Mark your calendar! On January 25 and 26, 2026, the annual Rooms Performance Festival will take place, with new work by young talent and established names. This year Rooms will take place at MU in Eindhoven.
Categories: Rooms
SPRING Professionals Program
Photo: © Sanne Peper
During SPRING‘s professionals program, SPRING Academy and Rooms Performance Festival join forces to share knowledge, network, inspiration and fun.
Accompanied by a number of inspiring guests such as choreographer Katja Heitmann and Marres director Valentijn Byvanck, the conversation will be about performance in a museum context.
SPRING takes place from May 23 – June 1 in Utrecht. Immerse yourself in an intensive and rich festival program spanning ten days and across the city.
The Rooms Performance festival is organized by Marres, VIAZUID, de Brakke Grond, Dansateliers and FASHIONCLASH. On August 10 there will be a Rooms Reprise, where you can see the piece PAL by Merette van Hijfte and Pleuni Veen. The Rooms Performance festival will take place again in January 2025.
Rooms Reprise
Last January, Marres, VIA ZUID, de Brakke Grond, Dansateliers and FASHIONCLASH presented the performance festival Rooms.
This summer, Merette van Hijfte & Pleuni Veen will give a reprise of their performance PAL in the ice house at Marres.
They will present the visual poem PAL, which gives shape to the moment when we exchange freedom for safety. In doing so, they respond to the various meanings of the adverb, which refers to the original, Dutch expression “pal staan”, and its figurative meaning “to be immobile” or “to stand firm.”
Saturday, August 10, 2024
1:00PM – 3:00PM – 5:00PM
Performers
Pleuni Veen
As a mathematics student, Pleuni Veen (1994, NL) is intrigued by the balance between the certain yet indeterminate nature of the world, and between the understandable and the intangible. Contact, friction and wonder are central to her work.
MeretteVan Hijfte
MeretteVan Hijfte (1994, NL) is a playful performer and energetic maker, who is not afraid to act from her intuition and impulses, making her work explosive and gritty. Following her graduation at the Mime School, she has been active as an actress, a filmmaker and member of the Collective BAMBAMBAM.
Rooms Performance Festival 2025
During the weekend of 25 & 26 January 2025, the yearly Rooms Performance Festival took place, showcasing new work of young talents and established names.
Rooms 2025 was packed with vibrant theater, edgy dance, a culinary performance, kinetic textiles, intimate activism, and much more. Your day pass granted access to a full day with six performances.
Line-up:
Sofie Kramer
Ahmed El Gendy
Amparo González Sola
Tabor Idema
Samah Hijawi
Jasmine Karimova & Johannes Offerhaus
Partners:
Marres, Via Zuid, de Brakke Grond, Dansateliers, FASHIONCLASH and MU
As a Rooms visitor, you’ll also got an exclusive first preview of the exhibition Vultures & Fireflies, opening this spring. At the end of 2024, Mexican artist Alejandro Galván will begin a painted chronicle of Mexico throughout the house Marres, portraying the perspective of Nezahualcóyotl: one of the largest working class suburbs in the Valley of Mexico.
Date: 25 & 26 January 2025
Time: 12:30-17:30, doors open at 12:00
Location: Marres, Maastricht
The Rooms program is the same on both Saturday and Sunday. A day pass gives you access to a full day with five performances. Marres Kitchen will be open until 6PM, serving drinks and delicious food.
Admission for ages 12 and up
Our festival is specially designed for an older audience, and the performances are not suitable for children under 12. Young people aged 12 to 18 are very welcome and enjoy free admission.
Rooms 2025 overview
Sofie Kramer
Monolith
In this ecstatic pole dance performance, the pole becomes a sacred object, a gateway to another world where ancient wisdom lies hidden. The static steel object is brought to life and imbued with ritualistic qualities, playing with the clichés of pole dancing and the audience’s expectations. A futu-feminist journey that raises questions about our connection to technology and explores the relationship between control and intuition.
