Rituals
For the third edition of Salon of Queer Indoctrinations, the theme was Rituals. The night was comprised of two performances and a short film screening. The works presented were:
“NEKROLOG” by Magadalena Petrova
NEKROLOG/НЕКРОЛОГ is a ritual performance that invites the audience into a deeply personal yet universally resonant exploration of grief and healing. This work centers on the multifaceted experience of grieving past selves, framing this process not as an endpoint but as an ongoing journey toward self-reclamation and understanding. NEKROLOG unfolds in a dimension where new intentions and dreams can take root.
This research expands on grief as a tool for healing, not just as an emotional response but as a way to acknowledge, honor, and release the many versions of oneself that have existed —or never had the chance to fully emerge. This grief becomes an act of recognition, a means of reckoning with loss, and a gateway to self-acceptance through the lens of being queer, neurodivergent, and post-Soviet within the Balkans and as diaspora within the Netherlands.
“Two Birds with One Stone” by GROSS&DOOMED
Two queer people encounter each other at different cruising locations across three different countries. In the light of the death and resurrection of Jesus, as celebrated in Orthodox Christianity, they draw parallels with their queer experience of self-reinvention, contemplate on the metaphysics of death, and succumb to a mutually aided experience of rebirth. The narrative unfolds in an often chaotic, intuitional style, reflective of the process of development and filming, woven together by a voiceover of philosophical reflections.
“Masked Rituals” by Yun Lee & Marcelo S. Daza
In “Masked Rituals” two fighters (Marcelo Daza and Yun Lee) engage in drills and rituals of
protection before facing off in a fight to exhaustion navigating the lines between attraction and repulsion, intimacy and violence. Throughout the fight, the commentary gradually shifts from narration to generated text on capitalist masculinity, eventually melting into a cinematic soundtrack.
A few words about the artists:
Magdalena Petrova (Bulgaria) is a multimedia-performance artist, and cultural worker based in Rotterdam. Petrova delves into ritual studies, ethnobotany, magical thinking, world-building, subculture, and post-Soviet youth studies by integrating elements of Bulgarian traditional witchcraft and folklore.
(IG: @magdalenahvpetrova)
GROSS&DOOMED is a collective created by multimedia artist Vladimir Vidanovski (MK) and theatre and performance artist Elio Troullakis (GR). Through their collaborative practice they explore the intersection of their artistic practices as an extension of their personal relationship, to understand and reflect on similarities and differences in experiences and upbring, growing up in closely related, but also frequently different and clashing cultures.
(IG: @gross.and.doomed, @radvlad , @st.elio.s)
Yun Lee is a US born, Hong Kong raised artist and curator mostly working with lecture-performances, sound, digital culture, and workshops. They are concerned with how our technologically filtered ways of seeing and hearing both limit and extend the ways we compose and define what it means to be human. Yun was not allowed to do any martial arts training as a child. As an adult they fell in love with boxing and MMA and have been training for several years.
(IG: @eel.feels)
Marcelo S. Daza is a multidisciplinary artist, born in Chile in 1991, currently based in Berlin. He works as a musician and sound/installation artist in Theatre/Performance collectives, dance companies and as a soloist. As an artistic director, Marcelo has created different platforms for emerging artists, presenting works at festivals, theatres, digital platforms and as well as street interventions. He has trained as a boxer for the past 3 years. His practice looks for shared sensorial experiences and to open space for artists who are not considered in Berlin’s networks.
(IG: @_marce____marron_)
