Hanna Zwart on NOODKEET
During Cultura Nova, our bloggers experience the festival first-hand. Not as critics, but as visitors trying to capture the impact of a performance or concert.
For this blog, Hanna attended NOODKEET by Vis à Vis and De Leedbewakers in the car park of the former DSM office. A performance about preparing for danger, whilst nobody knows exactly what that danger might be.
Read about her experience below.
Mini panic attack
There we are, sitting in the stands on the edge of a bottomless abyss of whatever may lie ahead. In other words: the car park of the former DSM office. I look at a yellow hut with all sorts of bits and bobs that can be folded in and out. In the background, the sound of the Heerlen urban motorway. A danger rumbling in the distance.
I try to enjoy the mini panic attack I feel welling up inside me. I know full well that location theatre always triggers an existential crisis in me… Silly me.
NOODKEET by Vis à Vis and De Leedbewakers is a sort of *Roos en haar Mannen* – sorry for yet another *Villa Achterwerk* reference – but on crack. Three friends preparing for doomsday, a ménage à trois that even that poor sod the Unabomber would have loved to be part of: Maurits van den Berg, Lisa Groothof and Len Lucieer.
They’re trying to prepare for the Apocalypse. Because, well, that’s what preppers do. It also reminds me a bit of the people on *Ik Vertrek*: being nice and self-sufficient, stocking up on supplies, maybe even planting a food forest somewhere. The reality: they’re frying eggs on an iron and singing the praises of the danger that lurks everywhere. Be prepared. For what exactly? Heaven only knows. Danger lurks everywhere – that much is certain.
So the question arises: are we prepared?
And then I think: we never are, baby.
About Hanna Zwart
Hanna Zwart, at your service. I’m 32 years old and every now and then I feel a bit like an alien. I reckon I’m the only Finnish Limburger in Heerlen. That’s why I’m really pleased that Muovipussi (FI) – straight from my mothership – is performing in the Spiegeltent. ‘What on earth is going on here?’ is my favourite feeling. One that I’ll no doubt feel again at this year’s Cultura Nova when I catch a contemporary sound art show or visit a site-specific performance, whether by young artists or not.