NOISE

Club Gewalt

Fri 2 Oct and Sat 3 Oct

Listening to the holy tune of collapse.

Past event

Fri 2 Oct

and

Sat 3 Oct

Past event

Fri 2 Oct

20:30

Frascati, Amsterdam

Frascati 1

Past event
Sat 3 Oct

20:30

Frascati, Amsterdam

Frascati 1

Past event

In this intensely immersive performance opera, born out of the urgency to learn how to navigate a world in collapse, Club Gewalt asks themselves the question: how can you readjust your senses under the constant static of information predicting the apocalypse? How do we give meaning to a future that doesn’t overflow with prosperity?

Imagine fluorescent lighting above a screen showing a glitchy PowerPoint presentation. Imagine a young professional mom giving a semi-intellectual TED Talk on recovering from postnatal depression. Imagine vintage synthesizers accompanying a musical number about your baby falling off the couch. Imagine the world collapsing. Imagine far too many words. Imagine far too little hope. Imagine hope.

We live in a time of polycrisis: we are simultaneously confronted with the rise of fascism, the arrival of the climate crisis, Western complicity in a genocide, fruits and vegetables full of PFAS, and our own identities that turn out to be contaminated with (internalized) sexism, racism, and homophobia. Where a future of stability and progress was once promised, all the systems around us and within ourselves are threatening to collapse. The human survival instinct (LION! DANGER! FIGHT OR FLIGHT! SURVIVE! CELEBRATE!) is failing massively when it comes to dealing with the complexity of today’s problems. Our amygdalas* are being immensely overstimulated and we are getting stuck in an anxiety limbo.

In the immersive performance opera NOISE, Club Gewalt explores an alternative to freezing up. The future is here: burying our heads in the sand is not an option but doomscrolling on the internet and compulsively reading self-help books are also only marginally constructive. Can we let the noise in and process it on an emotional level? Can we learn to accept the collapse of systems as cosmic law, without ceasing our protest against injustice? Can we prepare for the polycrisis by letting go of our resistance to vulnerability?

Through a derailed seminar on completing stress cycles, led by a group of chatty doppelgangers, the audience is slowly drawn into a collapse. Understanding and control are traded for an exercise in falling back in love with being human. Not by pretending that the future is better than it is, but by truly learning to listen to the noise. Cuz: never waste a good crisis.

Duration: 75 mins.
Language: Dutch, with English surtitles

Credits

composition and text Gerty Van de Perre, Loulou Hameleers, Robbert Klein, Sanna Elon Vrij and Suzanne Kipping performance Gerty Van de Perre, Nelleke Kuipers, Robbert Klein, Sanna Elon Vrij and Suzanne Kipping artistic direction Sanna Elon Vrij music direction Robbert Klein dramaturgy Amir Vahidi final direction Lisa Lucassen costume design Mayan Tuulia Frank (in collaboration with Carlotta Schumann, Hagen Keller) scenoraphy, lightdesign Wes Broersen sound design Joost Muller technical production Pablo Strörmann technique Neuköllner Oper (Berlin), Noor Thijssen, Sipke Woudstra (Netherlands) executive production Andrea van Bussel production assistant Zus Downes business lead Rick Mouwen artdirection campaign MaartjeMerel photography campaign Pim Top communication Emma van de Sande, Marlies van der Neut en Pauline Ouwerkerk in co-production with Neuköllner Oper Berlin with support from Fonds Podiumkunsten, Gemeente Rotterdam

In the press

“NOISE feels like a manifesto agains petty nitpicking, a call to fight whatever is causing the high-voltage tension.” **** NRC

“In NOISE, Club Gewalt asks how we can keep our footing in a collapsing world. There is no solution, but there is a strategy: stand in the eye of the storm and feel what the destruction does to you.” Theaterkrant

“You hold your breath and keep your ears open: The immersive sound performance NOISE explores the state of our society.” Taz (Die Tageszeitung)

About Club Gewalt

Club Gewalt is a music-based performance collective from Rotterdam. Rooted in rage fueled by injustice and love for togetherness, they make, compose, produce and perform their own work: ranging from feminist punk-christmas musicals and introspective killjoy operas about institutional racism, to disruptive club nights in museums and political slutpop concerts. Always highly skilled, musical, playful and somehow awkward.

Club Gewalt is addicted to crowds and, on the eve of the apocalypse, they sing their lungs out in an attempt to unlock an alternative timeline.