We're excited to invite you to an unforgettable night of performance art featuring the works of Buhlebezwe Siwani, Rachel Monosov, Göksu Kunak, and Johannes Büttner. Each performance offers a unique exploration of personal, cultural, and political themes, from spiritual cleansing rituals to geopolitical power struggles, memories of 1980s and 1990s Turkey, and the world of sovereign individuals.

PROGRAM:

Friday, 21 June: Performance night 19:00 - 23:00 

Entrance 8 euros including one drink

Saturday, 22 June: Exhibition 14:00 - 18:00

Free entrance 

19:30 - 20:00:

Buhlebezwe Siwani’s Inhlambuluko is a performance centered around cleansing ceremonies that heal and open up spaces and the body. Using medicinal plants and sound, the performance is meant to be a meditation rooted in the way of negotiating the body and one's physical space in a tender way, allowing oneself to open up and be ancestrally and spiritually vulnerable. This performance is a meditation on one's own ancestry using healing methodologies to move between the past and present in a spiritual and cognitive landscape.

20:15 - 20:45:

In Dead Earth, A Space of No Escape, Rachel Monosov threads together how geopolitical power struggle takes shape by control of land and resources, implementing nationally or racially segregated labor, manipulating locations of ruins, transforming them into forests, and denying recognition of native land rights through legal means. The work consists of a sculptural installation which is activated by performative interventions choreographed by the artist in collaboration with performers Camilla Brogaard, Rachell Bo Clark, and the opera singer Julia Shelkovskaia.

21:00 - 22:00:

In Göksu Kunak’s AN(A)KARA, memories and confusions of a Muslim child appear as voices and objects speaking from a past of the 1980s and 1990s. While the performance gives an overview of this distinctive era of Turkey, the artist simultaneously addresses the clichés and clashes about the East-and-West and the ever-present (self-)censorship. Kunak explores Turkey's late modernity with a particular focus on the city of Ankara, and the bodies of the neoliberal TV hosts that are like monumental statues as they embody nationalist ideologies, serving as instruments of propaganda. The performance also explores the shift in a concept of time: from kısmet, the idea that fate predetermines a person's path, to the clocked fast pace of modernity and the friction in between.

Ongoing:

Johannes Büttner's latest work delves into the world of sovereign individuals across various European countries, with a specific focus on the Netherlands. As a performer, creator of spatial installations, musician, and video artist, Büttner is known for his ability to shed light on and explore societal issues, and his newest project is no exception. Büttner invites us into the world of sovereign individuals, those who place themselves outside the authority of the state and follow their own rules and laws. Through a performative installation, Büttner explores the motives and beliefs of these sovereigns, who may have a wide range of ideologies and motivations.

Performing Sovereigny is produced by Surreal Projects, with support from the Mondriaan Fund, Amsterdam Fund for the Arts and Cultuurfonds.