A Matter of Touch

And although we all remain our individual selves, for a moment we also become a collective of bodies – with many hearts beating together in a human polyphony. It is like being here and not here at the same time. In a given space, but also somewhere else. Being transferred into another imaginary reality that is evoked by the performance we are witnessing.

Therefore, being a guest of a performance, a concert or a ceremony becomes a transpersonal experience: transcending me as a person, reaching out further than I can assume.

Transpersonal philosophy and psychology offer a reflection of life in a holistic way. Because human experience transcends the sense ego or self.

Artists who co-create this edition of Holland Festival invite us to live the multiplicity of life and go beyond the contour of what we already know and accept: to imagine another world. They encourage us to practice new ways of looking and being engaged in order to discover how to live together anew, to form communities on new terms – of solidarity and respect towards each other.

The transpersonal dimension of art means that we are not alone. Experiencing art creates a realm of empathy and connection with others: real and fictional characters, as well as those who belong to both modes of being, who are in-between. Just like our ancestors – present and absent, important but elusive. After all, our own bodies resemble a living archive of affects, images, a medium that bridges the gap between past and future.

The multiplicity of bodies present in the program of Holland Festival manifest themselves in distinctive forms and intensities:

bodies getting free from power relations designed by traditional patriarchal systems and looking for a female future (Lemniskata; Future Feminism);

bodies honouring life beyond the norms and standards imposed by society (ÔSS);

bodies caught between digital and tangible realities searching for exploring their affects (Dragons; The worm & Epitaph);

bodies desiring and wanting, caught in the scores of the neoliberal economy (Euphoria);

bodies tormented by the history and family traumas, trying to regain their own integrity (Vake Poes; of hoe God verdween);

bodies of the system – collective, seemingly anonymous; bodies of ‘not us’, yet performed by many of us (BROS);

bodies performing the choreo-bio-graphy of another maker (Jérôme Bel);

bodies determined by the existential loop: from the moment of birth to the moment of death (Angela (a strange loop));

bodies protesting against the capitalistic system of extraction and violence (Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead);

bodies demanding the right to be themselves, practicing freedom despite normativity (Prophétique on est dejà né.es; The Bacchae; She Who Saw Beautiful Things);

bodies acting against extraction, reconnecting with nature and ancestors (HOW TO LIVE (After You Die); Coral: Rekindling Venus);

bodies that are erased or forgotten, claiming their place in our historical consciousness (EXÓTICA);

bodies opposing capitalistic vision of collective life and searching for an alternative through raving (Respublika);

bodies searching for emancipation through fluidity and pleasure activism (skinship);

bodies singing out loud, letting the inner voice emerge (Indra’s Net, Dark Skies);

bodies connecting through the ritual of healing (The Disintegration Loops (for Euterpestraat); To Feel a Thing; EXÓTICA);

bodies that dissolve in a soundscape and sound that gets its corporeality (Ribingurumu no Meramorufuoshiu);
and others.

These bodies enable us to tune into new temporalities, material sensation, to feel our own bodies differently.

The call for a new spirituality and depth lies at the heart of The Elders – a special project initiated by ANOHNI, associate artist and spiritus movens of this edition of the Holland Festival. On her initiative Holland Festival has invited several people of great importance for Dutch society to contribute with individual spoken, written or performative gestures just before the beginning of some performances in the program.

ANOHNI identifies this very moment (most often devoured by the audience's pragmatical approach as a space of a critical potential. According her, we should pause and retune into another frequency, to look at artistic work beyond the logic of the buy-sell transaction. By sharing their wisdom, life experience, and reflective onlook of the world, the Elders shall call for an expansive perception of the arts.

The Elders’ comments therefore become preludes to the precious time of experiencing art together, to respect its uniqueness. They help us to remember that art is not a product, and artistic practice is not a profession like others. It is a transpersonal act in which we are together – as a temporary community of artists, spectators, residents, the theatre's technical team, festival staff. And we make a collective effort to transcend ourselves. To recognize that there is something bigger in / than our own lives, our individual identities, our views, our personal frames of references.

We are often told how to look, or what certain things 'mean'. Perceiving art too is kidnapped in this logic – of signifying, serving, providing certain emotions or answers. To represent a given vision of the world. Allowing the multiplicity of bodies – in us and around us – to be present and active, dismantles this monolith. The movement of escaping fixed categories and labels – opens a realm of freedom, healing and reconciliation.

Being more than oneself – a gesture of opening up to what is other (also other in us) – requires loosening the hard armor of dualist view on which especially Judeo-Christian European culture is deeply founded:

“The entire universe cut in half and solely in half. Everything is heads or tails in this system of knowledge. We are human or animal. Man or woman. Living or dead. We are the colonizer or the colonized. Living organism or machine. We have been divided by the norm. Cut in half and forced to remain on one side or the other of the rift”.

Paul B. Preciado, one of the most inspiring thinker, activist and writers of our time, calls for a new subjectivity. Decentralised, open and interconnected, to acknowledge “the multiplicity of all that we could have been". For allowing ourselves living life beyond the dualistic system of power that governs people’s identities, and bodies; a subject free to self-defining.

The need to look at the world beyond the optics of separating dualism is also crucial for ANOHNI and became a red thread in her thinking about the program:

All of nature exists outside of the binary. Binary needs to be transcendent. There is much more darkness than light. I’m talking about physical light and darkness in the universe. I was raised to believe there are equal amounts of darkness and light, but there are eternities of darkness, and tiny glimmers of light.

What if that is really ok?

Between the artificially isolated poles of black and white, in a grey scale – or rather an infinite palette of colors and shades – life plays itself out. To recognize this fact brings incredible relief, liberates us from the polarization, segregation, categories and judgements. “We need to work collectively and pool our empathy, find ways forward” claims ANOHNI.

I envision Holland Festival as a collective experience – a journey in which we will meet old and new friends, we will see familiar landscapes but also let ourselves get surprised by new ones and challenged by the unknown adventures. While sharing this journey with artists, we can all make an effort to be together and understand each other better. To live these precious moments when we can touch something ungraspable and be touched by it – to acknowledge someone’s narrative and respond to it in the privacy of our hearts. With awe, reflection, deep joy or tears. To be more than what we know.

Kasia Tórz, Amsterdam, May 2023