TABOO - TRANSGRESSION - TRANSCENDENCE

Peering through a peephole in the privacy netting of a construction site in South Rotterdam, I discovered the city was extending part of the shoreline of Rhine using land reclamation technology. This drew me to research the history of water maintenance while ruminating on the metaphorical possibilities of what it means to control and fill in the sea. The Inconsumable Power of Showing Hole is a performance lecture that meditates on the limitations of language and its potentials and failings to reach beyond our perceptual awareness. In this performance, I will oscillate between information overload and silence. I will read a lecture from oversized sheets of paper as I walk in circles. Inspired by Walter Benjamin's essay on Kafka, which understands the parable as an unfolding, as I finish each page, I will sit in silence while folding the paper into sculptural objects. This will be accompanied by a slideshow of my own digital animations and videos, providing visual aid and atmospheric stimulation. In the lecture, I will touch upon a constellation of fragmented inquiries including: the history of water maintenance infrastructures in the Netherlands and its correlation to the rise of Calvinism and the birth of Capitalism, the potential of what I am generalizing as "negative theologies" and apophasis, interpreted from the works of Bataille, Benjamin, Clarice Lispector, Fred Moten, Jack Halberstam, and Krishnamurti, as a kind of anti-fascist and anti-dogmatic thinking system, the movements of thought required to enter and dwell in what I call "hole-space", and the practice of reading metaphorically into built environments, infrastructure, and bureaucracies. In this presentation, I advocate for the unknown by purposely inflicting confusion and revealing my own uncertainty. In doing so, I hope to reveal the radical potential of "showing hole" or rather, of leaving some things unfilled.