The Line up is complete!
Kaat van Stralen
We are extremely excited to welcome Kaat van Stralen to VFest! Kaat & band will shake things up with their genre-defying punk mixed with psychedelia and alternative spoken word. They bring a patriarchy smashing energy that is so needed in this world that is filled with misogyny. Let’s smash some systems together with Kaat, Melvin, Anton and Faust!
Chiara Pastoor
VFest presents: Chiara Pastoor! Chiara is a diversely skilled artist, pouring her heart and soul into everything she does. Currently she’s working on her first big solo show ‘Langzaam maar gestaag’ and we are honored that she will share a unique insight into this cinematic music performance.
In ‘Langzaam maar gestaag’ she combines film and photography with piano and poetry carried by a voice that will blow you away. She shares her personal stories on vulnerability and honesty and in doing so, she creates a safe haven for her audience. A place where shame, guilt, fear and pleasure can exist freely.
Arno Verbruggen
Get ready for Arno Verbruggen ….SODOM…. A queer reclamation of Biblical myth through dance, design, and desire. SODOM is a ritual of resistance, transformation, and emancipation. A delightful feast for the senses and surprisingly soothing in all its bombarding glory.
If you’ve seen Arno perform before with for instance Club Guy & Roni or at last year’s Murf/Murw fest, you know this will be a sight to behold. And if you haven’t… well, dear sinner, you better come witness the miracle in the flesh!
Parallel Problems X Anouschka Loose
Super special collab announcement…Parallel Problems X Anuschka Loose!
In this unique show, body performer Anuschka will dance together with ambient noise duo Parallel Problems: Etta Harbar and Veerle Pennock.
All three share a radically playful approach to their work. Research from the heart, exploring time, body and space: not 1 show is ever the same.
Expect unjudgmental dance and deconstructed rave music made from trash.
KUTlijf
VFest presents: KUTlijf! Another special collaboration: Leonie Schepers, Kutjeskracht and Fem Fataal teamed up to create an immersive, colorful and bold installation. ‘KUTlijf’ refers to slurs in the Dutch language like kutwijf and to the way a lot of us learn to look at ourselves and our body: as a burden, annoying and ‘serving’ a patriarchal, capitalist system. These artists reclaim these terms, they reclaim their own body and make their own rules about it!
KUTlijf invites you to make your own rules as well, to shamelessly enjoy and create. It’s an installation for you to watch, touch and interact with.
Visual communicator and artist Leonie Schepers creates playful activistic art with fabrics and handmade carpets. She showed her important work on menstruation and vulva freedom on the first edition of VFest 2022 and we are super happy to invite her back with a huge tactile installation we think you’ll love! Kutjeskracht is no stranger to us either: she’s been designing our festival shirts since day one. Joyful and shameless Kutjeskracht moves fearlessly through a patriarchal world, slapping it in the face with her fashion design and other bold creations. She’s working on several pieces for VFest including (of course!) a new festival shirt! Fem Fataal is a young artist who works with different mediums, researching shame and taboo. She’ll be creating a calm and soft interior for our quiet room, where you can chill and decompress.
Maja Irene Bolier
For this performance, Maja Irene Bolier teams up with a sound from Etta Harbar. Dressed in gender-bending fleshy costumes, Maja tells a story of “belonging” in the body.
Autonomy/Anatomy is a queer feminist reflection on bodily autonomy and the control of how you are perceived. It explores who holds power over the body and how it’s seen—sitting in the tension between self-determination and the external gaze.
”The work comes from my own experiences with dysphoria as a queer person with breasts, and from times in life when having a “female” body brought danger and discomfort. Through spoken word and costume, this performance reclaims narrative and visibility on my own terms.”
Literary Darkroom
VFest X Tilt **Literary Darkroom** We hope you like it hot because we have a very spicy addition to the program! Our friends from Tilt invited L.J. de Brouwer and Lena Kurzen to perform their queer erotics stories. They’ll perform this unique piece 3 times and there’s very limited space in the darkroom, so make sure you don’t miss out on the most intellectual darkroom experience (we think) you’ve ever had!
Lena Kurzen used to be a logician working in shipbuilding. After an acquired brain injury, they became a writer. Currently, Lena is working on a neurodivergent, queer bouldering novel and short stories exploring (gender-)queer, polyamorous, and autistic themes.
Join Lena for a spicy, literary, quirky, autistic, queer and possibly even funny darkroom experience!
L.J. de Brouwer grew up on the Belgian-Dutch border and lives in Berlin. L.J. is working on a novel and a collection of poems about Christian physicality and divides their time between the library—for research into the history of gender, sex, and Christianity—and the city, where L,J. throws their body around to personally experience that very history through their own body. At VFest, L.J. takes you along for this ride in a wild story about their experiences.
The Literary Darkroom is a concept by the amazing Rozemarijn Romeijn. She will also perform this year, so stay tuned for more!
Arkana Ritual Arts
“The Daughters of Lilith”
Channeling the Dark Mother; Lilith, Arkana Ritual Arts travel through the veil between dimensions. As The Daughters of Lilith they will create a shared experience of collective catharsis. During Vfest they will walk around to gather any negative thoughts, experiences or feelings you, the visitor, may carry with you.
The Daughters will hold space and invite you to write these thoughts down for them to collect your notes in a special receptacle.
At the end of the day The Daughters will perform a ritual where they move through the levels of release, with each stage a channeling of Lilith’s power of transformation.
They welcome you to join this liberating Ritual of cleansing. Through the collected energy the negative emotions on the way your feminism is viewed will be dissipated. To then step through the veil in revelry.
Arkana Ritual Arts is a coven of witches with each their own speciality and magic, coming together through the art of movement, dance and the love of the occult.
Arkana Ritual Arts are Angela Boeijen, Jolijn Calle, Vleer Echevarrria, Annelies Jansen and Dayenne Neroli.
Rozemarijn Romeijn & Tilburg Queer Koor
Come join Tilburg’s very own Queer Choir! Instantly made iconic at Lesbisch Lentefeest, the Tilburgs Queerkoor is a project born out of artistic research by Rozemarijn Romeijn: a research into the queer history of her grandmother. Uncovering a fascinating, activist life, close to her own, she got inspired to start an activist choir, like the one her grandmother used to sing in. Combining classic and modern songs the message of Tilburg Queer Choir is very clear: we’re not here to sing pretty, we’re here to make our voices heard!
You can join the choir at VFest! Send a DM to Tilburgqueerkoor along with your phone number. The choir practices earlier in the day.
Rozemarijn and Maartje will introduce the choir uncovering the beautiful history of Dutch lesbian, feminist songs followed by a grand opening of VFest by you: the choir!
Joining the choir will ensure you of a free ticket as well, so what are you waiting for?
