In the Mouth of the Room #1
Line up: Cherella Gessel aka Chella Chella, Luka Prelas, Robin Plenio, Mark Alberto aka M Alberto | Curated and hosted by Sunni Lamin Barrow

What does a room hold?

What does it swallow, refuse, and amplify?

And if the space speaks back, do we answer?

In The Mouth of the Room is a 70-minute performance program where poetry, music, and movement unfold as a continuous act of listening. Across four artists, the stage becomes a living space, one that breathes and responds, and all who enter it become part of it.

Each artist contributes to a shared composition where nothing fully begins or ends, but instead circulates. A voice lingers. A sound stretches. A body interrupts or absorbs. Works bleed into one another, forming a single evolving landscape for the evening.

The “mouth” is both metaphor and mechanism: a site of speech, but also of consumption and transformation. The room listens as much as it speaks. Together with the audience, the artists shape what can be said and shared, and what remains unsaid and unshared.

This is an invitation to experience performance as something shared and unstable, where boundaries between disciplines dissolve, and where the audience is not outside the work, but within it.

Artists

Cherella Gessel, also known as Chella Chella, is a multidisciplinary artist and model. They combine text-based theater as well as physical performance—in theater and film—with dance, rap, spoken word, modeling, styling, hairstyling, and makeup. Cherella always creates from their own frame of reference and personal subjects and interests. For instance, YONIVERSE—“A theatrical hip-hop concert for Black, Queer Bitches”—was a solo performance in which they sought healing from traumas caused by society and internal conflicts. Healing is a subject close to their hearts, and they incorporate it as much as possible into their work. In 2020, they received an honorable mention for their participation with YONIVERSE at the Fringe Festival, and in 2021, they received both the 3 Package Deal and the Amsterdam Prize for the Arts in the Stimulating Prize category.
 

Luka Prelas (she/her) is a Croatian-bred, Zaandam-based writer and spoken word artist. In her work, she explores (her) humanity - traumas, loves, struggles with being a trans “other”, and her solidarities with “other others” - through a trans Lens. 

She won a feminist performance prize at the 2nd Queer and Feminist Awards in 2023, got published in an Amsterdam-based magazine 'Issue' in 2024, and was a 2025 Spoken Awards finalist. Luka thinks of her style as exorcism-like, often angry, seldom sweet, with a sprinkle of nasty and a dash of hope.
 

Robin Plenio is a composer, theatre maker and media artist. 

He studied musicology, cultural studies, new compositional techniques at the University of  Hildesheim and at the HfMT Hamburg.
His performances and installations often utilise documentary and biographical approaches that are interwoven into the theatre machinery whilst having a strong focus on sound.

Robins post digital approach towards his artistic practice opens up a variety of artistic research fields like videogameart, artificial intelligence, sensor based performances and embodied electronic music that become part of his aesthetic repertoire. He treats compositional techniques not only as purely musical but as concepts that can be applied to video, light, movement or dramaturgy. 

He understands artistic work as a collaborative and interdisciplinary process where he works in different constellations as a composer, performer, programmer, dramaturg, media artist, activist or video designer. 

In various constellations Robins work can be seen and heard at Ballhaus Ost Berlin, Kampnagel Hamburg, Botkyrka Konsthall Stockholm, Lichthof Theater Hamburg, Sophiensaele Berlin or Nationaltheater Mannheim amongst others. 

Since 2025 he continues his research in the DAS Theatre Program at the Amsterdam University of the Arts.

He lives and works in Berlin and Amsterdam.
 

M ALBERTO ian artist born in Curaçao and currently based in Amsterdam. M works on both sides of the Atlantic: as a composer, poet, arranger, saxophonist and maker of documentary theatre and essay performances. Bio:artist born in Curaçao and currently based in Amsterdam. M works on both sides of the Atlantic: as a composer, poet, arranger, saxophonist and maker of documentary theatre and essay performances. M's performances have been described as “lively and haunting, full of energy and urgency” (WDR3, Germany) and as "mystical weaving" (Volkskrant).

M's performances have been described as “lively and haunting, full of energy and urgency” (WDR3, Germany) and as "mystical weaving" (Volkskrant).