The Pergolesi Ensemble, known for impressive performances of the Stabat Mater, among other works, is taking a completely new path. With ‘The Eternal Now’, they bring a powerful, topical, and multidisciplinary performance about transition—new music, new repertoire, new energy.
Climate, energy, identity, gender – the world is in motion. THE ETERNAL NOW delves into this movement and explores the tipping point at which change becomes tangible. Not as something to fear, but as something that can liberate us. What happens when you fully immerse yourself in the ‘eternal now’ – that extended moment when time seems to stand still?
Composers Tilen Lebar and Dirk Hooglandt wrote new music especially for this performance, in which emotions such as fear, hope, anger and desire are central. Music that makes the collective and personal experience of change audible and tangible.
The performance takes place at special locations: empty factory halls, demolition sites, and industrial spaces in transformation. Here, where the past is palpable and the future has yet to take shape, the theme of transition comes to life. The raw acoustics and visual power of these places are part of the experience.
Electronic sounds mingle with vocals and saxophones, as the performers move through the space, between sculptures of wood and steel. These works of art – by Daniel Hooglandt (Superhoog) and Jos Bregman (Nature Access) – transform along the space and become a living work of art.
Directed by Henk Zwart (SuverNuver), this performance becomes more than a concert: it is a ritual, a trance, a journey through time in the moment.
Sofia Ferri – soprano
Marianne Selleger – alto
Tilen Lebar – soprano saxophone
Chi-Chun Chen – soprano and alto saxophone
Dirk Hooglandt – tenor saxophone
Bernardo Pereira – baritone saxophone
Art and space
Daniel Hooglandt (Superhoog) – sculptures in steel, each object a character
Jos Bregman (Nature Access) – wooden sculptures and tactile objects
May 30, 2025 (Try-out) – City Farm, Goethelaan 163, Almere
May 31, 2025 (Premiere) – Bajeskwartier, Bijlmerbajes, Amsterdam
June 5, 2025 – Undercurrent, Tt Vasumweg 171, Amsterdam
June 7, 2025 – Gebr. Min, Jan Apeldoornweg, Bergen (NH)
June 13, 2025 – Lock Factory, Tussendiepen 6, Drachten
June 14, 2025 – IJsselcentrale, IJsselcentraleweg 6, Zwolle
June 21, 2025 – Central Market Hall, Jan van Galenstraat 4, Amsterdam
Start: 20:00 – Doors open: 19:30
Tickets & info: eternal-now.nl
In the year 2018 I became co-curator and part of a newly created cycle of interdisciplinary arts named »Sluhodvod«. The cycle and the topics that we were dealing with, were related to the topic of »Memory & Liminality«. The name »Sluhodvod« refers to the auditory canal of the human body that defines the narrow passageway from the outer ear to the eardrum. In its concept »Sluhodvod« connected sound art that we hear with the context of visual arts. We decided to create a cycle of four events. Each event had a different contextual background and contributed to the local art scene in Ljubljana (Slovenia). With the collective we organised four events during the year 2019. Each event dealt with a different topic. The topics were categorised, named and titled alongside the events as follows: »Resonance«, »Parts«, »Invasion« and »Indicators«. As the group began to collaborate it connected different fields and interests. The variety of the interests included musical and visual technology, composition, musicology, philosophy, sociology and phenomenology of the sound.
The first of the events, titled »Resonance«, in its essence was presented as an interactive sound installation. Each participant of the installation had the possibility to contribute to the process of the creation of the final result of the event. The participants were given the possibility to move among the rooms, halls and corridors, to play with the sound objects and instruments, to sit and listen or to simply observe at any time they wanted.
Thus, »Resonance« took an action, the action that set up a connection between a concert hall, a listening room and a waiting-room. Each time the participants decided to move from one space to another they enabled a reflection on the sounds that they created themselves. As they entered the listening room their reflection on the creation itself transformed and became an electronically manipulated sound.
Each movement of the participants, as they changed their location from one space to another set to the activity itself a different experience of thoughts that were caused by the act itself. This movement enabled a reflection on sound that was created by them but this time as a memory of the process itself.
