A light is burning in the large window of a ground floor house, a man lays on his couch, his hand in his jogging pants, a cup of steaming tea in his other, and a blanket around his shoulders.
He is watching a reality TV show, surrounded by an IKEA Billy bookcase and his posters across the walls, hiding behind a dying Monstera plant, counting on its final leaves.
The man turns his head and notices you, yes, you, who told you it was okay to ogle people like that?
Through various durational performances separated from the public by mere glass, Trespassing presents: –The Living Room.
A series of performative interventions that navigates between the thresholds of the private and public, exhibitionism and voyeurism, and of social cohesion and estrangement.
The Living Room (noun) once known as the Drawing Room or Front Room, functions as a delicate bridge between the private and public sphere. For centuries it has served as a space fit for the entertainment of visitors. Yet as time passed, people began to use the living room more and more as an opportunity to withdraw from the outside world. Often, the living room is situated at the front of the house, furnished by a window that shields it from the outside world, on the condition that one draws the curtains..
Over the course of 2025 Trespassing shall explore the hypothesis of an eye as a weapon around the curious case of curtainless windows at ground floors, a remarkable phenomenon affiliated to the Dutch. The shameless exposure of living rooms on the ground floor often feels strange to tourists visiting the city: inhabitants leaving their curtains open or, often, not even owning a pair of curtains to open up, using their living rooms as a “front-stage’’ in which they (un)consciously present themselves to the external world.
Departing from this phenomenon several artists from different cultures and practices will be given a window as a stage in-and around the busy streets of the Red Light District, the place where the voyeuristic beast appears to be unleashed. Here they ponder whether glass borders can shatter by the touch of a peering eye.
By way of aesthetic disruption onlookers are invited to linger a little longer whilst they are encouraged to contemplate upon the questions posed behind our windows.
Upcoming Interventions
In The Face of 2026
Thursday night, January 29th, 22:00–23:00
Friday night, 30th of January, 00:00–01:00
Saturday night, 31 of January, 03:00–04:00
Zeedijk 128
Sander Breure & Witte van Hulzen
In The Face of 2026 will be performed by Klara Alexova
A new performance by Sander Breure and Witte van Hulzen
Setting: night.
A woman is still awake.
She is alone.
Her face is lit by her phone.
What she is looking at remains unknown:
war footage, her own childhood photos, or advertisements.
She might be reading a novel.
Maybe she is recording a video of herself for social media.
We can only guess by watching her face,
and by what we think we see in it:
doubt? anger? jealousy? desire?
How many facial expressions are there?
In the Face of 2026 is a choreography of facial expressions.
It explores what a face can express,
by attempting to strip the face of its meaning.
In this performance, Breure and Van Hulzen touch on contemporary themes of loneliness, estrangement, and addiction, using the everyday image of a figure in front of a screen, watching herself: a retelling of the myth of Narcissus, in the face of 2026.
Discernible throughout the multi-disciplinary work of Sander Breure and Witte van Hulzen is their fascination for the human condition: the behavior of people, the encoded structures in that behavior, the influence of time and place on the relationships between people. This interest becomes visible not only in their performances, but also in their video work, photography, installations and drawings.
Sander Breure (1985, Leiderdorp, NL) & Witte van Hulzen (1984, Bolsward, NL) both live and work in Amsterdam. Their multidisciplinary practice is based on research on body language and its interpretation. Their work has been shown in solo and group presentations in the Netherlands and abroad, including exhibitions and performances at Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam, ISSUE Project Room New York, MACBA Barcelona and CCA Zamek Ujazdowksi in Warsaw.