Sofie Kramer (1990, the Netherlands) is a theater maker, performer, writer, and pole dancer. She interned at Orkater, attended dance workshops with Nicole Beutler and Peeping Tom, and collaborated with choreographers such as Guilherme Miotto and Jens van Daele. Starting this year, she is supported by ViaZuid and Podium Bloos.
Concept, direction, choreography and performance: Sofie Kramer
Concept, composition, instrument design: Mári Mákó
Costume: Batuhan Demir
Audio operator and technical consultancy: Francesco DiMaggio
Dramaturgy: Joske Koning
Supported by: Via Zuid, Cultuurfonds, Amarte, United Cowboys
Ahmed El Gendy
i feel you like the moon feels the earth
Over the course of the project Zero Encounters, Ahmed spent a full 24 hours in silence with six different strangers. Allowing each stranger to lead the day as Ahmed quietly accompanied them, their relationship evolved through proximity and time rather than verbal exchange. i feel you like the moon feels the earth captures this intimate journey from memory – of simply being together, holding space as one.
Ahmed El Gendy (1987, Cairo) (they/he) is an Egyptian-Dutch artist who explores themes of agency, togetherness, and entanglement. Their work, which spans video, text, and performance, has previously been presented at Mediterranea Biennale (Italy) and at Festifreak International Festival for Independent Cinema (Argentina).
Performance: Ahmed El Gendy, Clotilde Cappelletti, Estéfano Romani
Advisor: Miguel A. Melgares
Amparo González Sola
Distances
Delving into the complexities of empathy and shared experience, Distances questions how we can resonate with the others’ experience—even when separated by great literal and figurative distances. Through choreography, the performance shapes the space between the performers and spectators, revealing the hidden burdens each carries. By focusing on gestures, the work invites us to reconsider the dynamics of gaze, distance, and closeness as we reflect on what it means to bear witness.
Amparo González Sola’s (1984, Argentina) (she/her) work spans dance, choreography, and participative projects, and is distinctly influenced by feminist activism and her experience of migration. Her earlier works include The conspiracy of forms(2023) and If every rock is a hole (2022), presented at the SPRING Performing Arts Festival, and the participative projectExploring Reciprocity (2019-2023). Starting 2025, she will be associate artist with Dansateliers.
Distances is part of the work While taking shape, which will premiere in May 2025 at SPRING Performing Arts Festival.
Concept: Amparo González Sola
Performers and choreography: Rita Bifulco, Alina Ruiz Folini, Amparo González Sola
Sound design: Nahuel Cano
Production: Dansateliers
Coproduction: SPRING Performing Arts Festival, Dansateliers, Frascati Producties
Supported by: BAU AIR, Greenhouse, Rooms Performance Festival, workspacebrussels (BE), Tanzhaus Zürich (CH), CAMPUS Paulo Cunha e Silva (PT)
Tabor Idema
Backspace
in collaboration with Diane Mahin
Tabor has lived with a 42-degree curvature of the spine since they were fourteen, which resulted from a period of intense tension accumulating in their body. In Backspace, they explore the ways one can endure trauma, as well as digging into the past hoping to heal the present. What happens when space is given to past tensions? What hidden pain surfaces? The body listens and remains open to everything it has carried for so long.
Tabor Idema (1999, Netherlands) (they/them) creates personal, provocative performances in an honest search for openness. Their simple yet sharp visual language adapts to the architecture of the spaces in which they perform. Locations become collaborators with whom they create poetic slapstick.
Sound design: Diane Mahin
Samah Hijawi
The Moon in Your Mouth
As we witness the violent erasure of some of the world’s oldest cultures, Samah asks: beyond human loss, what communities of plants and other beings are also disappearing? What traditions of kinship are being erased, and what stories from the past might still be retold for the future?
Samah Hijawi is a multimedia artist who is currently exploring ancient and contemporary food cosmologies. Drawing on her research in ancient cosmologies and farming practices, she explores what we can learn from the past to shape a future rich with interconnected relationships. Samah invites us to eat olives and embody Saturn in a single bite, following the shifting faces of the Gods above and below.
