The HM Concert - PERMANENT DESTRUCTION

PERMANENT DESTRUCTION is back. Following on from their first successful theatrical concert performance The SK Concert, the pop-up band consisting of theatre maker/performer Naomi Velissariou and sound producer Joost Maaskant returned. This second time around the code word is feminist terrorism. The HM Concert featured visuals by photographer and visual artist Jan Hoek.

In The HM Concert, Naomi Velissariou confronts the uncompromising work of German author and director Heiner Müller. In a radical interpretation, Velissariou expresses what she sees as the core of Müller’s work by dissecting and transforming it through the themes of misogyny, sexism, and feminist extremism. For her, a theatrical concert is the ultimate way to bring these ideas to light.

The HM Concert is the second part of a post-dystopian music theatre trilogy that seeks to break free from taboos in today’s visual culture. 

Feelings like heartbreak and misogyny are often avoided in this culture because they’re not sexy or Instagram-worthy. After all, pain doesn’t exactly help build your personal brand. Or does it?  PERMANENT DESTRUCTION shows that you can exorcise fear by honoring it – that all heaviness can leave your shoulders when you dance to the rhythm of your pain. The music – ranging from techno to trap, hardcore, and punk – offers an electrifying embodiment of a dark message, or as the band puts it: melodrama on speed.

The HM Concert premiered in May 2019 at SPRING Festival in Utrecht and toured across the Netherlands and Belgium until February 2020. Naomi then created part III: Pain Against Fear, for which she received the Theo d'Or 2020–2021. In 2018, she made part I: The SK Concert, which earned her the Directing Award.