Sonic Acts Biennial 2026
Symposium
Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam, 28 February 2026
In the performance lecture Politics and Desire, Violence and a Governance of Love, Salomé Voegelin asks whether love and political leadership can coexist, or whether political desire is always drawn toward violence and control. Taking the rise of contemporary authoritarian figures as a starting point, she questions why firm and unambiguous leadership feels so persuasive, and whether this desire inevitably pulls us towards ‘voluntary servitude’ and, ultimately, fascism. Drawing on the work of bell hooks, Hannah Arendt, David Graeber, and others, Voegelin considers how desire might be understood not as a force driven by lack and competition, but as a relational flow between bodies, communities, and the world.
Through readings and sound, Voegelin stages ideas and their counters, testing whether a sonic sensibility – attentive, relational, and fluid – might shift political desire away from domination and separation, towards forms of leadership grounded in relation. Against the desire for authoritarian certainty and political servitude, Voegelin proposes a sonorous politics of love: one grounded in reciprocity, incompleteness, and the possibility of imagining new forms of collective life.
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Sonic Acts Biennial 2026 was a citywide arts manifestation taking place from 5 February to 29 March across 23 locations in Amsterdam. Titled Melted for Love, the programme was visited by more than 21.000 people and featured cutting-edge performances, contemporary sound experiments, and multidisciplinary art by over 200 international artists.
The Symposium, which took place at Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam on 28 February and 1 March 2026, brought together performances and lectures by Yuk Hui, Flavia Dzodan, Steve Goodman (Kode9), Eleni Ikoniadou, Salomé Voegelin, Ayesha Hameed & Aimée Theriot, Margarida Mendes, Yazan Khalili, pantea, Lawrence Abu Hamdan, Busher Kanj, Amr Mdah & Fabio Cervi, and ILYICH.
→ Continue reading at 2026.sonicacts.com
CREDITS
Production: Sonic Acts
Camera, editing, sound: Engage! TV
Intro sound: KMRU & Aho Ssan
Design: Knoth & Renner with Anja Kaiser
This video is realised as part of New Perspectives for Action, a project by Re-Imagine Europe, co-funded by the European Union.
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