Shelly Shonk Fiffit

On 25 December 2021, the James Webb Space Telescope was launched. This infrared telescope is the biggest and most sophisticated space telescope ever, which allows scientists to look deep into the universe and into the past. It is used among others to seek out the ‘cosmic dawn’: the light of the very first stars, which came into being shortly after the birth of our universe.

But more than the voyage of discovery the telescope makes, Meirhaeghe is fascinated by the capability of the human mind to rise above itself and the universe. The vast endlessness of the universe engulfs us; science is constantly seeking, but our imagination is absolute.

The infinity of the universe swallows us up, science searches but our imagination is absolute. 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.

His companion on this trip past the borders of our body and our time is the Italian composer Caterina Barbieri. She creates electronic music with a ‘transformative and mind-enhancing’ potential. To the hypnotic tones of Fantas (part of her masterful 2019 album Ecstatic Computation), the performers, dancers and singers surrender to the inexplicable and inexpressible.

Shelly Shonk Fiffit will be an intense and ecstatic visual and musical trip, through both our inner worlds and the far corners of the cosmos. Fiffit!