PRESENTATION: Make Some Noise: Desire. Stage. Change.

Van Abbemuseum’s annual “Positions” exhibition series, which is dedicated to creating space for experimentation, gives several artists or collectives the opportunity to present their artistic positions independently of each other. They do so in dialogue with the museum and its surroundings. “Positions” shows innovative, thought-provoking and urgent work by emerging artists and collectives from the Netherlands and abroad.

By Dimitris Lempesis
Photo Van Abbemuseum Archive

At the Van Abbemuseum in Eindhoven, noise is not just something you hear — it is something you feel, something that moves you. “Make Some Noise: Desire. Stage. Change.” marks the ninth and final chapter of “Positions”, a series that for over a decade has given artists room to experiment, rehearse, perform and rethink what exhibition-making can be. Rather than ending quietly, this last edition leans into intensity, gathering twelve international artists and collectives whose practices unfold through movement, sound, performance, sculpture, film and digital composition.

The exhibition is loosely bound by the idea of movement — of bodies, materials, emotions and technologies — but resists a single narrative. Instead, it unfolds as a constellation of solo presentations and live encounters. Visitors are not simply spectators; they are invited to shift position, to listen closely, and to stay with moments of friction, desire and transformation.

The exhibition opens with Dutch premieres and one-time-only performances, setting the tone for an exhibition that treats the museum as a stage rather than a static container. Felisha Carénage initiates the opening through a striking procession: a masked, divine stilt walker unfurls black wings across the museum space, accompanied by carnivalesque scenes where play and danger, mourning and desire coexist. The work expands the museum into something ceremonial and unstable — a place where vulnerability and spectacle meet.

Nearby, Göksu Kunak’s “Spillage” explores the experience of mental and physical collapse. Part installation, part performance, it renders exhaustion and breakdown not as failure, but as states that demand attention and care. These gestures echo throughout the exhibition, where encouragement and longing appear less as abstract themes than as lived conditions.

Many works explore moments of suspension — emotional, political, physical. Jack O’Brien’s sculpture of two grand pianos hangs in mid-air, locked together in a tense embrace. The image is both elegant and unsettling, suggesting the strain between being stuck and the urge to break free.

Calla Henkel and Max Pitegoff bring the enigmatic atmosphere of their Los Angeles-based community theatre, “New Theater Hollywood”, to Eindhoven with a new European premiere. Rooted in collective storytelling and shaped by the ecological and political pressures of their context, their work underscores theatre as a space of shared uncertainty and possibility.

Matthew Lutz-Kinoy’s paintings move between history and fantasy, drawing on dance and desire to imagine bodies that slip across time. Tori Wrånes, by contrast, offers a quiet, touching metaphor: the archetypal opposition of cat and dog becomes a study of closeness, miscommunication and care.

Sound plays a central role in the exhibition, culminating in a museum room transformed into a living sound chamber. Here, resonance takes centre stage. Visitors encounter Felisha Carénage’s lyrical canvases alongside sonic works by Finn Kaino Ma’atita and Jerrold Saija, who trace connections between water and wind, echo and movement. Sound becomes a carrier of memory — linking past and future, body and environment.

During the opening, the internationally renowned Kantarion Sound system activates this space, which will gradually evolve into a museum club over the course of the exhibition. DJs, musicians, students, families and visitors are invited to inhabit the room, turning it into a site of gathering, experimentation and shared experience.

Several works respond directly to contemporary anxieties. Miloš Trakilović presents an algorithmically generated ‘love song’ built from fragments of pop music released just before the war in Yugoslavia. The result is haunting — a tender archive of optimism set against the threat of collapse, resonating uncomfortably with the present.

Selma Selman transforms personal longing into a monumental sculpture: a vast satellite dish that gestures toward escape, false hope and the desire for another life. SERAFINE1369 creates a contemplative environment that asks visitors to reflect on what it means to inhabit a body in a world marked by tension and friction. Simon Fujiwara’s cartoon character Who the Bær punctures these heavy themes with sharp humour, posing deceptively simple questions about identity, capitalism and self-image.

The exhibition also folds in history through reflective blinds by General Idea from the Van Abbemuseum’s collection. Subtly installed, they blur the boundaries between inside and outside, stage and street — a quiet reminder that performance is never fully contained.

As the final installment of “Positions”, “Make Some Noise: Desire. Stage. Change.” does not attempt to sum things up neatly. Instead, it leaves space open. Movement becomes both method and message — a way to resist fixed positions and imagine different ways of being together.

Rather than offering answers, the exhibition asks visitors to stay with uncertainty, to tune into resonance, and to consider what might emerge when desire is staged and allowed to change form. In doing so, it offers not a conclusion, but a charged pause — one that lingers long after the noise fades.

Participating Artists: Jack O’Brien, Felisha Carénage, Simon Fujiwara, Kantarion Sound (Ivan Čuić), Göksu Kunak, Matthew Lutz- Kinoy, Finn Kaino Ma’atita & Jerrold Saija, New Theater Hollywood (Calla Henkel & Max Pitegoff), Selma Selman, SERAFINE1369, Miloš Trakilović, Tori Wrånes. With Adam Russell-Jones and General Idea. Curated by Zippora Elders.

Photo: Installation view, Jack O’Brien, Cascade, Capitain Petzel, Berlin, 2025. Ph: GRAYSC

Info: Curator: Zippora Elders,Van Abbemuseum, Stratumsedijk 2, Eindhoven, The Netherlands, Duration: 31/1-20/9/2026, Days & Hours: Tue-Sun 11:00-17:00, https://vanabbemuseum.nl/