Production: Kunstenwerkplaats
Partners: Kunstenfestivaldesarts, C-Takt, KAAP, Kaaitheater, Monty and VierNulVier
Supported by De Vlaamse Gemeenschap
Jasmine Karimova &
Johannes Offerhaus
AIR 1 – 135 m3 of sound
AIR 1 is a performative installation piece by Jasmine Karimova and Johannes Offerhaus. In this duo’s debut collaboration, their respective mediums are fused into one. The work investigates the literal finitude of air. Air that is shared and exchanged between the audience, performers, space and the organ. A performance where the audience’s desire to listen, experience, and engage will ultimately lead them to make a conscious, impactful decision…
Jasmine Karimova (1998) is a Tajik-Australian composer and performer based in the Netherlands, pursuing a master’s in composition at the Conservatorium van Amsterdam. As an organist, her work explores the duality of power and fragility, blending voice and instrument. She has opened the International Organ Symposium in Amsterdam for three consecutive years. Karimova performed at venues like Muziekgebouw and Moscow’s Olympic Stadium, and collaborated with ensembles such as the Nederlands Kamerorkest. Recent interdisciplinary projects include the short film FIFU, children’s piece Mia en de Leeuw, and multimedia creation The Whale.
ZELT is a design studio founded by Johannes Offerhaus (1993, Nederland). The studio conceptualizes, designs and builds constructs kinetic textile spaces and structures that unfold into pavilions, tents and architectural form. Their creations encompass intimate spaces within everyday life as well as scenography for performances and film. ZELT has also collaborated extensively in the performing arts, designing sets and costumes for productions such as Papillon (Philharmonie Luxembourg) and dance film La Nostra Terra. Offerhaus began his career in fashion, focusing on kinetic couture pieces before transitioning into larger kinetic installations. His autonomous work earned him the Frans Molenaar Couture Award and a Dutch Design Award.
Press
For press requests, imagery and interview requests, please contact communicatie@marres.org
Partners
Partners Rooms 2025:
Marres, Huis voor Hedendaagse Cultuur
Dansateliers
De Brakke Grond
Via Zuid
FASHIONCLASH
MU
Thanks to:
Ruben Kieftenbelt
Ralf Nevels
Sanne Peper
Nicole Pul
Bas de Weerd
Hout Video
De teams van Marres, Via Zuid, de Brakke Grond, Dansateliers, FASHIONCLASH & MU for all help and cooperation.
Nationaal Muziekinstrumenten Fonds
Gieskes-Strijbis Fonds
Marres receives structural support from the Ministry of Education, Culture and Science, the Province of Limburg and the Municipality of Maastricht.
Rooms Performance Festival 2024
Music / Composer: Vanessa Lann, 9×13 Orange Drummer Beat!, performed by: NeoFanfare 9×13
cover photo: © Sanne Peper
Marres, VIA ZUID, de Brakke Grond, Dansateliers and FASHIONCLASH proudly present performance festival Rooms.
Young makers and established talents offered performance, theater, visual arts, dance, fashion and music. A weekend during which fragile dresses brought colorful stained glass to life, where conductor’s bodies turned into living scores, manuscripts got dictated and a shoe merchant brought you along into absurdist power relations.
Line up:
buren
Merette van Hijfte & Pleuni Veen
Kinga Jaczewska
Mauricio Limon
David Maroto
Genevieve Murphy
Ika Schwander in collaboration with Fran Hayes
27 & 28 January 2024
01 – 06 PM
Location: Marres, Maastricht
Regular: € 40,00
Student: € 20,00
Day passes are not available anymore.
A ticket provides full access to all performances on either of the two days. The program of Rooms remains the same on both Saturday and Sunday, with the exception of David Maroto’s performance, which will take place on Saturday. With a valid day pass, you get to see the entire line up. For a break, you can visit the Marres Kitchen restaurant or relax in our public city garden.
The next edition of Rooms is scheduled for January 25-26, 2025, we hope to see you again!
