Billy Bultheel - The Thief's Journal: Songs of Decreation

Time Crystals performance program

The compelling performance The Thief 's Journal: Songs of Decreation by Billy Bultheel marks the beginning of the Time Crystals performance program – a year-long international initiative curated by Suzanne Wallinga in collaboration with Peter van den Hoogen. Through a curated series of performances, the artists in the Time Crystals program highlight various aspects of sovereignty and focus on subjectivity and freedom of choice, the boundaries of the self and the constant development of individual identity within spiritual, social and political frameworks.

Architecture as an instrument

Billy Bultheel, a composer who works at the intersection of music, performance and installation, brings together different genres in his compositions. His work includes new music, noise, electronics and metal, with influences from polyphonic traditions of the Middle Ages and the Renaissance. The Thief 's Journal: Songs of Decreation explores how architectural space can serve as a musical instrument. Specially written for nine musicians, the performance combines live and electronic music with a location-specific performance and scenography within the brutalist architecture of the Thomas Church.

The title of Bultheel's work pays tribute to the semi-fictional autobiography of Jean Genet, the French novelist, playwright, poet and activist. In this autobiography, Genet uses "elevated" religious and Christian language to poetically portray the lives of social outcasts, including convicts, thieves, and beggars. The Thief 's Journal: Songs of Decreation similarly combines religious and purgative elements, sacred and industrial sounds, and communal and ritual aspects. The scenography invites both musicians and audiences to participate in a dynamic experience in which music becomes spatial, tangible and visual. This unique exploration brings together sound, architecture and movement.