‘Renée van Trier is a musician, performer and painter. An interdisciplinary artist with a sense for confusion, seduction, and theharassment of her audience. She does not fit into musical schemes — her indefinable sounds are reminiscent of Dadaist improv, Neue Deutsche Welle and avant-garde artists like Laurie Anderson and Yoko Ono. As in her performances, she also seeks the musical confrontation with the audience: eccentric singing, shamelessness, a mixture of creativity and madness — it could get uncomfortable, but of the good kind!’
Text: Sabine Ruch

As part of the experimental and innovative music program of the Onze Ambassade festival, the work Renée van Trier was shown. Through her performances, van Trier searches for the intersections between theater, museums, concert venues and festivals. The audience was confronted with a popstar in tracksuit, the birth of an alien creature, and a gabber dancer to complete the whole. With her self-presentation she reflects on the current era of social media and pop culture. Van Trier seduces us with recognizable elements of the entertainment industry such as styling, mainstream music genres, stereotypical lyrics, props and dance movements. But the moment we notice these elements are in fact obscured or distorted through exaggeration, we feel almost cheated. Van Trier forces us to rethink what we see, and to not simply consume, but really dare to look.

Onze Ambassade is a collaboration between ANNA Vastgoed and WEST Den Haag, through which they give new meaning to the former American embassy, the national monument at the Lange Voorhout. Last year, during the annually held Uit Festival on the Lange Voorhout, West contributed with the Onze Ambassade Festival through two days full of music, performances, exhibitions, workshops, lectures, debate and tours.