With each movement they created a series of fluctuations or if we define it with the resonance alone as: »The prolongation of sound by reflection; reverberation«
My observations of the event and the involvement I had with it, inspired me and caused a particular interest that I had in the following year. Later on, in 2020 I composed »Staticotion« for accordion and electronics that dealt with the reflection of reverberation, short-term memory, explicit memory, episodic memory and its realisation through an abstract medium as sound and in 2021 I started with compositional processes and composing the first work from the cycle of works titled Līmen.
As you see, the Līmen deals in a conceptual background with a psychophysiological phenomenon that includes our physical and psychological sensations. Usually we relate this shudder of emotion to a reaction which is correlated to our memory-response concerning past experiences which in turn can then be related to musical, visual or any other form of art. This so-called reaction to our ‘memory-response’ can trigger certain physical reactions within our body and beside brings a certain commemoration of our experiences in the past.
The anthropological conceptualisation in the theory of the liminality, passageway and the initiation rites by Arnold van Gennep and later on by Victor Turner, it had a certain impact in development of the cycle of works and therefore brought me to the addition of the internet phenomena of liminal spaces which broadly applies to the abandoned buildings and areas.
You see, Liminal spaces are thresholds or abandoned residential buildings, areas, corridors, hallways, underground pathways, shopping malls, office buildings, etc.
Their initial purpose is to serve as a space crowded with people. The act of abandonment loses their initial desire. The individuals who visited such abandoned areas for the first time reported emotional and memory responses of the spaces itself. These responses are related to two newly formed terms. The first one is Anemoia that indicates nostalgia or excitement of a time you have never known. The second Kenopsia describes a particular Psychophysiological response of an individual who interacted with the liminal space and experienced its atmosphere. We could say that liminal spaces enable us to experience these phenomena. Liminal as a cross-disciplinary term is used widely within anthropology and folklore, religion, spirituality and psychology. For instance, if we take a closer look at the theory of Arnold van Gennep, he invented the direct relation to the Latin word Līmen as a comprehensive description and indicates the threshold and passageway at the same time.
Fascinated by the term, its sense of fluidity and the anthropological theory behind it, I was inspired to write a cycle of 10 original work. The work Limen VII has (again) three parts. The first movement named Preliminality includes metaphorical deviation of the present state and forms a minimalistic and repetitive sonic environment throughout. Preliminality does not evolve. It is somehow static (i.e., from the harmony, sound and the macro form point of view). The ambisonic movements throughout the spatialised sonic environment allow it to come to life and to arouse. In the second part of the Līmen VII is the Liminality. The sense of sequential development comes along. The identity changes and transitions through a destructive progression of the viable sounds of micro-processes (i.e., interferences and beatings with microtonal changes). Where the macro form and the spectral chords enable further development.
Moreover, the sonic environment of the second movement becomes fluid and transitions into the third part of the Līmen VII itself. This is achieved through the use of different synthetical and analytical techniques (i.e., the acoustic response of the space, instrumental acoustics, Ring Modulation, Frequency Modulation & harmonic spectrum). ‘Postliminality’ becomes the conclusion of the event that reflects ‘Liminality’ and takes over a new identity. Accordingly, the sound resonates. It meticulously draws a parallel with the two previous movements and loops in a circle of the static environment.
The original poem that I wrote helps the singers (soprano) Sofia Ferri and (alto) Marianne Selleger to express the viable sounds through a conceptualised development of the prolonged overtone singing and foremost to articulate the development of the three stages themselves.
Tunnel I see, enlightened.
Transform me, ubiquity.
Instability, invisible reminder!
In my later reading sessions, I encountered the essay ‘Liminality as a Theoretical Tool in Literary Memory Studies’ by Claudia Mueller-Greene where I encountered an interesting discussion where the author wrote:
»Somehow, memory oscillates between the inside and the outside, connecting the subjective and the objective, the imaginary and the real, the self and the other, the individual and the collective. Memory involves all aspects of human life, be they biological, psychological, social, or cultural. Due to its omnipresence, memory is the object of a diverse range of disciplines. Correspondingly, the field of memory studies is situated at the intersection of a bewildering variety of disciplines, which creates exciting interdisciplinary opportunities, but also epistemological and methodological challenges. «
Claudia Mueller-Greene, The Concept of Liminality as a Theoretical Tool, Journal of Literary Theory, Vol. 16, Issue 2, (De Gruyter, 2022), 264-288.
