Migraine is a chronic condition effecting 11% of the world’s population. Many artists and musicians have turned to their migrainous sufferings as a source of inspiration. As a singer, composer and migraine patient, Mariske Broeckmeyer researches Migraine Art and Migraine Music. Combining these findings and her own experiences, she engages in a compositional practice, developing musical pieces, which are both highly personal statements and universal reflections on the migraine condition. This lecture performance will be a musical descent into the wondrous world of the migraine sufferer.  Broeckmeyer will shed a light on some astounding pieces of Migraine Music. She will talk about her own understandings of the migraine aesthetics and perform several compositions she created during the first year of her doctoral research at LUCA School of Arts and KU Leuven.

The migraineur lives a disrupted life. When the attack arises, all senses tremble. The rattling rhythm of life becomes an unendurable commotion and temporary isolation proves to be inevitable. Slowly, the body in pain slips into a void where chaos and torment thrive. For hours she retreats into the dark, shielded by silence and solitude. During this blackout all coherency is lost, all sense of temporality damaged and all language destroyed. In this perverse heterotopy, trapped in passivity, she waits and endures. Eventually, she knows, the torture will temper and the aversion abate. Migraines don’t kill and when the sky clears after all its rumble and tumult, the body is left intact and the mind all the more refocused. Life continues and the migraineur healthily returns to her daily routine. The plausibility of another attack, however, is inescapable and ever looming. She therefore constantly manoeuvres between the holes and navigates around the craters. But what does the artist encounter when she chooses not to bypass the blanks but actually enter, examine and exploit these voids?