his latest project, performance and action artist Hendrik Quast has learnt the art of ventriloquism in order to approach an underestimated organ – the intestine. In conversation with his sick ventriloquist doll, the intestine is explored in its peculiarities and metaphors, but also its pathologies. Quast's everyday experiences with chronic inflammatory bowel disease open up new ways of speaking and unusual spaces of humor for the sick and healthy audience. Attributions of visibly and invisibly marked chronically ill bodies are renegotiated here. With the means of entertainment art the artist and his team ask the question who actually holds the interpretative sovereignty over the sick body: medicine, the patient or the disease itself.

A production by Hendrik Quast in co-production with Kampnagel Hamburg, Künstlerhaus Mousonuturm and Sophiensaele Berlin. Funded by the Berlin Senate Department for Culture and Europe and the Capital Cultural Fund (HKF). Supported by the residency programme Akademie Schloss Solitude, Schloss Bröllin and Cimma Cità.

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Trailer: here

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Text, performance, concept Hendrik Quast 

Dramaturgy Alex Hennig
Artistic assistance Michel Wagenschütz
Stage Jonas Droste

Light Maika Knoblich

Video Rodrik Biersteker

Sound Toben Piel

Puppet, make-up, costumes Christina Neuss

Feedback Marcus Dross, Sandra Umathum, Daniela Dröscher

Coach for ventriloquism Marcus Geuss

PR Yven Augustin

Technical management Hendrik Borowski

Production management Lisa Gehring