FOPSA 2025 SCHEDULE
Festival Program
SPECIAL PROJECT:
anNEXUS
Sept 28 - Oct 11
anNEXUS is a special project about the multitude of languages in the Eindhoven metropole region initiated by FOPSA and created for the 2025 edition of the festival. For this project poet & visual artist sven staelens has created an artwork out of transparent tiles. Each tile has the same shape, yet the pattern they create never repeats. Each tile carries a sentence, in their original language and own handwriting, from an international resident of the Eindhoven metropole region, creating a constellation of languages and lives. Transparent and shifting with perspective, the structure expands endlessly, connecting stories without borders. anNEXUS becomes a living map of community, a geometry of language, and a network of voices that multiply across space.
The artwork serves as stage background for several of the events during FOPSA’25.
Sept 28 - Oct 9
(except Oct 5)
11:00 - 18:00
EXHIBITIONS
Paviljoen Ongehoorde Muziek
Vestdijk 25, Eindhoven
Delia Vico - Mediterranea
Delia Vico is a tattoo artist from Italy, focusing on the study of letters and lettering. In recent years, she has expanded her work to include large-scale murals and, in parallel, smaller-scale pieces such as ceramics.
The exhibition shows a variety of her works, including paintings, photos, ceramics. In her recent works, Delia draws inspiration from her childhood experiences regarding the artefacts her grandfather brought home from the Middle East. She was fascinated by those objects from far away and how they connected to a different culture. Delia creates a bridge of emotions, attempting to revive in those who see her works the same curiosity and wonder that she felt as a child.
She is working on a visual language rooted in the Mediterranean—a language that reflects all the cultures bordering this sea. An expression of inclusivity, respect for different cultures, and it can always evoke curiosity, admiration, and that sense of mystery toward cultures we have yet to fully discover.
Tonnus Oosterhoff - Me No More
Tonnus Oosterhoff is one of the most prominent Dutch poets of our time. He basically received all the awards a poet can get in The Netherlands. But more importantly, he never stops innovating. Combining style registers, old and new, sound and visual, diverse resources & references, well, everything really.
Tonnus experimented with the tension between handwriting, doodles, drawings, the transition to printed poems, and the limits of readability. From these experiments, the exhibition shows his experimental work ‘Handschreeuwkoor’; He was also a pioneer in digital poetry, resulting in his ‘moving poems’, of which the exhibition shows a few.
Sunday, Sept 28
13:-00 - 16:30
OPENING
Paviljoen Ongehoorde Muziek
Vestdijk 25, Eindhoven
sven staelens - anNEXUS
Presentation of this special project in collaboration with internationals from the Eindhoven metropole region.
See more information about the project above.
Noam Youngrak Son - The Blooms
At a time when we are structurally pushed toward immediacy—reacting instantly while political mediation grows scarce—science fiction offers another rhythm: a space for study and planning. Here, study means gathering in thought and experiment with one another, and planning means rehearsing possibilities that cannot yet be enacted but can be imagined together.
In this collective writing session, short speculative fragments—scenes, images, concepts—are woven into a rhizomatic narrative. Instead of converging on a single storyline, our text branches out, entangles, and resonates across contributions, enacting study and planning as forms of collective imagination. Together we bloom into possibilities that cannot yet be lived but can be imagined.
Bart van Dongen - A Choir of Languages
From a multitude of language-sounds and voices Bart composes a vibrant choir work. On the spot. With whomever happens to be there and has a voice to contribute. Don’t worry, you are in experienced hands with Bart. And, most importantly, nothing can go wrong. Not really. That’s a reassuring thought, isn’t it?
VARIOUS ACTS
Friday, Oct 3
20:00 - 22:30
Arthouse United Cowboys
Kleine Berg 62, Eindhoven
credits: Victoriano Moreno
Marthe Koning - What Pessoa Taught Me
Marthe steps into the fractures of Portuguese poet Fernando Pessoa’s poetry unraveling his many selves in a physical struggle against the illusion of wholeness and masterfully deconstructs his poems. Each persona represents a different poetic escape strategy. As a spectator, you become completely immersed in the physical struggle with the illusion that humans consist of only one thing. From a repetitive, controlled riddle to a mesmerizing and liberating cry that gets deep under your skin.
Natalia Papaeva - Hello, my dear students, today, I am your teacher.
