Join us on Thursday, November 19 th, for an evening bringing together the practices of composer and theater maker Soraya Lutangu Bonaventure and artist Ayomide Tejuoso for a Living Room Session unfolding through performance and conversation, guided by curator and moderator Shaquille Shaniqua Joy.
What does it mean to return, and what becomes possible when we return differently?
This Living Room Session, Returning Otherwise, approaches return as a collective inquiry: returning to the self, to the body, to ancestral knowledge, to imagination, and to ways of relating beyond dominant systems. Rather than moving backwards, return becomes an active, transformative process through which new ways of being, sensing, and gathering can emerge. How might we reconnect with knowledge that has been obscured, forgotten, or displaced? And how might these acts of reconnection challenge the structures through which we experience art and one another?
This evening features two performances: Mass by Ayomide Tejuoso "PLANTATION" and Act II: Vindication! This song never left your body by Soraya Lutangu Bonaventure. Read more about the programme below.
Living Room Session
Living Room Session is a curatorial framework and recurring live program set in a metaphorical living room where different artistic practices meet. Curated and hosted by Shaquille Shaniqua Joy, each edition brings together artists who explore a shared subject through their own medium.
Rather than seeking a definitive answer, each Living Room Session poses questions as an open ended inquiry, this time inviting us to reflect on the possibilities of return without having to arrive at a single conclusion.
Reserve your tickets via the link above. Please arrive before 19.25 as the programme starts at 19.30.
MASS is a performance from the body of work Praxis Modulus, by Ayomide Tejuoso "PLANTATION", with sound by Amy Gadiaga.
Praxis Modulus is a photography, film, installation and performance art body of work grounded in Ifa and Black dialects of grief and becoming. It is a creative manifesto and attestation, devoted to developing West African visual codifications through Yoruba ontologies and African American aesthetic philosophies. It engages Ifa in its position of the positive and negative, employing the color blue as a symbol of death and sacredness, and collapses into a collection of immersive and mythical stills: Black boys with crucifixes on their lips, bare Black women stained in blue, and PLANTATION as she convulses and exclaims in hidden alcoves.
MASS follows the mapping of Praxis Modulus into live form. On the steps of the Buro Stedelijk, PLANTATION leads a congregation of Black voices, styled in blue, gold and red and dusted in blue, through a ritual of appellation: guttural, poetic screams met by echo, chorus and the low pulse of the double bass. Emulating the Yoruba Celestial church, every utterance is repeated and carried by others, until grief becomes collective. Together they make a Black theater, a theater of the despondents, a MASS.
In Act II: Vindication! This song never left your body Soraya Lutangu Bonaventure explores the unstable relationship between experimental sound, the dramaturgical self, and the search for escape. Working with a sampler, effect pedals, and an electro-acoustic cello, Bonaventure builds sonic bridges that are both tangible and ethereal, attempting to turn the ephemeral into something timeless. Weaving voice messages and text from both collaborators and friends, as well as field recordings of impossible geographies, SLB constructs a shifting sonic landscape where intimate fragments travel across distances, contexts, and bodies. The cello becomes an orchestra of storms, moved by a transient insanity and marked by noise, while digital processes fold into the instrument until the distinction between the two becomes difficult to locate. These materials travel across distances and contexts, returning in altered forms as polyrhythms, ghostly vocal traces, and distorted electronic textures. Through their collisions and transformations, these sounds inform and deform our sense of knowing, unsettling the familiar and opening onto imaginative possibilities.
Curate the Moment
Two Squares, One City
This event marks the start of Curate the Moment: Two Squares, One City, the collaboration between OSCAM and Buro Stedelijk. Together, we'll exploring ways in which cultural organizations across Amsterdam can share space, resources and authorship.
From 2026 to 2028, OSCAM alumni are taking over Buro Stedelijk's programme, in a format that evolves each year. Shaquille opens 'Curate the Moment' with 'Living Room Session: Returning Otherwise'.
In 2027, an OSCAM alumnus will be given the space and curatorial lead at Buro Stedelijk for up to one month. In 2028, OSCAM and Buro Stedelijk will decide on the format together, based on what the first two years bring. The common thread is Two Squares, One City: the connection between Bijlmerplein in Amsterdam Zuidoost (OSCAM) and Museumplein (Buro Stedelijk).
Doors open: 19:00
Programme: 19:30 - 20:30
End: 21:00
Tickets are free, RSVP via the link above.
The event takes place at Buro Stedelijk. Entrance at Paulus Potterstraat 13, 1071 CX Amsterdam.
buro@burostedelijk.nl
