WORM Rotterdam

We welcome back SPELL_LOCKET, a Rotterdam-based curatorial platform fostering encounters between performance, sound, installation and club culture. Moving away from the fixed stage, each edition constructs an immersive environment where artists, audiences and spaces become entangled in a shared world.

This edition is co-curated and produced in collaboration with Amsterdam-based collective TREVOGA.

Step through the threshold SPELL_LOCKET and TREVOGA create for you and enter a maze of interconnected experiences, where each work gradually unfolds into the next.

This night has three acts: Acidic Male (live set); XX-63, a dance-theatre piece from TREVOGA; and a hybrid DJ set from k0priva. Expect industrial sound, intense physicality, hypnotic rhythms, and a space where synthetic pleasure comes with an anxious aftertaste.

SPELL_LOCKET and TREVOGA go rogue, taking theatre off-stage and into the cracks between DIY, the club and high-brow art.

WORM Rotterdam
worm.org

TREVOGA — XX-63 (t̶r̶e̶v̶o̶g̶a̶ ̶)

TREVOGA is a multidisciplinary collective based in Amsterdam whose work exists between dance, theatre, sound and visual art. From dreamers to doomers and affect aliens drawn towards intensity, TREVOGA is a community of movers who resist convention. Baked in a vestibule of Hell, Trevoga’s second ‘danced-theatre piece’, XX-63, inhabits “the exhausted afterlife of counterculture”. Through repetition and aborted gestures, XX-63 takes you into a standstill suspended between dreamstate and delay, where euphoric repetition begins to feel tight, and withdrawal becomes not merely a symptom, but a tactic.

ACIDIC MALE (Acidic Male)

Acidic Male moves between industrial sound, hypnotic rhythms, noise and experimental vocals, inhabiting the tension between softness and abrasion, violence and comfort, seduction and collapse. Through themes of sexuality, shame, revenge and bodily memory, sound becomes a means of rupture and altered perception, ultimately returning to the body’s capacity to transform.

k0priva (Mаgdalena Petrova)

k0priva is an entity inhabiting the space between DJ set, ritual and sonic storytelling. Moving through hypnotic, industrial an

Natalia Papaeva’s The Fire in My Mind
Aluminium, 2025, 170*210 diameter cm

For the exhibition in public space Beelden in Leiden, artists received six words from the curators to make an artwork about. I chose the word Perseverance because it suits my life values. I was inspired by the process of writing and the frustration that comes with it. I have to write and rewrite so much, and it always feels like it never gets better. Also, I had never made a sculpture before; during this process, I was tested by the material and my body. I thought this word, perseverance, was really challenging me, so I persisted through my disappointment in myself and my fear of seeing that it was not working until I saw that it started coming together. I was working in Paul’s garage, the technician who helped me with the sculpture, like a maniac.

The sculpture came to WORM and it means a lot to me, because WORM was my first job in the Netherlands that I loved deeply. WORM is the perfect place to learn how to fail and stand up the next day. I am happy that my work, the witness of my fears and battle with myself, came home to WORM.

I am grateful for Beelden and Leiden, Mette Samkalden and Rob de Melker, Paul Bouter for their support and WORM for their belief in me from the beginning.

Credits: Technical support - Paul Bouter
Curators: Mette Samkalden and Rob de Melker

AWARDS
Frans de Wit Prize, 2025
Business Platform Schipholweg, 2025

Commissioned by Beelden in Leiden (Beelden in Leiden)

Pictures by kin, Beelden in Leiden, Wilke Geurds, and Jonathan de Waart

WORM Rotterdam
worm.org

HIDDEN BEHIND X WORM: Bombstrap - Big Enemy

BOMBSTRAP will release their debut LP BIG ENEMY the 3rd of October at WORM together with Loogie, BLOED and Cancer Void.

Loogie (LOOGIE) (NL): Punk?
BLOED (BLOED) (NL): Blackened death war metal; raw, repulsive, hostile fu***ng noise.
Cancer Void (CANCER VOID) (Czech Republic): Spectral alien death metal influenced by bands such as Cancer and Void.
BOMBSTRAP (.rotterdam) (NL/UK): Caustic, explosive and exact hardcore drowned in nihilism. A sonic bullet charged with anarchic alchemy aimed straight at the heart of a corrupt society.

Saturday 3 October
WORM Rotterdam
worm.org

SELECTION ANNOUNCEMENT!!!

We are very excited to share the selected projects for CIRCUIT: WORM x De Fabriek x Amarte.

