A Solidarity Action “A Percussion Piece” Took Place In Amsterdam. What Was It Like?
Reform.news Editorial Team · 20 September 2026, 11:50
https://reform.news/en/a-solidarity-action-a-percussion-piece-took-place-in-amsterdam-what-was-it-like/A large-scale participatory performance titled “A Percussion Piece” took place on the evening of September 19 at Amsterdam’s famous NDSM shipyard. People of different nationalities came from various cities to take part in a joint performance in support of prisoners who remain behind bars in Belarus for political reasons.
According to the idea of the project’s author, media artist and curator Maxim Tyminko, participants registered for the event created a shared soundscape while wearing cardboard masks bearing the faces of real Belarusian political prisoners — as a symbolic “voice” of those whom attempts are being made to silence in prisons. The video recording of the performance is also expected to become a separate work of art to be shown at various venues.
Maxim Tyminko conceived the action so that each participant could experience direct contact with a person who cannot be heard. The organizers described the action as an artistic statement about human dignity, solidarity and vulnerability.
We asked one of the performance participants, artist Andrei Dureika, what the action looked like from inside the “soundscape.”
“I was inside, so I don’t know how many participants there were. There weren’t that many spectators, but they weren’t really the target audience. The participants gathered for about two hours, people got acquainted and communicated. Before the action, Maksim Znak and other former political prisoners spoke. Musicians performed as a warm-up.
People had different things in their hands. One person came with some kind of award — a sports trophy; some had buckets and canned goods, while Africans and Iranians brought their own musical instruments.”
“Inside, you can hear only the people next to you — no more than about ten people away. There were all kinds of people. Near me, some were playing drums professionally, creating a rhythm, and everyone else adapted to that rhythm. At one point, I completely lost my sense of time; I thought only half of the performance had passed. But then a signal was given, and everything ended.”
“Now I’m very interested to see what it will look like in post-production and what rhythm these sounds have been turned into.”
The video of the action is expected to appear soon as a separate work of art. Reportage photographs from the performance can be seen on the project’s social media accounts.