Line up
buren presents the prelude of their work shoe/farm, which will premiere in February of 2024. Departing from their respective backgrounds, a farm in Zeeuws-Vlaanderen and a shoe store along the Belgian coast, Melissa Mabesoone and Oshin Albrecht merge the worlds ‘farm’ and ‘shoe’. They step into their ancestors’ shoes and play with the habits, customs, sayings and vocabulary connected to farm life and shoe sales. In doing so, they link their experiences to broader social issues surrounding production processes, working conditions and consumerism.
Mabesoone (Knokke, 1988) and Albrecht’s (Bruges, 1986) two-woman collective buren bring critical, absurdist sketches about community, domesticity, gender, (art) history and neoliberalism. Their work has been shown on many international stages, amongst which at Centrale Fies (Italy), Teatro Nacional D. Maria II (Portugal), Szene (Salzburg) and within the discursive program Feminist School. The collective published a graphic novel titled STW, your favorite station! and became resident artist at Kaaitheater in 2023.
concept by buren (Oshin Albrecht & Melissa Mabesoone)
created with: Oshin Albrecht, Melissa Mabesoone, Benjamin Cools, Benne Dousselaere, Vera Martins, Famke Dhont, Margaux Janssens
produced by: au bureau
co-productie: Kaaitheater, Kunstencentrum BUDA, workspacebrussels, C-takt, KAAP, de Brakke Grond, Theaterfestival Boulevard, Playground festival (STUK, Museum M), apap-FEMINIST FUTURES, a project co-funded by the Creative Europe Programme of the European Union, Marres
Pleuni Veen and Merette van Hijfte present the visual poem PAL, which gives shape to the moment when we exchange freedom for safety. In doing so, they respond to the various meanings of the adverb, which refers to the original, Dutch expression “pal staan,” and its figurative meaning “to be immobile” or “to stand firm.”
As a mathematics student, Veen (1994, NL) is intrigued by the balance between the certain yet indeterminate nature of the world, and between the understandable and the intangible. Contact, friction and wonder are central to her work.
Van Hijfte (1994, NL) is a playful performer and energetic maker, who is not afraid to act from her intuition and impulses, making her work explosive and gritty. Following her graduation at the Mime School, she has been active as an actress, a filmmaker and member of the Collective BAMBAMBAM.
Credits camera: Samuel van Keeken
Muziek: Rint Mennes
Kinga Jaczewska (Poland, 1991) is a dancer and choreographer whose work focusses on what is often rendered invisible or commonly escapes our attention. Accordingly, her Rooms performance Raw and Tender, which she has made in collaboration with Agnese Forlani and composer Raphael Malfliet, looks at the functionality and corporality of motherhood – at the contradictions which it consists of. It comes as a response to Jaczewska’s earlier poem mothers.
Jaczewska’s previous works encompassed performance, video, installation, text and photography, and have been presented in theater spaces including Kunstcentrum Nona (Mechelen) and Magdalenazaal (Brugge), as well as at the Kunsthal Antwerp. In 2021, she was awarded de PrixFintroPrijs in the category of theater and dance.
Agnese Forlani (1997) is an Italian dancer and textile maker who is currently completing her Master’s degree in dance. In her artistic practice, she experiments with costume, scenography and materiality in dialogue with the dancing body.
Photo: Diego Franssens
In 2022, Mauricio Limón de León launched Les petits pois sont verts… Les petits poissons rouges; a collection of stained-glass haute couture dresses in collaboration with Adriana Gonzalez Hulshof. In Rooms, the collection is presented in the performance Flowing Sands Slogans. Here, the dresses are shown in a collaboration with Mahoalli Nassourou, Justine Olguín, Laia Vancells Pi and Manu Sol Mateo, performing a choreography of fluid geometries to music composed by Alejandro Contreras Pascual and Limón de León. Inspired by Samuel Beckett’s short television play Quad (1981), Flowing Sand Slogans takes Beckett’s sequence of movements as its primary structure. A meeting between four characters culminates in a disjointed catwalk performance of mechanized movements.