The final selection was not an easy one, and it required long hours of review and deliberation between representatives from all participating institutions.

We feel deeply honoured to have received so many great applications for our OPEN CALL. Unfortunately, we could only select 4 projects for this trajectory.

We look forward to working with the selected artists over the next three months to help experiment with and realise their ideas, question what we thought we knew already, and strengthen the bond between Rotterdam and Eindhoven in the process.

The selected projects for CIRCUIT are:
“Adormitura” by Raluca Croitoru
“Electroslushy” by Pim Visser (Pim Visser) and Douwe Teusink (Douwe Teusink)
“The Dead Are Never Inert (رَماد مسكون)” by Raghad Saqfalhait (.saqfalhait)
“Third Body” by Maggie Khorami (Maggie)

WORM Rotterdam
worm.org

“Adormitura” by Raluca Croitoru

Blending 16mm film, movement, and sound, Adormitura engages with decaying modernist-socialist public sculptures of Romania’s seaside resorts to address embodied memory and the ideological role of the body at rest.

“Electroslushy” by Pim Visser and Douwe Teusink

“In a city full of droning signals, we sync up to their rhythms to move with their hidden sounds. Homebuilt circuitry and electromagnetic field scanners provide the tools through which this performance unfolds.”

“The Dead Are Never Inert (رَماد مسكون)” by Raghad Saqfalhait

The Dead Are Never Inert (رَماد مسكون) is a multimedia performance that looks to ash and charred matter in discarded archaeological soils in Palestine, to reconsider how the land is read, inhabited, and valued.

“Third Body” by Maggie Khorami

Third Body is an artistic research project investigating the relationship between biological life and technology, bringing fungal organisms, bioelectrical activity, sound, light, and the human body into an evolving system of coexistence and exchange.

On the 19th, Hidden Behind Mist invites Etta HarBar is NOISE CART, FIX EVERYTHING and TONTO to clear your ears with a futuristic punk explosion!
Expect bizarre sounds, raw guitars and future-punk! Also: we welcome local music publishers, labels, and distributors to participate in a distro market - Goodies from Geertruida, Underbelly, Cinema Colombiano, Inner Basement and more!

WORM Rotterdam
worm.org

For this special edition of Field Recordings (Field Recordings), filmmaker Deborah Stratman joins us at WORM for an evening of seven of her short films.
In her films, Stratman gathers voices, footage and the stuff the universe is made of, frozen sound, light, levitating bodies, and leaves the connecting to the viewer.

Vever (for Barbara) – 2019, USA, 12 minutes, English
Optimism – 2018, USA, 14:43 minutes, English
Immortal, Suspended – 2013, USA, 5:50 minutes, no dialogue
How Among the Frozen Words – 2005, USA, 44 seconds, no dialogue
It Will Die Out in the Mind – 2006, USA, 3:50 minutes, English
The Magician’s House – 2007, USA, 5:45 minutes, no dialogue
In Order Not to Be Here – 2002, USA, 33 minutes, English

Cineville valid at the door and online on the day itself!

Wednesday 23 September
WORM Rotterdam
worm.org

We’re celebrating the second graduating class of AMPFEMININE’s DJ mentoring programme. New names, same unstoppable energy. Come see who’s next.

FOYER:
23:30 – 00:30 HMQ
00:30 – 01:30 skileen
01:30 – 02:30 SOLARIE
02:30 – 03:30 USII RIOT

CENTRAL STATION:
23:00 – 00:00 AMPFEMININE
00:00 – 01:00 AMPFEMININE
01:00 – 02:00 NADÈGE
02:00 – 03:00 gris
03:00 – 04:00 JILLA WAS HERE
04:00 – 05:00 Té de Gember

Friday 18 September
WORM Rotterdam
worm.org

Tonight! The Misconceived by James N. Kienitz Wilkins, which world premiered this year at IFFR.

Built entirely inside a game engine, it follows Tyler, a failed filmmaker turned single dad, taking a renovation job on the country home of an old college friend, now a successful sculptor. A social satire about work, class and the art world. Slightly painful and very funny.
We also added a short by Wilkins: Moon v. State (2024), a handful of old photographs and one breathless monologue by Emily Davis, on a robbery gone very wrong in 1950s Texas.

Doors 20:00, screening 20:30. Cineville valid!

WORM Rotterdam
worm.org

Alles van waarde is weerloos ia a thought of Lucebert, meaning, “Everything of value is defenseless”: well, tough!
WORM thinks Alles van waarde is VAN WAARDE!

WORM Rotterdam
worm.org