Attempt on Dying
by and with Boris Nikitin
Production management: Annett Hardegen
Supported by: Fachausschuss Tanz & Theater der Kantone Basel-Stadt und Basel-Landschaft.
A suicide assistant from EXIT once told me - it was at the organization’s booth at a science fair in Basel - that the fewest people who come to EXIT with their suicide thoughts make use of the „service“ in the end.
Most of them die from their disease in a „natural way“.
However: all who meet her for a first consultation and who most probably for the first time express their thoughts of maybe not wanting or not being able to live any longer, all of them share afterwards one same state:
relief.
relief of just having surmounted the probably most extrem tabu.
To say: I don't want it anymore.
What an achievement, i thought, that a society is creating an institution in which a person is enabled to not only think about it but also express this thought. And maybe for the first time doesn’t have to live but can actually chose to live - and be it only for a few weeks or even just a few days.
Where life suddenly is not an unavoidability anymore but is becoming a possibility.
I left the EXIT booth very excited thinking that this was some sort of a social revolution.
Learning to live by learning to die.