Previous shows by Limón de León (Mexico City, 1979) presented include A gigantic broom to uncover compelling narratives (Rotterdam, 2020), El primero que ria (Paris, 2023) and his current exhibition Memoria ciega at Museo Cabañas (Guadalajara), curated by Victor Palacios. He is represented by Ellen de Bruijne Projects (Amsterdam), Pequod.CO (Mexico) and Wild- Palms (Düsseldorf).
Adriana Gonzalez Hulshof is Director of Museum Kranenburgh, a museum of modern and contemporary art in Bergen. She was founder and director of Amsterdam Art|Weekend, worked for the Dutch National Opera & Ballet, and has developed art programs for the International Documentary Film Festival Amsterdam, the Prince Claus Fund, ArtHub Asia and others.
Vancells Pi (Blanes, 1993) completed her formal dance training at Codarts Rotterdam, before joining the Tanz Luzerner Theater company, Habemus Corpus and the companies of Roberto G. Alonso and Mari Rovira Crea. She currently works freelance, performing with the Dutch National Opera & Ballet and at festivals across Europe.
Transdisciplinary artist Sol Mateo Rivas Álvarez (Mexico City, 1989) takes his own sexuality as a starting point for his artistic explorations of gender stereotypes, beauty and morality. His works have been shown internationally, most recently at Temporada Alta International Theater Festival (Peru) and at the Centre National du Costume et de la Scène (France).
Nassourou (Mexico City, 1983) works at the intersection of performance, theater, film and still photography. She directed and presented the monologue Medea Redux in 2013 and is a part of the international collective Entre Minas. As a performer, she has collaborated with Barbara Foulkes (Arg- Mex), Pablo Helguera (Mex-USA), and Maj Britsen (Germany) among others.
Lepke Olguin Oaxaca (Mexico City, 1999) attended Paul Valery University in Montpellier, studying Anthropology from 2019 to 2021. Interested in dance, performance, music and spectacle, she currently works freelance, performing in collaboration with cabaret collective Las Suculentas, Manu Sol Mateo, and Limón de León for his show Les petits pois sont verts… Les petits poissons rouges.
David Maroto’s performance is titled after his most recent novella Not All of Me Will Die. This novella exists as an original manuscript in which the author reflects on memory, writing and the desire for posterity. In the performance, Maroto publishes the novella by dictating its contents to a group of participants who each write their own copy by hand. In this way, Maroto distributes his ‘oral novella’ in handwritten unique copies.
Maroto (Spain, 1976) is a visual artist who obtained a PhD from the Edinburgh College of Art for his research The Artist’s Novel: The Novel as a Medium in the Visual Arts. This is the first in-depth study into the artist’s novel as a phenomenon and follows from Maroto and Joanna Zielińska’s project The Book Lovers; a collection and bibliography of artists’ novels that they started in 2011. Maroto’s autonomous work has been shown at Kanal Centre Pompidou (Brussels), EFA Project Space (New York), and Vigil Gonzales Gallery (Buenos Aires) amongst others.
This performance will only take place on Saturday January 27, 2024.
An initiative of Technology Driven Art, a research group within the art schools Zuyd in collaboration with Out of Sight VZW and Marres.
technologydrivenart.org
out-of-sight.be
Genevieve Murphy’s Rooms performance Somewhere Someone Is Conducting Right Now views the body as a score. Four conductors, each in a room of their own, depend on fading music and memory as they orchestrate a self-chosen piece in partial silence. This not only draws attention to the individuality of each conductor, but also to music genre and environment. The spaces in between the rooms where different works merge become sonic spaces of their own. When all conduct together and all is heard in synchronicity, the house of Marres will sing.
Murphy (Scotland, 1988) graduated from the Royal Conservatoire of Glasgow, the Birmingham Conservatoire for music and The Royal Conservatoire of The Hague. In her work, she combines performance and visual art with contemporary classical music, to deal with subjects of psychology and disability. Her compositions have been performed in concert halls and art galleries, amongst which het Concertgebouw, het Muziekgebouw, W139, Stedelijk Museum (Amsterdam), La Fenice (Venice), Old Fruitmarket (Glasgow) and Theatre Spektakel (Zurich). Murphy was awarded an Honorary Membership of The Royal Birmingham Conservatoire in 2019.
