Hadewijch, ijch, ijch, ijch

Do not be sad because it is winter. Please bring warm clothes and maybe even a blanket. The church where we work, study, and read is not heated. We have been located here for the past six weeks – the Groot Begijnhof Sint-Elisabeth.

This site was formerly owned by the Begijnen of Gent. A group of lay Medieval women who practiced spirituality and collective living on their terms. We remember them as a proto-feminist project. We remember them for their radical forms of organization: running elections, offering a space where women of mixed social classes could live alongside one another, writing mystical literature to elaborate their experiences and teach. We remember that 600 women once lived here.

They were unacknowledged by the church and so we, too, have chosen to work beyond the walls of the school. Love makes me wander outside myself. Their subject, which we hold ourselves to, is love, mysticism, collectivity, and self-organization.

Hadewijch–-our starting point, our title, our mentor, our conversation partner–-was one of the first poets published in Middle Dutch. Little is known of her life beyond a collection of writings that consists of 14 recounted visions, 31 letters to young begijnen, 45 poems in stanzas to be sung aloud, 14 poems in couplets, and a list of perfects which are clad as love. Which no alien can understand. Which she invites us to share. She wrote about union with the divine.

In the hollows of the church, voice surfaces, distorts, rings, and resonates – all to most information must surrender to the sonic body of the space. Theater, as we learned it, is at a loss. We focus on song. Yet for some reason a whisper, the texture of gossip, is still possible. A body, be it inner, outer, or extended is at stake. The poem is flooded by a poetics of echo. Resonance is also a question of history. Are you not all deeply touched?

Beware, we privilege visions over ideas, process over product, conversation over conclusion, and, in the spirit of Hadewijch, Love over all.

Beware, lasers are present in the performance.

Since Love’s arrow first inwardly shot me.

We warmly welcome you into the cold.

When March begins, we see…