Welcome to dreamspace, conceived from my mind. Please leave behind worry of any kind,
you may take root in the present
and plant your feet wherever
you feel the ground beneath you.

I invite you to wander around in this virtual garden.

(you may get lost at any time)

Application Associated artists

Tumba x Beurschouwburg

I. The Seed - A guided meditation

II. Unnamed (2022)

Animated collage with meditative soundscape
for“Recaptioning Congo” expo at FOMU

III. The creation (2020) -
visual spoken word performance accompanied by music

created for Het Bos Antwerp

My name is Tumba (they/them), a full-time healing human being and artist, researcher and spaceholder. As a racialized, non-binary queer individual, I recognize that parts of my inherent disposition are altered by systemic violence and generational sickness.

Rituals grew from my practice as a spoken word performer, where my voice became a vehicle, transiting through thoughts, often entering a liminal space between limbs and lips. However, I often felt hypervisible, and uncomfortable with the given dynamics between the performer and crowd. Too often it left me feeling drained, regurgitating the same poems that retrace family lineage, reopening unhealed wounds, and making me source from a well that wasn’t being watered. The search for a more sustainable way of performing brought me the seed of guided meditations.
From this seed, a lot of my work has been growing organically towards creating spaces where I use my voice, sounds, visuals, somatic exercises, and plant medicine, to create a moment of contemplation. It is an ongoing experiment on what can happen within the context of a “performance”, and how to use the possibilities of a stage as a place for collective transformation.

Guided meditation, to some, are vague and mysterious concepts that seem to belong to the white, rich and otherwise privileged few. This is far from true, it is a spiritual and ancestral practice which is interwoven into our (cellular) memory. Every opportunity to reclaim and expand this practice with others has been a blessing. I’ve had the pleasure of facilitating rituals before concerts, workshops, festivals and other community events, and every time I’m reminded of the magical potential it holds, and how it is an incredibly powerful tool for deeper interconnectedness.

I thereby adjust the focus of the guided meditation on a specific context but always carry with
me the intention to allow mother nature and her creations to speak through me, to exchange knowledge and understanding from all forms of organic intelligence, and to direct these so they may become fuel for our collective futures.

Since 2022 I've been facilitating as part of the Back2SoilBasics collective, which seeks to make the philosophy of permaculture accessible to marginalized communities in and around Brussels through urban interventions. This translates into workshops, participatory design, collective cooking sessions, foraging and so much more. We start from the conviction that finding a connection to the more-than-human world is a portal to a more spacious society. Practicing in a collective setting has been the undercurrent of my creative flow.

With my application to this program, I intend to bring in my community, and the dreams we carry together. We dream of a world where art and breath can come from the same heartfelt space of surrender. We dream of making art from an embodied place, nurturing the needs that have been reduced to stubborn weeds at the side of the street.

A residency allows/invites a vacancy, a spaciousness in our minds that allows for subtle reprogramming. During these periods with bsb, I would like to deepen my practice as both a spaceholder and a performer. Concretely, I want to allocate some time and budget to facilitate workshops for other artists, organizers and creatives using guided meditation, movement and conversation. The intention here is to reflect upon and develop new rituals that can enrich our individual practices. I want to bring in my own network (the collectives that are part of my soul/soil family) as well as a broader public.


Concurrently, I’d like to continue nurturing my own artistic pratice through further developing an EP where I go deeper into the poetic metaphors hidden within (our) nature. For this I’d like to invite sound artists, musicians and vocalists during the residency and archive the synergies that arise. I feel intuitively that there will be an overlap between these spaces, and things will organically connect.This program would allow me to receive a framework, material support, a sounding board as well as a platform to open our ongoing invitation to the world. My offerings during this trajectory could take many shapes, depending on the context and collective needs/desire.

I look forward to discussing, dreaming and dive into the desire we share as a collective.

In the meantime, I invite you to listen to the guided meditation offered below.

Thank you for witnessing,

Tumba

Keep scrolling for a glance into the garden of my mind

(selected works)

Overview:
- Words for beurschouwburg
- A guided walk into the garden of my mind
(3 selected works)
- Tumba's Resume

please find
a quiet space
where you can
plant your feet
and close your eyes

Want more?

- end of this unfinished container -