Curated by Mawena Yehouessi, THE SOUL STATION’s public programme includes two evenings of performance — 22 August and 13 September 2024 — during which four artists and their collaborators are invited to perform within the installation.

Instead of explicitly drawing from Danielle Brathwaite-Shirley’s artistic themes, the programme aims to highlight contemporary, non-hegemonic individual and communal healing practices of restorative justice.

Embedded within Danielle Brathwaite-Shirley’s universe, Michelle Tshibola has developed a body-building and pole dance performance. “In this game, robots have taken the place of human sex workers. They have more value as they appear to be more useful to both the consumers and pimps. As a matter of fact, the aim of this invention was to normalise inhuman acts; creating increasingly abusive and violent predators. Michelle 2000 is a very fine and stylish cyborg sexbot (model), whose DN.AI gives it a truly human consciousness. Its mission is to kill all predators and prevent patriarchy from dominating the world.”

Lighting designer Giovanni Allegro will accompany the event.

IRIS, is an act of coming together, a moment of shared resistance. Bounded by a common purpose and the desire for change, it is not only about standing against, but standing up for each other; uplifting, amplifying, and fostering collective strength. We choose togetherness as an act of defiance, knowing how collective action can reshape reality. IRIS is a sonic architecture in which we shall transform; an electrifying interstice in which we shall unfold. It is a place serving as a portal for mutation. IRIS is a loud conviction that we all shall improve, sparking a resurgence of hope. For we find our greatest power through changing, never exclusively for ourselves, but together; standing together and holding one another as we walk toward a (truly) common vision.

Capsizing Danielle Brathwaite-Shirley’s installation scenography, Catol Teixeira and Luara Raio present a collaborative, movement-based performance composed of five tactics for traversing in between territories. The convergence of their two bodies announces the moment before a change: they instigate and activate passages that cut across the flesh of time and presence to uncover movement technologies that generate wind and transformative shuffles.

In Hard Wig, Soft Life: Happy Birthday, New Kyd explores the archetype of Julius Eastmonk, the fictional lovechild of US-American composers Julius Eastman and Meredith Monk. The title references a term popularised on social media and aimed at racialised Black women who, in exchange for a so-called ‘soft’ or seemingly easy life with a wealthy, often White partner, face isolation from their communities. Challenging this myth, New Kyd celebrates the birthday of Julius Eastmonk, rumoured to live an exceptionally ‘soft life.’ Through movement, text, sound, voice, and video, Kyd, in collaboration with Túskqo Sobrinho, creates an experience that delves into the terror of desiring visibility while facing potential isolation from community.