“We are showered every day with gifts from the earth, but they are not meant for us to keep. Their life is in their movement. Our work and our joy is to pass along the gift and to trust that what we put out into the universe will always come back. Hoarding the gift, we become constipated with wealth, bloated with possessions, too heavy to join the dance.”
Sit with it (work titel)
Sit With It is an intimate, participatory performance shaped as a contemporary ritual and building on the wisdom that wealth is not measured by property but by having enough to share with others..
A group of participants are invited to sit together in a cirkel in which a story without words unfolds through the passing on of objects, materials, textures that triggers memories, associations and awareness. What emerges is a collective ritual in which the objects are activated from a status quo to a place of honour and respect. By traveling through the hands of a divers group of people they become common goods to be cared for by all. The performance emerges from the (playful) tension between performer, participants, and the context in which it takes place, creating space for grief, gratitude and togetherness.
Sit With It ultimately offers a gentle yet radical proposition: that by giving ourselves to the act of simply staying with what is through attentive presence, we might receive back a renewed sense of connection, humility and aliveness within a world that screams for repair.
PICTURES: first try-out at Permeke Library Antwerp (October 2025) during a temporary residency: Space for grief.
“Until we can grieve for our planet, we cannot love it,” wrote activist and ecological scientist Joanna Macy. I decided to dedicate my residency to the creation of a ritual that expresses grief for global loss.
Over a period of two weeks I collected objects and materials in a display cabinet that represent loss on a global scale. I daily activated these objects and materials through an artistic intervention, for a diverse yet intimate audience of library visitors. I concluded the residency with a participatory performance in which I passed on the objects and honoured them with a dance. Photography: Javier Perugachi.
CREDITS: Concept and performance: Rebecca Lenaerts. Collaborators to be confirmed. Production: Platform 0090. (creation 2026-2027)
