Never ending Carnival

Hey there,

After a winter break practice-hibernation period, I am back with some invitations to play, upcoming events, and some notes on Carnival and collective joy that seem relevant to my practice and people surrounding it. I’m also sharing some places I will be appearing soon, hoping to connect with people around!

Last year I started my residency at the EKWC, where I got the incredible opportunity and support from their fantastic advisors to create a work that I now call Songs for the Renewal. The work shows ritualistic objects: whistles, huacos, and fountains, each displaying a urinating female human-like figure. The fountains are interactive and sound-triggered, each attuned and activated by a different whistle pitch.

The instruments belong to an imagined society from the future that worships the cycles of breath and urination as sacred cycles that continuously connect our inside with the outside world, making our bodies part of a larger organism. The ritual surrounding these objects is known to have been performed for renewal. However, the exact nature of the ritual remains unclear, inviting the audience to speculate and participate by playing the instruments.

I am excited to show a full version of the installation at the Prospects exhibition (27–29 March 2026), organized by the Mondriaan Fonds at Art Rotterdam.

For the presentation of the work I have been collaborating with Jack Bardwell, whose scenographic skillset has helped me tell the story of the work. Working with a spatial designer on the scenography has been an invaluable experience, as often it feels like the worlds I am building are mainly grounded in the imaginary. Now they are manifesting in space.

During the exhibition I will conduct experiments to come closer to the nature of the ritual. This participatory performance will happen twice a day, accompanied by performance artists Anna Bierler and Leon Lapa Pereira.. Keep an eye out for the performance schedule and join the whistle choir!

Notes on Carnival and Collective Joy 

A year ago I visited the Carnival de Oruro, something I had been dreaming of for years, as it is said to be one of the most beautiful carnivals in the world. In this carnival, groups from all over Bolivia come together to perform Indigenous dances and music, while also displaying traditional arts in the form of masks and textile works such as weavings and embroideries.

I couldn’t stop crying for at least an hour while watching that spectacle. Since then I have been obsessed with Carnival, and especially the experience of witnessing this particular one. It made me reflect on the role of art within it and, more broadly, the role of art and the function of the artist in society at large.

I did not grow up in a place where Carnival is celebrated. Being descended from two Carnival-obsessed cultures, Brazil and Bolivia, the lack of Carnival in my life has always felt like something problematic that I had to counter through organizing theme parties. But it seems this isn’t a personal problem: it is a broader societal and while nothing new, I still think it’s alarming.

In the book Dancing in the Streets: A History of Collective Joy, author Barbara Ehrenreich addresses the inherent human desire for collective joy. She traces the origins of communal celebration in culture and its function in human evolution. Dancing together was, much like developing language, essential for enabling human communities to function beyond individual action. “Dance cannot work to bind people unless (1) it is intrinsically pleasurable, and (2) it provides a kind of pleasure not achievable by smaller groups.” ¹

Ehrenreich identifies the key elements of these communal festivities as feasting, drinking, song and music, dancing, costuming, and masking. What was once an essential part of human culture is now, at least in modern societies in the Global North, largely reduced to a single yearly activity: Carnival.

In her book, Ehrenreich tells the story of the disappearance of communal celebrations and collective ecstasy, often suppressed by ruling classes throughout history: “The essence of the Western mind, and particularly the Western male upper-class mind, was its ability to resist the contagious rhythm of the drums, to wall itself up in a fortress of ego and rationality against the seductive wildness of the world.”² 
She writes that there used to be many carnivals throughout the year, but these occasions sparked and unleashed forces in people that became threatening to ruling elites. Peasant uprisings and slave revolts were common side effects of Carnivals that led to Carnival being increasingly restricted and replaced by spectacles such as military parades, in which the public merely watches in awe rather than participating. The disappearance of Carnivals are accompanying phenomena of big societal changes through the spread of monotheistic religions, the imperialism that originated in Europe, the militarisation of armed forces, industrialisation, and the advance of capitalism. While, the author explains, there have been ressurecctions of the phenomena of carnivalesque collective ecstasies in movements such as the rock’n roll hype, football and rave culture, all these movements have been successfully commodified at large.

In recent years my love for theme parties and my artistic practice of LARP making have gradually come closer together in events like the Full Moon Blood Ball or an office Christmas party for freelancers who don’t have a company that organizes one for them.

