Dark Habits

In Dark Habits, Simon Van Schuylenbergh – together with other performers from the Ne mosquito pas network – brings five short group performances in which they talk about unspoken morality. By perverting conservative values, they open a grey zone in which our own values can be rethought. 

For these performances, they start from Simon’s fascination for ‘moral ambiguity’, or the impossibility to be pure in a moral sense. They therefore focus on the figure of the nun, as seen in the comical movie Dark Habits (1983) by Pedro Almodovar. Not the narrative, but the dark habits of the nuns speak to their imagination. 

Another reference is The Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence, a group of queer activists who held ceremonies dressed up in self-made nun costumes. They declared gay men – infected with AIDS and whom no one dared to touch – as saints. The faith of these nuns centered on society’s notion of the ‘dirty’, infected body, as opposed to the ‘pure’ body, described within the catholic faith. For them, a process of sanctification was considered an anti-normative form of canonization. 

± 90 minutes 
In English