Electrify Everything —
2023

Electrify Everything
Experiments and Observations on Electricity

The live performance 'Electrify Everything' translates the seductive and captivating magic of demonstrations of the eighteenth-century Enlightenment into a critical exploration of the origins of the units and language used to measure electricity. The field of electricity has been developed, manipulated, and named for three centuries to control and apply it. 

'Electrify Everything' invites the audience to reflect on the structuring power of electricity and its relation to resources and exploitation. Pom Bouvier-b. and Marjolijn Dijkman use an experimental technique that brings the organicity back into a phenomenon that, by nature, through the displacement of elementary particles of matter, is dynamic and living. Together, they have developed experimental musical tools to play live with electric currents. They will create a sound composition using the electric charge of specific objects and devices as a medium, playing on the variations of magnetic fields. 

Jean Katambayi Mukendi wrote a text for the performance based on the language of electricity. The units of electricity create different chapters that explore the history and the current state of energy production in an associative and poetic interpretation of electric terminology. Trained as an electrician, his works are part of a search for solutions to social problems in Congolese society and the country's depletion of its enormous energy resources.

Electrify Everything, booklet with the text by Jean Katambayi at Framer Framed, Amsterdam. Photo: © Maarten Nauw / Framer Framed.

Performance: Marjolijn Dijkman & Pom Bouvier-b.
Spoken word & text: Jean Katambayi Mukendi
Produced in the framework of On-Trade-Off

This performance will be further developed in the upcoming year.