Museumnacht: The Archive Is Alive
Nov 7
Internationaal Theater Amsterdam
With performance, music, visual art and storytelling, we explore the archives our bodies carry, as well as the forces that preserve us.
The archive is alive. Let’s unbox it.
- Date
- November 7, 2026
- Duration
- 420 min, no interval
- Genre
- Perspective
- Language
- English
- Location
- Bookshop
An archive does not live solely in documents, display cases or boxes of acid-free paper. It lives in bodies, voices, rhythms, alter egos, desires and stories that continue to haunt and resonate across generations. Some pages are missing. Some stories were never written down. A gap in the archive can be a loss, but it can also be an opening: a space where imagination enters.
During Museumnacht, six artists set living archives in motion.
Free admission with a Museumnacht wristband, or register for free via the website.
Tickets and times
Zaïre Krieger
7:30 PM and 10:30 PM
From the work of Zaïre Krieger (1995) emerges a call for justice, love, and the freedom to be more than one thing at once. During Museumnacht, her blue-scaled, extraterrestrial, foul-mouthed alter ego Zireïa takes over, introducing us to other versions of Zaïre that resist easy categorization.
She is joined by theatre maker and pianist Djuwa Mroivili (1998), who remixes music, words, and movement into her own distinctive form of storytelling. Perhaps Djuwa’s underwater alter ego Mx. CoelaCunt will also make an appearance: a glittering hybrid being who is at once fish, human, auntie, ancestor, god, archive, and griot, and who has always preferred to remain elusive and undocumented.
Kyara Harley
8:30 PM and 0:30 AM
Singer Kyara Harley is not only a performer but also a world builder. Inspired by her love of fashion, ballroom culture and music, she transforms The Bookshop into The Mothership during Museumnacht.
At the heart of The Mothership is her hit song Activate, Kyara’s explosive empowerment Pride anthem. Driven by heavy drums, pumping bass and ballroom attitude, it is a call to the girls, the gays and their allies: take up space, move loudly, and refuse to be erased.
Foxy Roxy
9:30 PM and 11:30 PM
London-born performer Roxanne Pratt, also known as Foxy Roxy, uses pole dance, twerking, heels and body language as forms of storytelling. Drawing on her Sierra Leonean and Zimbabwean heritage, she approaches the body as a living archive: a place where knowledge, memories, rhythms, sensuality, joy and resilience are stored and passed on.
Her performance is therefore not only a way of telling stories, but also a form of archiving in itself.
DJ NYAMECMPLX
11:00 - 11:30 PM
0:00 - 0:30 AM
1:00 - 1:30 AM
Through her initiative cmplx.rythms, she works as a digital archivist, diving into vintage music from the past and revealing how its influence can still be heard in today’s sound.
Mural
Ongoing
Throughout the night, a mural will gradually come to life as Museumnacht unfolds around it. The design engages in a dialogue with the history of the theatre and the traces of the Amsterdam residents who once entered the building through The Bookshop. Over the course of the evening, the painting grows into a new archival piece: a tangible testament to the fact that this night took place.
