LOVER'S MANIFESTO

ILSNA (Ruth Borg)
wo 13 dec - 20:30 - 21:30
wo 13 dec 2023
20:30 - 21:30
  • wo 13 dec 2023
    20:30 - 21:30
    Zaal 3
    De Constant Rebecqueplein 20A

I am practising what it is to love and be with another,
based on a measurement within.
I am practising remembering this is not a sin.

Lover's Manifesto is a solo performance exploring how we can exist as lovers outside the constraints of dominant religious and cultural narratives.

The creator of this work began to question her own belief systems surrounding love, after experiencing parents and people in partnership around her (including herself) bound to laws of love that are smothering instead of nourishing.

Who holds power over our practice of love? How can we reclaim love and rescue it from the claws of should be, shame and justification?

Exploring, word by word, her own truth as a lover, that artist began writing: her own personal ‘scriptures’, re-imagining new psalms of love. Songs which hold and incorporate the changing semitones that make up the music needed to be a lover, unsuppressed.

This work stands on the shoulders of other writers and musicians who have passionately questioned love, such as Bell Hooks, Audre Lorde, Adrienne Maree Brown and Alabaster de Plume. 

About ILSNA

ILSNA, meaning tongues in Maltese, invites you to her first performance. She sings dark and soothing tones and spits fire in her words. She emerges from mediterranean waters to voice that which is silenced behind closed doors. ILSNA is the name Ruth Borg chooses for her vocal and music endeavours.

Ruth Borg (1994, Malta) is an interdisciplinary artist based in Amsterdam. She works in theatre, performance and film as a performer, maker, writer, and facilitator. Ruth creates work and spaces that may allow us to remember power, liberation and joy where they have been buried by the hands of over-domestication and domination of all sorts. She uses her body, voice and connections with others to make works that feed the world where it is starved.

In 2015 she graduated with a BA (Hons) in Theater Studies from the University of Malta and two years ago she graduated with a BA in Mime from the University of Arts in Amsterdam. She has performed locally and around Europe with various collectives, companies and her own work too.

Credits

performance Ruth Borg | mentor Fleur van den Berg | sound advise Jethro Cooke | technical Support Erik van de Wijdeven | photos and Poster Design Lisa Attard | dedicated to My Mother Margaret | with thanks and love to Justin Schembri, Charlotte Gillain, Olga Tsyganova, Inez Almeida, David van der Velden, Miruna Vlad, Emma Grima, Inge Guteit, Josefine Aavild Rahn, Tom de Ronde, Julienne Schembri, Bitha Babazadeh and Mime Fabriek