INOX 8/11

Performance by Merzedes Sturm-Lie at AMVB — Museum and Archive for Life in Brussels, April 2026 Over the past year, Merzedes worked extensively as an administrator of her parents’ archive and oeuvre in constant dialogue with her mother. She chose to share that experience as a performance entitled INOX 18/11, composed of a text written by her father, a stone from Verdens Ende (“world’s end”) in Norway, where her mother grew up, and a cooking pot from her kitchen in Brussels. With minimal technical setup, the text, stone, and pot are activated on the floor. A contact microphone attached to the underside of the pot amplifies the sound of the stone’s friction and impact, while a delay pedal repeats and distorts it. In parallel she recites and sings her father's text. The stone carries geological time and a connection to her mother’s origins. It is used to grind, scratch and strike the pot. The cooking pot, mostly associated with female labor, nourishment, and care, are for her strongly linked to Saute ma ville by Chantal Akerman and Semiotics of the Kitchen by Martha Rosler, in which the domestic sphere becomes a site of tension and resistance. Her performance marks the culmination of engaging with her parents’ archive, reflecting on heritage, emotional ties and intergenerational memory. Text by Lotte Beckwé