Voicing Stigma in Performances: An Account of Mad:Ness (2023)

Abstract

How is madness powerfully voiced in music? For one, we are musicians who need no convincing of the clarity of voicing beyond words; the task is listening properly. For another, we are people who intimately know the harm that can be inflicted by pathologizing notions of mental illness, especially when diagnosis and medical treatment are so easily grasped as practices of healing and care. Seeking to let Madness speak otherwise, rather than to be spoken for or about, we playfully reflect with our recent performance “Mad:Ness”, hosted by Tonali in Hamburg in March 2023.