Ed Liebrecht graduated with distinction from the Royal Academy of Music, where he was awarded the Fred Southall Prize for his final performance. He is committed to bringing ideological variety in his work that merges diverse influences. His upcoming projects include a jazz orchestra collaboration with Oxford University Orchestra, a return to the Haydn Chamber Orchestra for the Walton Violin Concerto.
Composer and conductor Ezequiel Menalled (Buoneos Aires, 1980) received his Bachelor and Master degrees in conducting from the Royal Conservatoire of The Hague. He works with various genres, with or without the use of electronics and other technological media, and ranging from solos to large ensembles. In 2003 he founded the Dutch Ensemble Modelo62, and has since served as its artistic director.
Libia Hernandez’ (Cuba, 1965) rejects the idea that classical music is predominantly for a small elite, and looks to cultivate new listeners and an ever-widening group of people to experience classical music as current, necessary and irreplaceable – an enduring force that bridges cultures and continents. In 2024 Hernandez will conduct a new opera written by Monique Krüs, Piratenkoningin at the Nederlandse Reisopera.
Basque conductor and violinist Mirari Etxeberria Guerrero (Andoain, 1998) is the founder, artistic director and principal conductor of Pamplona’s Youth Orchestra. She holds a Bachelor’s degree in Violin and a Master’s degree in Musical Investigation, and is currently finishing her formal training at the Amsterdam Conservatory. As assistant conductor, she has previously worked with Juanjo Mena, Martin Sieghart and Ryan Bancroft.
Composer: Vanessa Lann
Piece: 9×13 Orange Drummer Beat!
Performed by: NeoFanfare 9×13
Composer: Tan Dun
Piece: Circle with Four Trios, Conductor and Audience (1992)
Performed by: Nieuwe Ensemble
Composer: Beethoven
Piece: Symphony No. 9 in D minor, Op. 125 – “Choral”: 2. Molto vivace
Performed by: Royal Concertgebouw Orkest
Composer: Luciano Berio
Piece: Sinfonia for 8 Voices and Orchestra: III. in Ruhig Fließender Bewegung
Performed by: Electric Phoenix and Royal Concertgebouw Orkest
Ika Schwander and Fran Hayes present Someone, I tell you, in another time will remember us. With references to the nymph Daphne and the poet Sappho, the work explores the transformation from human to tree and from life to death. It creates an environment where sensory stimuli are rare and the audience has room to breathe. In this space, questions surface that are normally lost. What might drive someone to trade human existence for something else?
Schwander (Luxembourg, 1999) graduated from the Toneelacademie Maastricht in 2023 with her work è vero, è vero, è vero; a co-production with VIA ZUID and Festival Cement. She makes visual performances and prefers to work in border areas where different mediums meet. Her work explores themes including trauma, care, religion, ecology and death.
Hayes (Dorchester, 1999) is a multimedia artist based in London whose practice explores the relationships that form in the spaces between the digital and the physical, Hayes’ practice mixes science-fiction influences with references to current issues such as ecological breakdown and the consequences of capitalism and to everyday occurrences. The works range from 3D modelling and animating to ceramics and writing.
Festival overview
Photo: © Sanne Peper
Photo: © Sanne Peper
Photo: © Sanne Peper
Press
For press requests, visual materials and interviews, please contact Julie Cordewener: julie.cordewener@marres.org.
Partners/thanks to
Partners Rooms:
Marres, House for Contemporary Culture
Dansateliers
De Brakke Grond
FASHIONCLASH
VIA ZUID
Courtesy of Gieskes-Strijbis Fonds
Marres receives structural support from the Ministry of Education, Culture and Science, the Province of Limburg and the Municipality of Maastricht.
Rooms Performance festival
In the weekend of September 4 and 5 of 2021, Marres launched performance festival Rooms. Rooms presents new work by young makers and established talents. In the homely chambers of Marres, exiting theatre, dreamy films, intimate dance pieces and extraordinary visual arts alternate. Behind the doors of the rooms, ten makers take you on a two-day expedition to unexplored worlds.
