The narration of pain is a fundamental component of the perception of pain itself. The omission of verbalisation intensifies the crisis in which chronic pain patients find themselves. With his work Willi gives form to a language of the incommunicable, through a set of percussive sculptures that can speak for the patients, narrating the condition of suffering without words. The installation is finished via a performative act, in which the anthropomorphic gong-sculptures are "made to speak" through caresses, blows, scratches. The presentation of the work in Milan is an important step in completing the sculptures, because the audience will be invited to engage with the sculptures, contributing to their completion. The therapeutic act of transferring the tactile sensation of pain onto the metal body of the sculpture, restores the form and specific vibration of a deeply personal and intimate experience. The act of sharing it with other people turns the performative into compassion, a word that derives from the Latin notion of ‘cum-patior’ i.e. sharing sufferance. The need to re-appropriate the dimension of compassion, in its etymological sense, extends from the specific case of the condition of the chronic patient to the everyday crisis of the insufficiency of language in people’s relationship with each other’s. In this sense, the presence of Willi's work within an international event dedicated to design sheds new light on the median role of the object, as a catalyst for discourses rooted in human experience, as an amplifier of dialogue.

Chronic Pain Orchestra is tangible evidence of poetry’s inherent expressive capacity, and of the power of art to create bridges where there were walls, to generate beauty where there was pain.