The Year of Desire

How do you perceive your own body? Who are you beyond that body? When do you feel beautiful? Where does shame come from, and how do we navigate desire? What do you truly long for?

Leading up to the sensory audio performance BLOOS de mens (2023), a merger of Marte’s earlier works BLOOS (2018) and BLOOS de mannen (2021), The Year of Desire launched in February 2023: a program exploring intimacy and sensuality from every angle. Each session spotlights a different artist or maker. Together with a diverse community of 70 members, Marte explored our yearnings and how we can manifest those desires through art.

What is the year of desire?

When we hear words like sensuality, desire, or intimacy, we often think of eroticism or sex. But it is so much more than that: through sensuality, you bring life energy into every aspect of your existence. In The Year of Desire, we connect from inside out, from your deepest shame to the greatest freedom. Across ten sessions, we explore desire in all its forms and facets, translating personal longing into a collective experience.

The Year of Desire was an ongoing dialogue between Marte and the community: on one hand, a thoughtfully curated program; on the other, a space for sharing personal and intimate lived experiences. Marte invited various theatre makers and artists to work in her studio and share their artistic process with participants. Together with her team, Marte created a safe space for every gathering to explore the physical, embodied nature of desire.

The programme

Session 1: The Hungry Body

A sensory dinner with Katrijn Westland. In this first session, we got to know one another by sharing a meal. Don't expect an ordinary dinner: by stripping away certain senses or stimulating others, this became a sensual and adventurous evening. Eating without hands, a scent as a course and aphrodisiacs you’ve never experienced before: Katrijn Westland (scenographer of The Year of Grief and the performance GRIEF) created a feast centered entirely around the senses.

Session 2: One's Own Body

This session revolved entirely around body image. How do we view our own bodies, and how do we move through them with confidence? What expectations do we hold, and how can movement teach us to love our physical forms - especially those parts we usually criticize? Perry Gits, a prominent figure in the international ballroom scene, dancer, and maker (his performance PERRY won the Golden Cricket award in 2022), vigorously welcomed us into his world. Expect attitude, joy, and a safe space to embrace your body exactly as it is.

Session 3: The Blushing Body

Everyone feels shame - whether about parts of their body or aspects of their behavior and character. Emmy-Koos Meijer paints people in her practice in the most intimate way possible: exposed, literally and figuratively. During her one-on-one live drawing sessions, she interviews her subjects about their body image, doubts, and desires. How do we deal with shame? Can there be strength hidden within sharing it? Emmy offers the experience of 'gazing with softness' (zacht kijken), as she calls it. During The Year of Desire, Emmy-Koos spent a month in residency in our studio to further develop her practice, sharing her findings during this third session. Some people even felt brave enough to be painted on the spot? (Entirely optional).

Session 4: The Enjoying Body

Which sensory experiences make you come alive? Running your hand through a bag of rice, lying shirtless on a cold tiled floor, listening to music drifting in from another room. The fourth session was all about sensuality - sensory experiences that make you feel truly alive. These can be erotic, but certainly don't have to be. In a session with Marte and scenographer Geartsje van der Zee, we worked on 'the physical conversation,' an exploration into sensory forms of communication that Marte uses in the audience discussions after BLOOS de mens.

Session 5: The Anxious Body

To explore desire is to inevitably encounter our fears. Some fears are so old that words can barely reach them. But the body keeps the score. Markus Schnizer, a body coach with a background in dance, works with trauma in his practice. Through touch, he creates a safe space to feel (old) fears and pain. Certain postures or touches can trigger traumatic memories long forgotten, but with Markus, you make room to process those emotions. Marte—who has been seeing Markus for years—calls it "a sauna for the soul." Markus was closely involved in developing BLOOS through his knowledge of the body and trauma. In this session, we worked directly with his approach. (If you preferred not to be touched, you were very welcome to simply observe).

Session 6: The Safe Body

With the resident artist of session six, we went in search of a safe space. Safe to share, safe to be who you are, safe to desire whatever you wish. How do you shape such a space? What conditions are needed? When do you feel truly seen as a human being, and when does fight-or-flight kick in? Together with resident artist Papaya Kuir, we explored the safe body.

Session 7: The Masculine Body

In this session, we worked with photographer Lily Cummings, who also shot the imagery for BLOOS de mannen. With Lily, we investigated masculinity. What does it mean to be masculine, and how does that translate into visual images? Working alongside Lily on her series Bodies On Paper, we stepped into our masculine strength. (If you preferred not to be photographed, observing was completely fine).

Session 8: The Performance BLOOS de mens

Members of The Year of Desire, received access to the performance BLOOS de mens at De School Amsterdam. BLOOS de mens combines BLOOS (2020) and BLOOS de mannen (2021) into a performance free of gender boxes, where people share their most intimate inner worlds. For BLOOS de mens, Marte interviewed individuals aged 10 to 100 about sensuality, intimacy, and desire. Reclining inside a personal cocoon, you listen to one of these stories while your cocoon provides a physical experience tailored to the narrative. BLOOS de mens is open, raw, and sensory: a performance without shame.

Session 9: The Feminine Body

During the ninth session, we went in search of your divine feminine energy. What is feminine within you? What contrasting forces reside inside your being? Together with movement director and performer Simomo Bouj, we explored how to play with our elusive feminine side and work with your personal definition of "feminine." What do we actually mean by feminine, and who gets to decide?

Session 10: The Free Body

Whoever feels safe and seen is free, Marte is convinced of this. You, with all your fears, traumas, triggers, and user manuals: you are allowed to exist fully. This year was designed as a mirror to see and embrace yourself. Whoever is free dares to give everything. In this session with Isabel Burr Raty, we searched for our life energy, chi, prana, kundalini, the microcosmic orbit, the fountain of youth, whatever you wish to call it. Through her Beauty Kit Project, Isabel developed eco-erogenous para-pharmaceutics—beauty products made from female fluid—raising radical questions about exploitation, agency, and sexuality.

Session 11: Beyond the Body (Year-End Closing)

In The Year of Desire, we explored the many states of our physical body and being. We traveled from our anxious body, through our blushing body and our yin and yang, to the safe and free body. We explore intimacy, sensuality, and desire in all their forms. In this final session of The Year of Desire, we looked back on the year and moved beyond the physical. How do we connect with the cosmic, with the world around us, with people, plants, animals, and that singular feeling when standing atop a mountain? How do we connect with the divine?