IN CONVERSATION WITH ANIMISTIC BELIEFS & JEISSON DRENTH
Words by SAMO ŠAJN
Rotterdam-based electronic duo Animistic Beliefs teams up with media artist Jeisson Drenth for an immersive live audiovisual performance, Thức Tỉnh. This collaborative show, blending captivating visuals and experimental soundscapes, explores themes of cultural heritage, technology, and identity. The performance will take place on January 10th at the renowned Muziekgebouw.
ANIMISTIC BELIEFS
Animistic Beliefs is a Rotterdam-based duo creating a new, creole musical language that blends IDM, global club, and jungle music. Drawing inspiration from their Southeast Asian roots and queer experiences, Marvin’s Molucan heritage and Linh’s Vietnamese-Chinese background, they push boundaries in the experimental electronic scene. Their work celebrates cultural heritage while embracing fearless techno experimentation.
Can you walk us through the collaborative process of developing Thức Tỉnh?
We’ve collaborated with Jeisson for years, starting with a music video that grew into a live audiovisual show. During COVID, we developed an installation for museums, which came about organically, making the process feel natural and fulfilling.
With Thức Tỉnh, we wanted to push ourselves creatively, exploring new mediums and forms of expression. For us, that included experimenting with movement, crafting masks, and sharing personal stories through these mediums.
The process was collaborative and organic, involving brainstorming sessions and a mind map to capture themes and ideas. From there, we structured the performance into five scenes. Each of us leads in one or more scenes to highlight personal experiences, with moments where we come together on stage.
How did your individual artistic practices influence one another?
After our first collaboration, and we got to know each other better, we noticed that we actually share a lot of the same experiences as bi-culturally raised queer indivduals living in The Netherlands. We also share interests, socio political views and being neurodivergent haha. We use different ways to express ourselves in our work tho! I think we challenge and also affirm each others thoughts and inspire each other with our practices and our ways of being. And because our work is a translation of our being, all that I just mentioned, also influences our individual practices.
What challenges or breakthroughs did you experience while merging music, visuals, and performance into an immersive AV show?
With this show we have tried to move away from the traditional live show (music and visuals on a screen). We wanted to incorporate more. To be able to make a performance with many different elements, such as movement, calligraphy, shadow puppetry weaved together we also needed a bigger team and also a production team to make this all happen. Which can at time also be challenging because you’re working with more people, but it has been very nice to learn from each other and explore ideas together.
The show is deeply inspired by pre-colonial traditions. How did you go about researching and integrating these cultural heritages into your work?
Since 2020, we’ve delved deeply into our cultures to explore identity and belonging. Our work reflects these personal journeys, inspiring the stories told in this performance.
As part of Thức Tỉnh, I perform live calligraphy, writing key themes from my exploration of identity as a way to reclaim my Chinese heritage. Growing up, I often denied this part of myself to avoid discrimination, despite learning to write Chinese characters as a child. Reconnecting with this heritage and sharing it with the audience feels deeply personal and empowering.
We’ve also integrated traditional Vietnamese and Moluccan instruments into the music. These familiar sounds, which we first explored in our album MERDEKA, are now woven with electronic elements to enrich the performance.
Could you elaborate on the tools and techniques you used, such as drum machines, synthesizers, and visual design, to create the ethereal and transformative space of Thức Tỉnh?
For the sound, we use our live setup, including the Elektron Analog Rytm drum machine and a eurorack modular synthesizer, while expanding into new instruments. Linh plays the Soma Electronics Enner, which uses the body to control sound, and the traditional Vietnamese Sáo Bầu flute, a reed instrument that resonates through a gourd.
Visually, we incorporate handmade masks, live shadow puppetry, and movement inspired by traditional Indonesian dances to enhance the ethereal and transformative atmosphere.
The performance features distinct sections blending electronic and acoustic elements, dance, text, and poetry. How did you structure these elements to ensure they compliment rather than compete with each other?
The chosen elements naturally enhance and complement one another. Each scene combines different elements to create harmony: Linh’s calligraphy performance pairs with electronic music, Mar’s scene blends movement with electronic and traditional instruments, and the puppetry scene integrates a partially live soundscape of electronic and acoustic instruments. This structure ensures each combination works seamlessly.
How does Thức Tỉnh challenge conventional narratives in electronic music and performance art?
Thức Tỉnh challenges conventional narratives in electronic music and performance art by embracing imperfection and humanity. Instead of focusing on technical mastery, we explore, experiment, and allow space for vulnerability and unexpected beauty. Combining dance, mask-making, sound design, and storytelling—often outside our formal training—has let us approach the work with fresh perspectives, resulting in something raw and honest.
What role does the audience play in your performances? How do you envision their interaction with the immersive world you’re creating, and what would you like them to take away from the night?
We want the audience to feel connected to the performance, finding parts of themselves within it. It’s about bringing people together, sparking conversations, and sharing thoughts. The show is partially seated and partially standing, allowing people to interact with it as they feel comfortable. As the performance progresses through its stages, some parts invite contemplation, while the final fast-paced rave scene offers a space for release and liberation.
With Thức Tỉnh, you bridge cultural roots and cutting-edge technology. How do you see this project contributing to the larger conversation about inclusivity and representation in the arts?
