Museumnacht: Museum of Black Futures

Step aboard the Radical Space Station, a live podcast and meeting space within The Museum of Black Futures. Together, we will explore what we want to add to this museum, what Black Futures mean to you, and what a museum actually is in 2025.

We start from the history of the Amsterdamse Schouwburg, the building we are in, and use its history as a compass for new futures. Conversations full of thought experiments. 

Senegalese-Dutch theater and film director Myra Fanta Bodian is collaborating with DJ and producer STATE OFFF on a performance inspired by the Bukut rituals from Casamance, southern Senegal. These traditional rites of passage mark the participants' transition to a new phase of life, in which they learn from the wisdom of their ancestors.

STATE OFFF, who specializes in the South African music style Gqom, mixes minimalist, rhythmic beats with deep bass and percussion. Together they create a sensory journey to la Forêt Sacrée, the sacred forest, where we experience the hidden knowledge of nature. A spiritual performance in three parts.

London and Amsterdam-based artist Femi Dawkins (also known as Jimmy Rage) moves between visual art, music, poetry, and performance. During Museum Night, he will recite his own texts and paint live.

Following on from his projects My Ghostly MRIs and Phantom Gaze, he will once again explore the spiritual echoes of colonial history and the presence of ancestors in contemporary spaces.

Dawkins won the Gieskes-Strijbis Podium Prize in 2022. His performances are intimate and ritualistic, imbued with poetry and inspiration.

London-based dancer and performer Foxy Roxy (Roxanne Pratt) uses pole dancing as her medium to explore sensuality, power, and self-expression. Drawing on her Sierra Leonean and Zimbabwean background, she sees dance as a sacred space for transformation and healing.

For The Museum of Black Futures, Roxy created a mesmerizing performance about the resilience of women who navigate male-dominated environments, such as the gold mines in Zimbabwe. There, despite their limited visibility, women remain indispensable to spiritual and social cohesion.

In her work, the body becomes an archive, a living canvas of stories and survival.

GLTTR GDDSS is a performer and DJ who brings together music from different diasporic regions to create exhilarating, cosmic sets. Expect a mix of Ghetto House, UK Garage, and Jersey Club, in which trance, energy, and freedom merge.

The Bookshop transforms into an intergalactic dance floor where GLTTR GDDSS takes the audience on a musical journey beyond the boundaries of time and space. A dynamic performance full of rhythms, liberation, and glitter.

American comedian and performer Raquel Palmas uses improvisation, music, and humor to address social issues. She has performed in Boom Chicago, Amber Vineyard's Queer Cabaret Pearl Dive, and at international festivals in New York, Adelaide, and Edinburgh.

Her performance for The Museum of Black Futures is both cheerful and sharp: an ode to femininity, resilience, and zest for life. With humor as her weapon and love as her motivation, Raquel dedicates her work to her grandmother.

Paris-based artist Serge Kponton works with painting, photography, and body art, using the human body as his canvas. During Museum Night, he will be painting live on faces and bodies. Through this transformation, his models become part of his creative universe.

Kponton explores the relationship between emotion, identity, and art, fueled by his years of research into global body art traditions. His work invites reflection, an encounter between vulnerability and beauty.

During Museumnacht Amsterdam, more than 70 museums open their doors to Amsterdam's young audience. Go on a journey of discovery and explore all the beauty that Amsterdam's museums have to offer. Collect new memories and themes, fill your bingo card with beautiful locations and make new friends.