Claire Cunningham

Give Me a Reason to Live is a 40 min solo performance by Glasgow based choreographer Claire Cunningham inspired by the work of medieval Dutch painter Hieronymus Bosch and set to a mesmerizing sound score by sound artist Zoe Irvine.

Exploring issues of religion, in particular religious art, alongside questions regarding judgement of bodies and quality of life, the work takes the form of a series of tests. Tests of body and of faith. For the artist it is a study in the notion of empathy.

Give Me a Reason to Live is dedicated to the approximately 70,000 disabled victims of the Nazi Aktion T4 euthanasia program and exists as a live memorial to these individuals and the current disabled victims of the present UK governments so-called ‘welfare reform’.

With this work she has been consciously pushing the subject matter away from autobiographical material – looking to create connections with other people and issues, to find new methods of researching and devising material – such as the use of duration, methods of working alone and of creating shared artistic space.

Give Me a Reason to Live is a stripped bare, physically powerful work -consciously engaging on a political level, and thereby raising questions of the environments the work should be placed in in order to engage more widely, or to create more resonant contexts.