Seaven Tear s. Dowland Retold

A living palimpsest of sound and memory, Seaven Tears. Dowland Retold lets multiple temporalities unfold at once. Layers of music, recollection and meaning surface and dissolve, reflecting on the fragile, ever‑shifting act of remembering - how we recall, retell, forget and reinvent, and how those shifting memories shape the worlds we inhabit.

Drawing on John Dowland’s Lachrimae (1604), the work reimagines this intimate suite for our own time: lute, viola, accordion and early analogue electronics. Each instrument inhabits its own temporal and interpretative layer - some close to the original, others fragmented, filtered or transformed through improvisation and electronic manipulation.

What emerges is a performance suspended between memory and fiction, presence and absence. Not only a meditation on loss or decay, but a celebration of memory’s creative force - a reminder that by retelling, we do not simply remember; we re‑imagine. We do not retrieve the past; we assemble it anew.

In collaboration with Wilde Westen & Conservatorium Kortrijk.