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Holland Festival: Whispers from the Past

Kwinnie Lê (VN)
Fri 21 Jun ’24 - Sat 22 Jun ’24
A short and intimate ritual-performance in which participants create a rhythm together based on music from ancestral tattoo traditions.
Fri 21 Jun ’24
-
Sat 22 Jun ’24

Surrender as a group to the oral and musical tradition that is part of tattooing in its original form. In artist Kwinnie Lê’s participatory performance, you will take part in the ritual mashing of tattoo pigment. Mortar and pestle form a cadence that is believed to conjure a connection between the physical and spiritual realm. 

Using rhythm as an ephemeral device for passing on ancestral stories, Lê’s performance is a meditation on oral history in which she asks questions like: who gets the agency to pass this knowledge on, and who can receive it? With Lê, the story mainly lies in the rhythm of the mashing. And like the stories that are orally passed on to succeeding generations increasingly diverge from the original story, the rhythms will constantly change during these sessions, too. In this ongoing performance, Lê consistently uses the previous group’s rhythm as a starting point for the next.

  • Duration: 20 min.
  • Language: English & Dutch
  • This DIY programme is free of charge.
  • You can choose a time slot and join if enough spots are available. 
Part of

Holland Festival 2024