NL premiere

Composer, musician, and performance artist Billy Bultheel – accompanied by an ensemble of musicians – brings the Dutch premiere of his new performance A Short History of Decay to Rewire 2025. In this one-of-a-kind work, a small group from the audience are invited to sit among the musicians on stage while others take seats that surround a towering, monolithic, resonant instrument that amplifies the piece's deep tones. The two distinct vantage points of the divided audience speak to the work's political and critical themes; drawing from existentialist Emil M. Cioran’s 1949 book of the same title – which critiqued fascism and idolisation – Bultheel's A Short History of Decay is punctuated by three monologues, co-written with writer and curator Edwin Nasr, that speak to geopolitical unrest, adapted for the specificities of each context that the piece is performed. In true Bultheel fashion, the work plays sonically in the tension between the ancient and the present, mixing re-interpreted Gregorian melodies with electronics, blast beats, and screaming distortion.