Athletes of the Heart

21:00 - 02:00

“The actor is like the physical athlete, but with this surprising difference: his affective organism is analogous to the organism of the athlete, is parallel to it, as if it were its double, although not acting upon the same plane.
The actor is an athlete of the heart.” — Antonin Artaud, The Theatre and Its Double. (1938)
 

Casino Luxembourg, in collaboration with galR production unit, the Transatlantic label and curator Agnes Gryczkowska, presents the opening night of Luxembourg Art Week.

Following Luxembourg Art Week’s late-night opening, continue the experience at Casino Luxembourg – Forum d'art contemporain with an evening dedicated to performance and music.

Under the title Athletes of the Heart — borrowed from Antonin Artaud — this edition brings together artists for whom the stage is a space of endurance and vital expenditure. Here, performance becomes a physical, emotional, and sonic trial: a pursuit of tension and transcendence, where the heart — rather than form — leads the experience. These “athletes” do not merely perform; they engage their breath, their vulnerability, and their intensity to transform the night into a shared terrain of pulse and resistance.

The evening features a bold and original programme, where experimental performance merges with raw, emotionally charged music.
 

Blackhaine (UK, performance)

Blackhaine is a British contemporary artist whose radical approach to drill & noise musics and performance extends to choreography and immersive A/V installation, including creative direction and scenographics for globally renowned rappers. Originating in the static anxiety of 2020, Blackhaine’s multimedia work expresses a visceral transition from stomach-knotted dread to exhaustive, prang-out negative ecstasy. A politics shaped by northern English life and culture informs his hybrid dramaturgy of voice, movement, and scenography in context of theatre of cruelty theology. Driven by a pursuit of nihilism as honesty, his physically demanding performances - known to leave him bloodied and bruised -  deploy durational and pressurised technique in genre-shattering, recombinant forms at once intimate and confrontational.

In live situations Blackhaine stages deconstructions of his catalogue and works in progress. Each performance differs from another but share a persistent conviction on experimenting with forms in flux between noise, punk and ambient, avant dance and poetry.

Katarina Gryvul. (UA, live)

Katarina Gryvul is a professionally trained composer, violinist, music producer and educator. After completing her formal studies, she transitioned her focus to electronic music, blending her classical training with avant-garde sounds to develop a distinctive sonic identity.

Gryvul’s compositions revolve around timbre as a primary element, fusing her classical roots with innovative approaches to sound design. Her work often incorporates live electronics for instruments and voice, analog synths, alongside spatial audio, creating an immersive soundscape. In addition to her artistic practice, Katarina is the founder of Gryvul School, an initiative dedicated to sharing her expertise with musicians worldwide. The school supports students and professionals, encouraging their growth and exploration of new possibilities.

B4MBA & MOOKI6 present Nexus (ES, live)

Nexus is a brand new collaboration between Senegalese Hispanic producer, DJ and vocalist B4MBA and Franco Guadeloupean A/V artist MOOKI6, both core members of Barcelona's Jokkoo Collective. Jokkoo formed back in 2017 to infuse the city's club scene with experimentally-minded pan-African rhythms and modish diasporic flavors, and the Nexus project extends the narrative further, blurring dancehall and trap outlines with industrial noise, metal and dark ambience 

iced lattina (BE, DJ set)

If emotional music was a genre, there would be no need to describe iced lattina’s take on music. Whether that emotion is confidence, anger, apathy, or thrill, there will be distorted bass and backroom sounds, always. Nonchalant with the bpm, diligent with the selection, iced lattina embodies unpredictability in the truest sense. 

Maxim Tur (DE, performance)

Maxim Tur (*1996; Leninskoe, Kyrgyzstan) is a Berlin-based media artist whose practice draws on pop culture, internet phenomena, and videogames. His works engage with philosophical and media-theoretical questions, translating these explorations into installations, sculptures, videos, and performances. 

He graduated from the University of Arts Berlin. 

In the work to be presented, Maxim Tur is accompanied by Miran Thiemann, alias urge2bite, vocalist and electronic music producer from Leipzig, now based in Berlin
 

galR 

galR is a cross-European production unit exploring spatiality through avant-club tendencies in sound, arts and community.  

Supported by previously-directed seminar team at Universität der Künste Berlin, the label coheres around the work of its forthcoming research base hqLX, an off-space for encounter and experimentation in Luxembourg City, i.a. co-programmed by Casino Luxembourg. 

For the upcoming presentation, galR is accompanied by Transatlantic, a multi-disciplinary label and agency based in Berlin. With a focus on contemporary music, the label prizes friendship and connection above any strict genre regulations. 
 

Graphic design: Hannes Brischke