Encounters
Fred Moten and Brandon López

21.05.2026, 20:00 15 €, get tickets West Den Haag in the former American Embassy, Lange Voorhout 102, The Hague

Fred Moten and Brandon López create performances that unfold in real time; improvised, intense, and expansive forms where voice, language, and sound move together at full force. Their work carries an urgency that feels inseparable from the present it emerges in. Their debut in the Netherlands takes place on Thursday evening, May 21, at West Den Haag in the former American embassy building. This modernist space marked by layers of political and institutional history, adds another layer of resonance to the setting.

Poet and cultural theorist Fred Moten has long been engaged in thinking through the social and aesthetic life of Black study, creating conceptual spaces that hold emergent forms of cultural production. Bassist and composer Brandon López approaches the double bass as a site of ongoing exploration, pushing the instrument toward new sonic and physical possibilities. As a duo, they navigate the urgency of the present through improvisation, holding together dissonance, rupture, and relation.

This evening takes place within ‘Encounters’, a series at West that brings together practices across art and theory. Rather than centering on outcomes, ‘Encounters’ opens a space for what happens in between, where listening, thinking, and being together unfold as it happens. An encounter is something that does not resolve, but keeps opening a shared field between voices, practices, and forms. Earlier, West hosted the theorist Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak within this series.

The concert is understood as the encounter itself. Following the performance, we invite the audience into conversation for a brief, informal moment of exchange, an extension of the listening. Not as a separate discussion or talk, but as something that continues from the music, where reflection, questions, and response remain in motion together, in what might be understood as a shared practice of study.

Fred Moten (text, voice) is a poet, cultural theorist, and scholar whose work explores Black study, aesthetics, and social life. He is Professor of Performance Studies and Comparative Literature at New York University. Across his writing and practice, Moten develops conceptual spaces for thinking with and through collective forms of life, sound, and relation. He is the author and co-author of key works including ‘The Undercommons: Fugitive Planning & Black Study’ and ‘In the Break’, which have become influential across fields of critical theory, performance studies, and the arts. Moten has received numerous fellowships and honors, including a MacArthur Fellowship (2020).

Brandon López (bass) is a bassist, composer, and improviser based in New York City. Working primarily with the double bass, his practice explores physicality, sound, and extended improvisational forms, often in collaboration across experimental music and performance contexts. He has performed internationally in a wide range of settings spanning contemporary music, free improvisation, and orchestral collaborations. In 2019, he was a featured soloist at the New York Philharmonic. In 2025, he was named Rising Star Bassist in the ‘DownBeat ‘Critics Poll. His work with Fred Moten includes duo and trio collaborations released on TAO Forms and Reading Group.