We don’t approach Thức Tỉnh as a deliberate contribution to conversations about inclusivity or representation. For us, it’s about pursuing our passions—exploring new mediums, connecting with cultural roots, sharing stories, and enjoying the creative process. That said, who we are and the stories we share naturally bring representation into the work. Thức Tỉnh reflects our personal experiences and backgrounds, and by being authentic, we hope to inspire others to see that their stories and perspectives belong in the arts. If it sparks a conversation or resonates meaningfully with someone, that’s a wonderful bonus.
Lastly, what are your hopes for the show - will this be a standalone performance or are there plans to develop it into an extended run of dates?
We are talking with festivals and venues that give space for these type of performances to happen and we are very excited to be able to do this performance in different places. So I guess stay tuned and keep an eye on our social media for the upcoming dates!
JEISSON DRENTH
Jeisson Drenth is a media and performance artist exploring technology’s role in shaping our past, present, and future. Combining video, sculpture, performance, poetry, and music, his work reflects queer perspectives and his experience with intercultural migration. After six years as a VJ and designer, Jeisson began his practice in 2019, with his first solo exhibition focusing on DNA testing and the ethics of genetic selection. His work delves into identity, displacement, and cultural heritage.
Could you tell us about your role as a media artist in Thức Tỉnh? How did your collaboration with Animistic Beliefs come to life?
Linh, Mar, and I began collaborating in 2019 when I created the music video for their track An Eye for A.I. Using photogrammetry and photography, I developed visuals exploring ways to depict Linh, Mar, and their instruments. This evolved into our first audiovisual show, CACHE/SPIRIT, which delved into the interplay of technology, identity, cultural heritage, and environment.
When COVID hit, we adapted the show into an installation, which traveled to museums, festivals, and theaters. Over time, we began incorporating more creative disciplines—adding languages like Spanish and Vietnamese, acoustic instruments, and even poetry. Each project has built upon the last, leading us to Thức Tỉnh, which brings together all these evolving elements in an exciting and dynamic way.
Can you describe your creative process in developing the visual aesthetics for the show?
My creative process revolves around shaping my past, present, and future—reclaiming my agency in this journey. It began with writing poetry, first in English and later in Spanish, to explore belonging as someone adopted from Bogotá, Colombia, and raised in Europe. Learning from peers, community organizers, writers, and artists continually drives my work, which reflects both personal vulnerability and networked, subversive elements.
For Thức Tỉnh, I use techniques like scavenging archives, 3D scanning environments from Vietnam, Ambon, and Colombia, filming in natural history museums, and building archives of objects. These media, processed through various software, form immersive visual worlds. My work bridges personal longing—for example, dreaming of the Colombian jungle—with larger narratives about colonial history, restitution, and Indigenous liberation.
The show also marks my first steps into advanced CGI/3D graphics, creating nature-inspired environments tied to my heritage. Grounding this artistic practice are years of learning anti-racist theory, studying colonial museum histories, and engaging with Indigenous movements. This holistic and connected creative process allows me to remix and transform media into new stories to share on stage.
How did you approach this performance - did this differ from your approach with previous projects?
The most important part of the creative process for me was finding new forms of expression that resonate with who I am today and the world as it is now. This year marks my ten-year anniversary in live visuals for nightlife/electronic music. In that time, I’ve challenged myself within the constraints of screens on the dancefloor. However, I eventually felt limited by creating within that space—using my laptop to generate visuals and ornamentation.
In my solo presentations at cultural organizations, I began to explore music, poetry, installation, sculpture, and performance. Thức Tỉnh brings together all the techniques and ideas I’ve developed along the way. I now perform on piano, with music I composed in Ableton, paired with two new poems set to surtitles and visuals I created using a new technique.
For my solo scene, I began by searching for an instrument to work with. I knew I wanted to use the Pito Murcielago, a bat-shaped whistle from the Tairona people that I acquired in Colombia. With its singular note, I built a soundscape that became the foundation for new poetry. After experimenting with various instruments and software, I settled on the piano and a track that emotionally resonated with me. I merged it with digital music and wrote two texts exploring my relationship with the instrument, my ancestry, and the feelings of displacement.
The visuals for my scene reconstruct the Tatacoa Desert in Colombia, known for its unique landscape and stargazing conditions. This multi-disciplinary journey—including courses in Ableton, virtual filmmaking, animation, and piano lessons—has been an inspiring rollercoaster. Collaborating with Linh, Mar, and our brilliant team has pushed me into new creative territories and affirmed this process.
What do you hope audiences take away from the multimedia experience of Thức Tỉnh, especially in terms of the visual narrative?
I want audiences to connect with the art on multiple levels—emotionally, intellectually, and culturally. Art, image production, and storytelling all carry socio-political and historical contexts, which invite us to engage with them. Through Thức Tỉnh, we aim to break free from the cultural conditioning imposed by dominant power structures. This project is about finding our voices and envisioning a shared future.
The texts, music, and visuals in my scenes, as well as the collective moments on stage, are created to help me reconnect with my cultural heritage, which Western culture has often alienated me from. This production represents a shift from critique to creating beauty. If I can move someone, even just a little, with my voice, sound design, and visuals, I will feel fulfilled.
Animistic Beliefs and Jeisson Drenth premiere their new live AV show, Thức Tỉnh, on the 10th of January at Muziekgebouw in Amsterdam, as part of FIBER x The Rest is Noise Festival. Tickets available HERE.
