LAST PORTRAIT

2024
EDITION

Weaving together text, sound, dance, and visual poetry, Ashley Ho (Singapore) and Domenik Naue (Germany) will present a new performance-installation on loss, grief and distance while braiding connections between botany and illness, labour and care, tradition and regeneration. Last Portrait is a contemporary dance borne through the 2 artists’ collaboration and with guidance from Pietro Marullo (Italy) for 6 months, thanks to online sessions and on-site residencies in Indonesia and Italy. 

This contemporary dance was presented as a set performance as part of the Asia-Europe Festival’s main programme in Rovereto, Italy, in conjunction with the Oriente Occidente Dance Festival. For the Closing Curtain, it will be a continuing exhibition and performance, navigating the landscape of loss, which is transformed through connectivity. In a world of rapid change, it feels like collapse is a spectacle we are watching collectively. Part of a generation hyper-aware of loss, we track change obsessively, also knowing that when we document what is present, we are pointing out everything that can disappear. How can we move forward, not stuck in nostalgia or paralysed by the fear of losing?  

Using excavated personal family objects collected through the years, this iteration invites us to a space where relics of the artists’ performances rest, connecting with spectators through the memories emanating from those pieces. The artists will perform single fragments of their work as they guide and go into conversations with the audience. 

First performed in a defunct (and re-purposed) shipping wharf in Amsterdam in July 2024, the performance-installation is itself a document that will evolve through its different iterations. Last Portrait is an on-going conversation that develops where it travels through: Over het IJ and Dansateliers in the Netherlands, Studio Plesungan in Indonesia, Oriente Occidente in Italy, and Dance Nucleus in Singapore. With intermediate public presentations, the performance always remains an open question and an offering. 

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Prior to the performance-installation, Ashley and Domenik, together with Pietro, will engage in a dialogue session titled Psychogeographies: Inter-textual Inscriptions, where they will discuss their collaborative relationship that has seen them working across different spaces (warehouse and wharfs, streets and HDB void decks) and contexts (Europe vs Asia, Amsterdam and Singapore where each has a special relationship with the sea and shipping). They will also speak about their unique approach to creating, in which writing, photographs, digital images, diagrams, videos, objects, gestures, dance, and other forms of inscription are irreverently treated as though they are equal mediums; freely generated and (seemingly randomly) composed together as bricolages. Through obsessive collection of different realia, and playful rewriting of document after document, they generate ‘inter-texts’ that become choreographies that in turn, respond to the different places that they inhabit or travel to.  

Schedule:

Saturday, 28 September 2024

  • 4:00PM – 10:00PM: Exhibition/Installation vieweing hours
  • 4:00PM: Psychogeographies: Inter-textual Inscriptions (Artist dialogue and presentation)
  • 8:00PM: Live activation of the installation (40-minute performance)

Sunday, 29 September 2024

  • 2:00PM – 8:00PM: Exhibition/Installation viewing hours
  • 6:00PM: Live activation of the installation (40-minute performance)
Asia-Europe Cultural Festival 2026 - The Bench (by accident)
ashleyho+domeniknaue is a collaborative duo creating transmedial performances that blend dance, poetry, music, and scenography. Their work, rooted in personal experiences, aims to foster collective imagination and transform harsh realities through vulnerability and playfulness. Nurtured by friendship and institutional support, their performances have been presented at various festivals, and they currently work across the Netherlands, Belgium, and Singapore after graduating from ArtEZ in 2022.
Italian artist Pietro Marullo, based in Brussels, creates interdisciplinary works at the intersection of visual and performing arts, often incorporating new technologies to explore social, historical, and anthropological themes, particularly the dynamics of human communities and violence. His installations and performances, analysing human community, internal violence, and cosmogonic forces, have been presented across four continents in prominent festivals and platforms.
Italian artist Pietro Marullo, based in Brussels, creates interdisciplinary works at the intersection of visual and performing arts, often incorporating new technologies to explore social, historical, and anthropological themes, particularly the dynamics of human communities and violence. His installations and performances, analysing human community, internal violence, and cosmogonic forces, have been presented across four continents in prominent festivals and platforms.

Creation, Performance, Graphic and Sound Design: ashleyho+domeniknaue

Scenography: ashleyho+domeniknaue in collaboration with Lena Michel van Drie and Pam Sikkink

Dramaturgical Advice: Elowise Vandenbroecke 

Styling: Cara Cain Insa Wittenhaus 

Production and Support: Dansateliers 

Co-production: Over het IJ 

Residency and Financial Support: Asia-Europe Foundation, Dance Nucleus, Studio Plesungan, Amsterdams Fonds voor de Kunst, Janivo Stichting 

Thank you to Gabriel Pietro Marullo for the spiritual guidance, and to roelroel for sound support.

Scan the QR code or click the link HERE to book your tickets for free!

The event is part of the Asia-Europe Cultural Festival 2024, organised by the Asia-Europe Foundation – ASEF with the financial support of the European Union and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Denmark.