I install an office in the space, a table and some chairs.
One seat remains empty for my late grandmother.
A woman I never met, whose name and life have always been shrouded in distance and mystery.
I invite people to sit and to join me in sharing stories, questions, reflections on cost and value, power, extraction, and collective futures. After each conversation, I write a poetic letter to my grandmother, translating fragments, feelings or impressions from our exchange.
Each letter is marked.
These letters are not direct transcriptions, but artistic translations to my dear grandmother, sometimes poetic texts, sometimes drawings, sometimes ritual marks, or a spell. I do not attempt to resolve the gap between myself and the other.
The empty seat remains an open invitation to all that is missing and each day the stack of letters grows. I am interested in how small rituals like listening or writing can become the basis of a reparative future, beyond social work or confession. I want to connect with others who carry their own stories of separation, longing, or inheritance.
My performance addresses the larger system of things missing and unaddressed that continues through today’s global and digital economies. To listen, to write, to hold an empty seat, to share a moment in public is a small but persistent act against forgetting.
Concept and performance | Michelle Samba
With support of | Station Noord, Explore the North, Tryater, We the North, Ministerie van OCW
