FFF4 | Phobiarama

"The only way to banish our fears is to face up to them", says Dries Verhoeven (b. 1976), and that's precisely what he invites us to do as we enter the darkness of the tent pitched in the heart of the city with "Phobiarama" glowing in neon beside it.

A live-performance installation, a ride to be experienced in the centre of the city, "Phobiarama" is the latest work from the internationally-acclaimed Dutch artist and director who presented "No man's land" at the Onassis Stegi 1st Fast Forward Festival three years ago, in which viewers were given a guided tour of downtown Athens by and through a reality of being an immigrant.

"Phobiarama" is a site-specific performance which simulates the contemporary theatre of fear infiltrating our daily existence, and invites you to enter a labyrinthine ride which seeks to cast out all that haunts us.

Now, to tell the truth: what are you most scared of? An abandoned suitcase in an airport? The possibility of leaving the Euro? The financial crisis, nationalism or the extreme-right national parties? Terrorism and the global security services?

The world première of "Phobiarama", a co-production by the Onassis Stegi and the Holland Festival, problematizes, exposes and dissects the strategies of fear and personal precarity, inviting us to demystify and expose the "wizard" behind a global fear mongering.

"We've never been so insecure and so very scared", Verhoeven notes, reminding us that: "Our fear receptors are in our brains, in the amygdala, the neurons that activate our reflexes when we are in danger. Our amydala has been putting in a lot of overtime lately. Politicians, the media, marketers and terrorists have forced us to stay ever-vigilant, ever alert. They've taken aim at our fear receptors with devastating accuracy. But which are real threats and which just cooked-up conspiracies...?".