Overview
Photo: © Sanne Peper
Photo: © Sanne Peper
Photo: © Sanne Peper
Program
Sa: 12.00 & 3 pm / Sun:3 pm (balzaal)
Kiem is a stream of thoughts, trying to catch up with itself in fits and starts. A failed reflection on scale, context, language and people.
Sa: 1.30 pm / Sun:1.30 & 4.30 pm (balzaal)
In GOT 2 4 GET, Koning tries to not divide herself and the world into one ‘I’ and millions ‘others’. She surrenders. In a ritual incantation with the audience on her side, she defies gravity and sings away thoughts with one goal: to be allowed to dissolve into a greater whole.
Sa: 12.45 & 3.45 pm / Sun:2.15 (schouwkamer)
Treat thy neighbour as thyself is a stream of consciousness exploring the discomfort of speaking your mind. A woman sits on a chair that for some reason has been put onto a platform. She has something to say and she will need to figure out how to do this. She might be addressing someone specifically. Sometimes the stage tries to highlight her words, other times it seems to contradict or even interrupt her.
Sa: 4.15 pm / Sun:12.00 pm (balzaal)
In this personal solo, in which Levi navigates in between dance and storytelling, memory and farewell are the central themes. She brings to life a multi-faceted and almost, but not quite, gossipy portrait of intimacy and distance within a family. She invites you to reflect on your own family history and the farewell of previous generations. The performance challenges you to open up to notions such as impermanence, memory and past.
Sun:12.00 & 3.00 pm (tuinkamer)
Two bodies in a perpetual embracement; skin to skin, bones entangle and muscles interweave each other in one persisting movement. Since the global pandemic outbreak in 2020, our approach to physical contact has changed radically. Embracing each other has become a scarce physical act, solely allowed in private. In presence of an embracement highlights the importance of the simple but vital act of an embracement.
Sa: every 15 minutes between 12.30 – 1.30 & 2.00 – 3.00 & 3.30 – 4.15 / Sun: every 15 minutes between 12.45 – 1.30 & 2.00 – 3.00 & 3.30 – 4.30 (filmkamer)
The photographic story Flipping The Bird takes you to the dunes; the starting point of a quest to make contact with flora and fauna. The film ends in an explosion; a plea to break free from your solid ground and to choose a new direction. Flipping The Bird is a beautiful and compact work of art, in which language and image constantly reinforce each other.
Sa: 2.15 / Sun:12.45 & 3.45 (schouwkamer)
In Ik ben gestolen, Schouten tries to share something about the subject she initially tried to avoid: the unconditional love of a child for his parent. This monologue is a letter to her father. She demands of him, longs for him, loves him and looks back on him. In a sober setting, her words and her presence on the floor, which she uses as an instrument, are central. By telling her personal story she hopes to touch the universal.
Sa: 1.30 & 4.30 pm / Sun: 12 pm (tuinkamer)
Ten of Swords is a slow pace exploration on the transitional moment from life to death. A space, scarcely decorated with sound, tools and creatures, invites you to inhabit and examine a last breath.
Sa + Sun: continuously 12 – 5 pm (voorkamer)
From his son in Lomé in Togo, Teeken (1944) received a photo depicting his son’s wife, mother-in-law, their two children and his family-in-law. The composition of the photo inspired him to create the motif for a painting: the tousled rhythm of their heads and limbs around the cluttered coffee table within the closed shape of the heavy sofa.
Sa: 12.00 & 1.30 & 3.00 & 4.15 pm / Sun: 12.00 & 1.30 & 3.00 & 4.30 pm (tussenkamer)
In these 24 gouaches, Teeken (1944) investigates the chaos and order of his kitchen table. Every day he sees this round table, often things piled on top of it. The visual poetry of circular objects, such as cups, plates and glasses. against other, almost shapeless, items like a transparent plastic bag: the complexity, disorder and at the same time a certain arrangement fascinate him.
