Positions #9—Make Some Noise: Desire. Stage. Change.

Longing for all that is different. Van Abbemuseum presents Positions #9: Make Some Noise: Desire. Stage. Change.

The comprehensive exhibition opens to the public on Saturday, January 31, 2026 at noon, with a programme of premieres and performances. Sounds, stories and movements come together in the Sound Chamber.

Movement
“Let yourself be heard” is the core invitation of Positions #9: Make Some Noise: Desire. Stage. Change. Twelve international artists and collectives convene in a dynamic constellation of solo presentations, performances, and encounters. Their practices span choreography, sound, theatre, sculpture, cinema, and AI-powered composition, each offering a distinct approach to how bodies, materials, and technologies shift and resonate. With movement as its connective thread, Make Some Noise: Desire. Stage. Change. invites visitors to move, to listen, and to imagine what could emerge from this.

The exhibition opens on January 31 at noon. Highlights include Felisha Carénage's opening procession Dreamer/Goner 2026, Göksu Kunak's new performance Spillage, and the Dutch premiere of Adam Russell-Jones' dance performance Release The Hounds, examining how it feels to be the last dancer on the dance floor. The performance is an ode to the working-class dancer and as he sways in the space, a question arises; is he dancing for pleasure or payoff?

“By amplifying movement, Positions #9 shifts our perspective to our ability to imagine and build a different reality, to be different. Make noise: an encouragement to artists, participants, and the audience to be present, to engage, and to set change in motion. Movement as poetic, social and cosmological; stage as museal, theatrical and earthly.” —Zippora Elders, senior curator                 

Stage
Positions #9 brings together a variety of artists, relating to themes of attentiveness, encouragement and longing. The exhibition’s set-up, spanning ten large rooms, loosely creates an atmosphere between spotlight and backstage, offering a choreography in which one might envision a stage for themselves, guided by the voices and positionalities of the artists and their relations. There are multiple ways to enter and move through the exhibition.

Kicking off the opening ceremony, Felisha Carénage opens the museum under the black wings of a masked, divine stilt walker, while inside presenting carnivalesque scenes of play and danger, mourning and desireability. 

New research by Göksu Kunak introduces Spillage, an opening performance and installation exploring the notion of crash and the uncanny, sliding towards psychosis.

In a room that can be one’s first and last encounter of the exhibition, Simon Fujiwara's work uses fantasy and storytelling to explore how people today long for a sense of identity, connection and realness.

Calla Henkel and Max Pitegoff bring the decelerating ambiance of their community theatre New Theater Hollywood from Los Angeles—a region that faces vast ecological and political changes—to Eindhoven, with the European premiere of new work.

A large central sculpture by Jack O’Brien of two suspended pianos, entwined in a suspended movement, alludes to the tension between being stuck and breaking free.

With spatial, theatrical paintings, Matthew Lutz-Kinoy reflects on historical and contemporary positions of dance and desire.

In a dim lit room, Miloš Trakilović connects the threat of war with an algorithmically generated “love song,” made up of popmusic fragments from just before the war in Yugoslavia, resonating with contemporary threats.

Through choreographic practice working with restraint as a state that can be both binding and liberatory, SERAFINE1369’s audio-visual installation, opens up space between singular readings.

Tori Wrånes turns the opposites of cat and dog into a moving metaphor for the (im)possibility of closeness.

At the building’s original entrance, the reflective blinds by General Idea, an architectural intervention that has been in the collection of the Van Abbemuseum since the General Idea exhibition in 1985, blur the boundary between inside and outside, museum and street.

In the room that can be start, finale and break, Selma Selman transforms her personal longing into a monumental gesture that speaks of hope, despair, and the desire for a different existence.

 “Amidst widespread uncertainty and a rapidly changing planetary environment, many people confront feelings of anxiety or even paralysis. With their evocative, poetic and intellectually charged works, these artists inspire to engage deeply: to long, to listen, to imagine alternative scenarios and to take the stage. We desire to bring movement, literal and metaphorical; to demonstrate how art and creative joy are the beating heart of a world still deserving of our attention and our voice.” —Z. E.

Boldness
One of the museum rooms will be transformed into a dynamic Sound Chamber. Here, artists explore how sound can carry stories. Attendants will be accompanied by Felisha Carénage’s lyrical canvases and a mixtape of Moluccan noisemakers and sounds from communities by Finn Maätita & Jerrold Saija in collaboration with Shakuru Tajiri and Josse Vessies, in the year that marks 75 years of Moluccan diaspora in the Netherlands. Together, they trace connections between water and wind, echo and embodiment. During the exhibition, this room will grow into a space for experimentation and gathering: a museum club where DJs, singers, (chosen) families, students and other visitors will bring the exhibition’s themes to life.

 "Positions #9 sustains optimism through intergenerational coming together: young people as part of a larger whole. Hope and energy are nourished through sharing perspectives: intimately experiencing momentum, jointly shifting time and space, as well as sensing the actuality of change. As an antidote to gloom and powerlessness, art draws our attention back to what binds, to our own and collective wishes, creativity, manifestation, and presence.” —Z. E.

Since 2014, the Van Abbemuseum’ s Positions exhibition series has been providing space for emerging and midcareer artists and collectives. Each edition features several solo presentations. Previous iterations have included work by Mounira Al-Solh, Anna Boghiguian, Nolan Oswald Dennis, Bouchra Khalili, Naeem Mohaiemen, and Laure Prouvost, amongst others. The Positions series focuses on the voices of the artists, thus complementing the museum's collection presentation and solo exhibitions. Positions #9 will be the last edition, with more than twelve bold artist positions filling the complete old wing of the Van Abbemuseum.