In this performance artist and language activist Natalia invites audiences to engage with the politics, poetics, and physicality of language. She invites us to question what knowledge do we pass on, and what do we consider important to share with the next generation, with newcomers. How much time are we willing to give to endangered languages? Expect high energy, movement, group work, and mental effort. “Please do not be late,” the teacher insists. “I absolutely hate when my students come late.”
credits: Natascha Libbert
Fatemeh Asiri & Changli Cui Luo - Traces That Speak
In this interactive session, Changli and Fatemeh use the body as an image and memory as a language to connect with their “migrant bodies” and create a poem without words. The performance explores alternative forms of expression that challenge the confines of poetry written in words. Together, we invite each other to use our female bodies, to improvise from our memories, to move and connect in order to compose a poem traced on each other's scars.
Saturday, Oct 4
20:00 - 22:30
SPECIAL PROJECT: ONEWORD SOLOS
Arthouse United Cowboys
Kleine Berg 62, Eindhoven
Poet: Dean Bowen
photo credits: Merlijn Doomernik
Oneword solos
Oneword solos is a special project commissioned for FOPSA’25 with six dancers and one poet. Each dancer chooses a word that binds their personal life to the world and transforms it into a solo dance performance. The poet connects these six words into a single poem. What emerges is an evening of fragments and connections, six movement performances, one voice, and a shared language of gesture and verse.à
Dancers and their chosen words:
Revé Terborg - “Spiral”
Rachele Chinellato - “One[ness]”
photo credits: @edward.amsterdam
Anuschka Loose - “Zero”
Sameepta Lamba - “UBUNTU”
Rohiet Tjon Poen Gie - “Ancestry”
Fleur De Decker - “Refraction”
Arthouse United Cowboys
Kleine Berg 62, Eindhoven
Sunday, Oct 5
14:00 - 16:30
VARIOUS ACTS
Merijn Bisschops / Zwerm & Karen Willems / Tegest Pecht-Guido - The Five
Composer and filmmaker Merijn Bisschops transforms A.H.J. Dautzenberg’s novel De Vijf into an audiovisual concert experience with dance film. Brutal guitar riffs meet fragile textures, metal collides with microtonal detail, and under the raw surface, an emotional depth unfolds. On screen, bodies move through a tense exploration of gaze, power, and desire, male and female, bound and unbound. Together, music and movement become a sharp response to the novel’s provocation: what can and cannot be said, shown, or imagined today?
Guitar Quartet Zwerm together with drummer Karen Willems perform Merijn’s composition live while Merijn’s dance film is simultaneously shown. The choreography for the film is by Tegest Pecht-Guido in collaboration with the dancers.
Karolien Wauters - Sweet and Source
In this performance Karolien explores the limits of communication, which will lead into an overload of information where the source is nowhere to be found. Sign language is a language based on forms of the hands and expressions of the face. Although we all use different signs in different moments, there is somehow a common agreement on hand gestures or… maybe not?
In a world rushing for faster, better communication, this work asks: what is the cost, and what remains when the source disappears?
Berendine Venemans - Membrane
In this art performance Berendine zooms in on the humanity and vulnerability of connection. At a time when we seemingly have a lot of control over presenting ourselves and connecting with others and the world around us, she questions how much control we really possess. Do we even have control over what the other person perceives or how she responds to us? A captivating and somewhat alienating performance in which Berendine investigates the dynamics that arise in the present moment between myself and the outside world when making contact through the membrane, the glass sheet. Showing, not showing. Seeing, not seeing.
Paviljoen Ongehoorde Muziek
Vestdijk 25, Eindhoven
Saturday, Oct 11
14:00 - 16:30
CLOSING
Delia Vico - “Mediterranea” - connection through gesture-
Delia traces letters across history and skin, blending Gothic forms with the fluidity of movement. Her work bridges personal memory and cultural heritage, drawing on childhood treasures and Mediterranean influences to create a visual language of inclusivity and wonder. These shapes carry stories of travel, curiosity, connections between worlds, and invite us to read with the eyes, the body, and the heart.
This dynamic performance offers a different perspective of her work, thus complementing the works shown in the exhibition.
Sarah Prescimone
photo credits: Barend Verijzer
Reactions to the exhibitions by Delia and Tonnus
During FOPSA’25 POM will host exhibitions showing works of Delia Vico and Tonnus Oosterhoff. See page 3 for more information. While everyone is welcome to visit the exhibitions, there will be two very special visitors. We have asked two performing artists to create reactions to the exhibitions in their own art disciplines. Sarah Prescimone (choreographer & performer) and Abel Ton (composer & musician) gather impressions at the exhibitions during the festival. At this last day of FOPSA they present their responses to the artworks.
Abel Ton