Sa: continuously 12.30 – 13.30, 2 – 3 & 3.30 – 4.15 pm / Sun: continuously 12.30 – 1.30, 2 – 3 & 3.30 – 4.30 pm (room 7a)
Wilsons’s film is an inverted dream in which we disappear. She has been spinning around her own axis for too long and the earth, less and less solid, opens up. What happens at the ends of the circle? Wilsons’s work creates an open space for imagination and magic.
Sa + Sun: continuous 1.00 – 16.00 pm (garden)
Listen to stories about art works from all over the world with The Invisible Collection in the beautiful garden of Marres. Afterwards, together with your family and friends, you’ll learn how to imagine these beautiful stories in a workshop.
Rooms 02 Performance Festival
In the weekend of 10 and 11 June, the second edition of ROOMS Performance Festival took place.
In ROOMS young makers and established talents take you on an expedition to unexplored worlds with dazzling dance pieces, mysterious theater, experimental jazz and dreamy films.
Biographies
Led by Amsterdam-based choreographer and performer Miri Lee (South Korea, 1975), Collectief Imprography is an independent artist platform focusing on advanced levels of impromptu performance forms. Since 2018, Lee has been organizing the Co-Session Series, fostering a close collaborative scheme among its professional dancers and musicians from various artistic backgrounds.
Judith Engelen (Belgium, 1995) makes physical and associative performances in which she combines fast technology with slow literature. In addition, her work always has a strong connection to psychoanalysis and biology. Abel Enklaar (the Netherlands, 1995) is an interdisciplinary artist who explores the intersection of technology, identity and environment through performances and installations. Their work explores the impact of technology on our understanding of ourselves and the world around us. Enklaar has presented their work at festivals and venues around the world.
Nina Marte Wilson (1998, the Netherlands) graduated as a performer and visual artist from the Institute of Performing Arts, Maastricht in 2022. During her studies, Wilson started to replace the stage with other landscapes and herself with objects and elements. Starting from a theatrical background she moves towards other media, including film, photography, animation, installation and food. In a playful and inventive way, Wilson creates a ritual in which the spectator is offered the silence and space to become absorbed in the moment. Everything shown, is born out of situations or landscapes she puts herself in. Working intuitively, she grounds, get bogged down, collects and listens, overwhelming and sincere, with the softest touch.
With a signature of rooted groove in combination with well-tempered outbursts, drummer Sun-Mi Hong (South Korea, 1990) has placed herself strongly in the Dutch jazz scene. By approaching the moment in a meditative fashion, Hong achieves the ability to bring something entirely original to the band stand. Known for his distinct trumpet tone, out-of-the-box creativity and diversity of projects, Alistair Payne (Scotland, 1995) is a prominent name amongst the new wave of Dutch jazz.
The work of Arno Schuitemaker (the Netherlands, 1976) arises from existential questions and is an ongoing quest for the mystery of our bodies and ourselves. Hyperphysical and immersive, they receive praise for the depth created at the crossroads of the intimate and the universal. In his performances, sensory experience is prioritized over narrative. Schuitemaker has shown his work at renowned venues and contemporary performing arts festivals in over 25 countries.
Alesya Dobysh (Russia, 1989) and Marina Pravkina (Russia, 1986) met 15 years ago being a part of the Moscow urban dance scene. During that period they mastered footwork oriented club styles, such as House dance and UK Jazz Fusion, self-studied fundamentals of contemporary dance and actively participated in a “battle” dance scene. In developing their choreographic material, they draw inspiration from the abstraction and deconstruction of footwork patterns. To explore their interdependence, performers construct rules and play obscure games, finding new ways to complement each other’s physicality and its limitations.
Overview
(Photo: © Sanne Peper)
Rooms 2024
Please save the date for the third edition of Rooms, scheduled for 27 and 28 January 2024, we hope to see you again then! Keep an eye on our website and social media.
Press about Rooms 02
Press
For press requests, imagery and interview requests, please contact Julie Cordewener: julie.cordewener@marres.org.