Let's talk about it... with Griet Menschaert

In our empowered festival series Let ' s talk about..., we focus on important themes that affect us all and ask for depth. In edition 2024, we reflect on the influence of America on our daily lives: Let's talk about US & us.

This year we are diving even deeper into the theme by inviting a local artist or creator as a guest of the festival. What is their take on the theme? For our first edition of 'Let's talk about it with...' we are giving the theatre to Griet Menschaert. She is a Belgian-born, Eindhoven-based artist, writer, performer, curator and educator. Her work is exhibited internationally and she was founder and director of the platform KONT magazine. She is also a Coach Reflections at Design Academy Eindhoven. Griet Menschaert has a great fascination for the influence of context on people. She uses her pencils to reflect, confront, comfort and process.

We are pleased to give the floor, and pencil, to Griet Menschaert:

I have a partner who thinks out loud: he talks his thoughts. He does it in such a charming way that I often let myself get carried away on his stream of association out of convenience. Then I don't have to think myself. But sometimes I get so carried away that I no longer know whether what is going on in my brain is still mine or whether it is being subtly colonized by my partner's stream of words. Those were his thoughts, what are they doing in my head? How is it that this is now occupying my mind? That I am still thinking about this in bed? Strangers, get out!

At the moment, I check a similarity between my partners hard-to-ignore thought radio and the election campaign in the U.S. Whether I like it or not, every fart that's let out over there these days, I'm breathing in through the air above my Eindhoven cottage. All that American tralala is strewn over my existence like stubborn sand that I'll probably never get completely pried away from the nooks and crannies of my cerebral arches, even though my upper chamber is already so packed. Often, moreover, I am invited to shout something big at all that nonsense, at all those enervating farts that reach me from the U.S., for example, a profound "Waw!" or a well-thought-out "Wtf!

Is it perhaps possible to place a marketing defense system over Eindhoven? With náme when it comes to ridiculously derailed election campaigns? But perhaps also when it comes to ridiculously derailed megalomania of local egos? Because apparently there is always more than enough budget for surreal protagonists lavishing my life with uninspiring performances. My brain is withering away before your very eyes. Can't someone summarize the American situation briefly and clearly, say in a narrative of an hour or two, instead of in a hundred thousand posts and millions of pictures and movies that look more like slapstick than politics? I don't even have a TV or even a media subscription these days. I am saving for a new kitchen so that my respective roommates whom I am trying to save from homelessness and I can put our dishes in a dishwasher, which would contribute to peace at the kitchen sink. Such a thing is called a daily chore. Its existence is quasi-nil at the moment. My integral head has to break down these weeks, willy-nilly, about that which the American marketing strategists (and others who, of course, also profit from my online interactions), euphorically bombard me with. Please, can someone take me by the hand to dwell, under each other's guidance, on that gigantic spectacle that could soon turn our whole lives - what do I say: the whole world upside down!? Oh WAIT!!! Here it is: Parktheater to the rescue! The U.S. and us! Make Culture Great Again!

I already have my tickets. Because.

- Griet Menschaert, Eindhoven 2024

Griet Menschaert has summarized her thoughts in a visual story. In a way as only she can, subtle but critical with a touch of humor.