As you see the Liminality is a concept that seems particularly well-suited to address problems that arise from the distinctive ‘in-between position’ of memory. Concept of liminality deals with ‘threshold’ characteristics. Liminal phenomena and states are ‘betwixt and between’ and it helps to avoid the ‘delusions of certainty’ by drawing attention to interstitial entities and processes that resist clear-cut categorizations and are inherently blurry and impalpable (not easily comprehended).
Therefore, the liminality is an innovative concept. Liminality facilitates processual approaches and helps to avoid false certainties created by static concepts.
The same applies to music. The fictional privileges in dealing with mnemonic liminality receive particular attention. The unique freedom in the depiction of consciousness allow imaginational processes to portray the subjective experience of mnemonic liminality through the medium as sound
The liminal phase constitutes an experience of existential change during which the person involved »wavers between two worlds«. More than half a century later, the anthropologist Victor Turner rediscovered van Gennep’s ground-breaking work and recognized the importance of the liminal. He coined the term ‘liminality’ and developed the concept further as a decidedly processual approach in sharp contrast to the leading structuralism of his time.
A liminal situation is for Turner »an interstructural phase in social dynamics«. He stresses that liminal entities »are necessarily ambiguous« and »at the very least ‘betwixt and between’ all recognized with fixed points in spacetime of structural classification«. For Turner, this ‘betwixt and between’ position of the liminal results in its »structural ‘invisibility’«, since it is »at once no longer classified, and not yet classified«. It is »that which is neither this nor that, and yet is both«
These characterizations of the liminal explain why the concept of liminality can serve as an epistemological tool for dealing with phenomena that avoids clear-cut definitions and categorizations, as the complexities of memory tend to do. Whenever we are confronted with concepts that turn out to be unclear or even contradictory, there are two possible reasons, as Turner points out: »In the first case, we are dealing with what has been defectively defined or ordered, in the second with what cannot be defined in static terms«.
There is a second aspect of the liminal which is highly pertinent in the context of memory, its formation, and the function of imagination and creativity in these processes. Turner notes that liminality constitutes a »stage of reflection«, in which the elements of culture are being mixed anew and comes up with the following hypothesis: »Liminality may perhaps be regarded as the Nay to all positive structural assertions, but as in some sense the source of them all, and, more than that, as a realm of pure possibility whence novel configurations of ideas and relations may arise«
With regard to memory, this theory may account for the enigmatic transformations of mnemonic contents and forms unfolding in the liminal spaces between the ‘outside world’ and the ‘world inside’ where memory is on the move. It was Turner himself who opened up the concept of liminality to problems outside anthropology. Since then, it has become a truly ‘travelling concept’ between different disciplines.
Cultural anthropologist Les Roberts elucidates this conceptual expansion of liminality:
»[…] what is understood by the term liminality today encompasses a wide array of meanings and theoretical associations that go far beyond those more traditionally linked with anthropological discussions on ritual […] and cross-societal rites of passage«
Interdisciplinary application of liminality is mostly encouraged by anthropologists and the »applicability of the term is wide, potentially unlimited«, but we need to consider that »the role of experience is crucial to a full understanding of the term, however applied«. Any meaningful application of liminality needs to pay due attention to the anthropological and experiential underpinning of the term.
That is precisely why we should experience the liminality in art, sound and space through the production of the event The Eternal Now.
To reconcile and rethink about the structural term of the liminality. You can join the unique experience through our cycle of events around The Netherlands in Stadsboerderij Almere (30th May), Bajeskwartier Amsterdam (31st May), Undercurrent Amsterdam-Noord (5th June), Gebroeders Min Bergen (7th June), Sluisfabriek Drachten (13th June), Ijsselcentrale Zwolle (14th June) and with our last show in Centrale Markthal Amsterdam (21st June).
Composers in the crosshairs of our attention