FEMALE DESIRE – Performances by Anouchka Oler Nussbaum and Loma Doom

As part of SUPERHOST 2023

Programme

The yearlong programme ANTENA, developed by Céline Gillain, deconstructs preconceived ideas and conventions about music. It explores how listening, rhythm, and female desire are historically connected, and how those connections can open up new worlds. Female Desire is the second event in a series of five.

According to Miriam Toews, in her 2018 novel ‘Women Talking’, the origin of the word ‘listen’ is the Middle English ‘liste’, which means desire. ANTENA explores the way occupying sonic space is related to exploring oneself, one’s voice, to defining one’s desire. Female desire is not only the desire of women, it’s the name of a rhizomatic desire that needs to be decolonised, a desire that is not about control or domination. – Céline Gillain

19:00
Learning How to Speak Again
Performance by Anouchka Oler Nussbaum

The performance Learning How to Speak Again by mixed media artist Anouchka Oler Nussbaum revolves around ventriloquism. Etymologically, ventriloquism comes from the Latin for ‘to speak from the stomach’. Since the voice does no longer depend on the movement of the mouth, it seems to come from elsewhere. In this performance, Anouchka Oler Nussbaum will teach you how to speak through other bodies, have conversations with objects, and make them speak or say what you really think – with a smile.

Learning How to Speak Again was commissioned by Mophradat, as part of the festival ‘Read the Room’ held in March 2022 at Kaaistudio’s in Brussels.

In English.
Duration: ca. 25 min.

19:30
La Sirène
Performance by Loma Doom

Based on earlier residencies that allowed her to source from archives, such as the one at contemporary arts centre de Appel in Amsterdam, this performance by DJ and sound practitioner Loma Doom will reimagine the enchanting voices of sirens. This time, their voices will no longer lure into destructive sexuality, but rather be voices that look for a place of belonging. Loma Doom will create an immersive set, blending the work and voices of various female composers, performance artists and visual artists.

Duration: ca. 1 hour

About the artists

Anouchka Oler Nussbaum is a visual artist based in Brussels. She has an MFA from the Piet Zwart Institute in Rotterdam (2012), a post-graduate degree from Ensba Lyon (2015) and she studied gender studies at UCLouvain in Louvain-la-Neuve. For the latter, she conducted research on the French Red Dykes, a political lesbian movement from the 1970s. Nussbaum co-founded feeelings with gladys gérenton in 2017, an artist-run space that is interested in economic and affective issues. She has developed and presented her work at exhibitions, collective events and residencies, such as Kantine, Le 19 CRAC, Mophradat, Kaaitheater, La Tôlerie, Galerie, Triangle France, Aware: Archives of Women Artists, Research and Exhibitions, CNAP, Entreprise Projects, Frac Ile-de-France: Le Plateau, Cooper Gallery, La Ferme du Buisson, MOT International, de Appel, MAC VAL en Setu.

Loma Doom is the moniker of Femke Dekker, an Amsterdam-based sound-practitioner and broadcaster. Loma Doom’s signature style revolves around electronic experimentalism, both for mind and movement, that seeks the outliers. An experimental approach that avoids linearity and looks for a space where intuition and understanding meet. Actively incorporating styles predating the computer era, Doom sources from her fondness for freak folk, psychedelic music and hardcore punk. She takes a position at the centre of a respected underground dj scene performing at venues and festivals such as Salon des Amateurs in Düsseldorf, Meakusma in Eupen and Dekmantel in Amsterdam. Using radio shows and archives as her main media, Doom’s current focus is on various notions of listening and how listening is actually a call to action. She holds residencies at radio stations Stranded FM in Utrecht, Radio Tempo Não Pára in Amsterdam, Echobox in Amsterdam and Mutant Radio in Tbilisi. Parallel to spending her time behind decks, she has a practice as contemporary arts educator, teaching as a (guest) tutor at Sandberg Instituut in Amsterdam, Design Academy Eindhoven and the Royal Academy of Art, The Hague and is an artistic research fellow for the Amsterdam based Visual Methodologies Collective.

Practical info

Venue: M HKA’s top floor (SUPERHOST SPACE)
Limited capacity
No registration needed
Free access