How To Live (After You Die) - Lynette Wallworth
Lynette Wallworth is known for her highly empathic work focused on the stories of others, but in How to Live (after you die), the artist presents a story from her past. She draws on her teenage years when she was enticed into a fundamentalist Christian group to provide first-hand insight into the allure of extreme sectarianism. With music from, among others, associate artist ANOHNI.
How To Live (After You Die) - Lynette Wallworth
Young woman gets caught up in a polarising belief system
When outlandish conspiracy theories like QAnon captivated millions of people worldwide, Wallworth saw a chapter from her past intrude into the present. During his presidency, Donald Trump had a team of charismatic, self-proclaimed prophets, the Evangelical Advisory Board, as advisors, and having played the role of 'prophet' in her community, the artist decided it was time to tell her story.
In this work, she takes her listeners along in the fall of a young woman caught up in a belief system that divides and polarises. How to Live (after you die) gives voice to an artist in her prime while at the same time pointing to the plethora of extremist influences that can manipulate and shape us unless we find our way back to our own story. Other pieces by Wallworth are featured at the Holland Festival.
'As an artist, imagination is my religion, but along the way, I encountered others. I devoted myself to some of them and was wrecked on their shores. (…) I abdicated responsibility entirely to a God-sized roulette wheel that made every decision for me, and it didn't end well...'
− Lynette Wallworth