While these events had a manageable number of guests, many of whom were also friends, they were public events. Like other parties, they provided relief from everyday life, but in addition to music, dance, and drinking, they also offered the opportunity to take a break from being yourself by putting on a costume and becoming someone or something else for a night, as well as games that could be played together. It is said that in the Roman Empire people were given panem et circenses (bread and games) to satisfy and distract them, so that they would not voice discontent or criticism of the ruling class. I wonder whether today panem et circenses might have exactly the opposite effect: luring people out of their isolated “personal” spaces and into collective pleasures that have the potential to transform into collective power..

In both cases, the feedback from guests was that they had talked and connected with strangers during the festivity more than they normally would at a public party.

My grandmother says the end of Carnival is the saddest time of the year. So my conclusion here is we shouldn’t wait for Carnival, neither travel far to participate, we should have more of it, here and now. More Carnivals to combat the growing disconnection to each other, to spark collective joy, to dance away the hardships and fuel resistance and love for each other through ecstatic collectivity. I know that theme parties will not save the world, but they might save your sanity. So the party committee and I are on the lookout for the next carnivalesque happening. If you have an idea, place, or urgency, let us know! And if you don’t wanna miss out on the next Vampire ball subscribe to the .zip newsletter if you haven’t yet. Rumour has it that there will be a tavern night in Rotterdam where my wine- and beer-brewing friends Jack Bardwell and Felix Bell and I will be serving drinks. Reach out for more information!

Making (Carnivalesque) LARPs with the School of Prepping Otherwise

The Garage School is a collective that organizes schools around different themes, depending on the needs and resources of participants. Since last fall they have been running the School of Prepping Otherwise for the collective learning in practice (CLiP) at Kunstinstituut Melly. In this school they question, challenge, and expand the measurements and advice on catastrophe-prepping provided by national and European governments, which are often tailored around able-bodied citizens who can afford it.

I had the pleasure of contributing to the School of Prepping Otherwise as a tutor for LARP. Over the last months I introduced participants to LARP as a tool; we played together and designed our own LARP inspired by their learnings and experiences during the school.

The design process took place during a jam in which we first gathered common interests and then sketched out LARPs in smaller groups. Interestingly, three out of four groups included a carnival as part of their LARP. While Carnival was present partly because it coincided with the Christian Carnival season, the motivation for including it seemed more connected to the desire to use the force of collective joy to conspire against the immense and ungraspable power structures suppressing us.

For everyone curious to learn more about the School of Prepping Otherwise: they will present their final event, The end is both near and already here; prepping for collective beginnings on March 28 at Kunstinstituut Melly.

Places I’ll appear and hope to connect & play:

Athens… (End of May till end of June)…With how many strangers could you speak between Hamburg and Athens, and how can radio-making and storytelling counter loneliness and isolation? With these questions as a starting point, Daniel Siegersma and I were selected for the Tiny Residency Deep Connection programme at Communitás Athens. While our artistic practices differ aesthetically, we share a passion for participatory storytelling that we have been wanting to explore together for some time. The goal of this residency is to travel by slow means (train, bus, ship) and explore how artistic practices can unfold under these conditions. On our way we will pass through multiple countries and cities such as Prague, Vienna, Budapest, Timișoara, Rome and Athens. We would love to meet cultural practitioners and spaces along the way with overlapping interests in our methods or themes. If you are on our route—or know someone we should meet, please let us know!

Knutpunkt in Gothenburg (April 16-19)…A big carnivalesque festivity I look forward to every year is the Knutpunkt, this year happening in Gothenburg, Sweden. I will be testing and launching a new LARP I have been working on: The Ballad of the Broken Signal. This LARP is based on collective singing, the writing and singing of heroic tales, and LARPing out the gaps in historic storytelling. Participants will create the ballad of a group of adventurers and sing it together, while also becoming the very characters celebrated in the song. While the technology within the game is reset to a level comparable to the Middle Ages, the scenario takes place in a future after climate collapse, where a group of adventurers search for a signal using an antenna, hoping to learn more about their past, and perhaps their future.

Venice (May 6-10)…With the kind support of the Mondriaan Fonds I will be visiting the opening of the 61st Venice Biennale between May 6–10. If you are there as well let’s meet?

And that’s it for now. As always, I am happy for this newsletter not to be one-sided only, love to hear comments, thoughts, desires and ideas. If there is more playable stuff (and hopefully more Carnivals) coming soon you’ll hear back from me. 

1  Barbara Ehrenreich, Dancing in the Streets: A History of Collective Joy (London: Granta Books, 2007), p. 9.

2  Barbara Ehrenreich, Dancing in the Streets: A History of Collective Joy (London: Granta Books, 2007), p. 17.