Early in the new year, FIBER and The Rest Is Noise premiered a new multimedia collaboration by electronic music duo Animistic Beliefs and media artist Jeisson Drenth. On Friday 10 January, Thúrc Tinh was welcomed by enthusiastic supporters at Amsterdam’s landmark concert hall complex, Muzeikgebouw.

Animistic Beliefs + Jeisson Drenth, “Thức Tỉnh”, Muziekgebouw, Amsterdam, 10 January 2025. Photo: Sabine van Nistelrooij.
As the theatre lights dim, I hear forests sounds: birds, wind in trees, water bubbling over rocks. A masked figure emerges from the wings to the sound of a thudding drum. Dressed in black, the figure crouches and scurries tentatively across the stage as the rhythm picks up, punctuated with rasping growls. The creature grasps a pail and a large brush as a wide screen over the stage fades in to project a view from above, framing a long white sheet on the floor. As the rhythm becomes more complex, Linh Luu, part of the duo Animistic Beliefs, begins to write a calligraphic script on the floor in wide performative gestures. On the screen above, subtitles provide a translation in English as each pictograph word is inked: Trauma, Discovery, Ancestry, Growth. When the script is complete two costumed assistants appear at the side of the stage to bring the sheet up to the wall, stage left, where it hangs as a banner overseeing the rest of the performance.

Animistic Beliefs + Jeisson Drenth, “Thức Tỉnh”, Muziekgebouw, Amsterdam, 10 January 2025. Photo: Sabine van Nistelrooij.
This opening sequence announces the themes to be addressed in Thúrc Tinh, a Vietnamese word that can be translated as “awaken”, and also “rebirth” as the opening track of Animistic Belief’s benchmark album MERDEKA (2022). Its expressionistic choreography reminds me of the ritualistic aspect of theatre, as a portal into mythological space-time opened for communal and potentially cathartic experiences.
As fog floods over the stage floor, a large gong at the back of the stage is pushed forward by another masked figure. Shirtless and wrapped in a traditional Ambon cloth, Mar Lalihatu, the other half of Animistic Beliefs, strokes the instrument’s golden face with a mallet and it responds with a sigh. Linh rejoins onstage, now wearing a large golden mask and a patterned sarong, and the two protagonists face-off in movements inspired by Indonesian dance.

Animistic Beliefs + Jeisson Drenth, “Thức Tỉnh”, Muziekgebouw, Amsterdam, 10 January 2025. Photo: Sabine van Nistelrooij.
When the gong is set to the side, the assistants re-appear this time bringing forward a large fan-shaped screen, that seems to float on the dry ice cascading over the front of stage. Unmasked, Linh appears at a spotlit podium to the side and begins to narrate a story. Told in the voice of a parent or elder, Linh speaks of becoming estranged from their child or family despite efforts to remain close. On the backlit screen, silhouetted arms assemble cut out figures and decorative motifs into scenes that could be impressions of village life. A tree populated with variations of a character evokes the metaphor of a family tree and thus ancestry. As Linh continues to speak, shadowy figures, objects and shapes elaborate on her words, illustrating themes of migration, separation and conflict. As the sequence concludes the shadow puppets are quickly removed, before the arms scuffle like dogs over a red lighting gel.
Jeisson, who has until now remained in the shadows, presumably working the sound, comes to the centre. He sits behind a table that supports a keyboard and some objects and begins reciting prose. Emerging from the “trash heap” of the colonised world, Jeisson speaks in both Spanish and English. I recall a refrain of: “ideas that precede words like queer and woke”, and Jeisson punctuates his delivery with brief piano motifs. Projected on the screen behind him is a digitally generated landscape of sand, which he discussed in the pre-performance talk as being based on the the Tatacoa Desert, a star-gazing site in Colombia and as a place one goes “to meet their dreams”. The video shifts to foreground digitally modelled “cultural objects”, spotlit in darkened game space. Jeisson concludes this sequence by blowing into a bat-shaped clay whistle that he acquired in Colombia; breathing life back into an object that one might only otherwise encounter behind a glass case in a museum.

Animistic Beliefs + Jeisson Drenth, “Thức Tỉnh”, Muziekgebouw, Amsterdam, 10 January 2025. Photo: Sabine van Nistelrooij.
Thúrc Tinh has been developing since 2023 as part of a residency program with Muziekgebouw Production House that supports young and promising artists to produce new works for international markets. Over this time Linh, Mar and Jeisson experimented individually with forms that were beyond their disciplines. Jeisson, who had established himself as a media and performance artist, undertook an Ableton digital music production course and also explored various acoustic instruments. Mar built a Moluccan tifa drum with their father, learned to make masks and familiarised themselves with the dance traditions of Indonesia. Linh developed her performative calligraphy technique and experimented with instruments affiliated with her Chinese-Vietnamese heritage, such as a zither that she came to play in a non-traditional way with a bow. Neither “properly” Dutch, Indonesian, Vietnamese or Colombian, in their collaboration these “digital natives” bring their explorations together in dialogue, showcasing their “superpowers of disassociative thinking,” as Jeisson remarked beforehand. As such, Thúrc Tinh does not follow a conventional narrative arc, but rather follows its own internal logic, as once sequence segues into another. “Organic” is how they describe their collaborative working methods in the foyer talk, and it’s evident as Thúrc Tinh never felt forced, retaining the artists’ playfulness as a novel and endearing quality.
The final sequence was announced with a gamelan riff that I recognised from MERDEKA, bringing the artists back on stage in more familiar roles. Linh and Mar on one side of stage are poised behind a table of music making machines, while Jeisson is positioned on the opposite side of the stage behind his laptop. Between them is a large video projection. While it’s not so clear what Linh and Mar are doing, I read later that their set-up includes an Elektron Analog Rytm drum machine, a Eurorack modular synthesizer and a Soma Electronics Enner alongside a Vietnamese Sáo Bầu flute. The video begins as a scene of spinning tree tops, black silhouettes and against a red sky. Jeisson’s software controls appear on screen as wireframe serpentine motifs are filled out, textured, and composited live into the sequence, while a ticker tape text scrolls vertically down the left side of the screen with messages such as: “to all our cuties <3 <3 <3”. Over 20 minutes or so the music and visuals layer up and increase in intensity towards a euphoric crescendo.

Animistic Beliefs + Jeisson Drenth, “Thức Tỉnh”, Muziekgebouw, Amsterdam, 10 January 2025. Photo: Sabine van Nistelrooij.
Muzeikgebouw is an iconic complex of theatres and concert halls, with a reputation for classical concerts, so I’m amused to watch the young people in the front rows wiggling in their seats. I look around to check how the other generations are handling it and am drawn to a man who looks old enough to be their father. He watches mesmerised, mouth slightly open as lights flicker across the lens of his spectacles. It prompts me to reflect on the enduring qualities of music and performance, light and sound, that bridges the ancestral and the contemporary; tradition and technology brought together to synthesize something new.
Initially scheduled for last year, the audiences’ anticipation for Thúrc Tinh was palpable. With DJ justin case selecting in the foyer as patrons queued for the coat check and bar, it felt like an excitable gathering of family and friends rather than a world premier in a highbrow institution. So while Thúrc Tinh was ambitious, I doubt the artists were seeking institutional validation, and they seemed confident and at ease to share and discuss their open-ended processes—which is an indicator of their professionalism. Scrolling on my night bus back to Berlin I learned that Animistic Beliefs were headlining a major club at my destination the next night. I admire their chops.