MELTED FOR LOVE, Sonic Acts

Diogo Passarinho Studio developed the scenography and spatial consultancy for Melted for Love, establishing a cohesive spatial framework across three venues, W139, Arti et Amicitiae, and Rozenstraat – a rose is a rose is a rose.

Responding to the Biennial’s exploration of hospitality, kinship, and collective listening, the project approaches space as a sensitive and adaptive medium, one that holds, listens, and responds. Each venue is conceived as part of an interconnected ecology, supporting distinct curatorial trajectories while maintaining a shared spatial language grounded in attentiveness, care, and openness.

At W139, the scenographic approach supports works engaging ecological catastrophe, extractive histories, and contested infrastructures. At Arti et Amicitiae, the spatial framework embraces love as a regenerative, more-than-human force, accommodating practices rooted in ancestral memory, land, and environmental entanglement. At Rozenstraat, the design creates conditions for reflecting on ongoing grief and temporal continuity, resisting closure while holding space for collective mourning.

Across all sites, materials, thresholds, and spatial rhythms are carefully composed to foster proximity, permeability, and participation. Rather than prescribing fixed narratives or pathways, the design invites open-ended encounters, allowing sound, bodies, and stories to co-compose the environment. Visitors are positioned not as passive spectators, but as participants within a shared field of relations.

The project engages scenography as a practice of care, cultivating conditions for vulnerability, exchange, and solidarity. It contributes to the Biennial’s broader inquiry into how listening can shape new forms of togetherness, and how spatial design can support temporary yet meaningful experiences of belonging.

2026 Sonic Acts, NL
Curator: Angeliki Tzortzakaki
Exhibition Design: Diogo Passarinho Studio

Team: Diogo Passarinho and Gonçalo Reynolds

Artists: Lower Levant Company (in collaboration with Olga Micińska), Adelita Husni-Bey, Diana Policarpo and Bernardo Gaeiras, Alina Schmuch, Maeve Brennan, Nour Shantout, Noor Abed, Dominique White, Ameneh Solati, HUNITI GOLDOX, Arjuna Neuman, Eglė Budvytytė, Eliana Otta, Christian Nyampeta,  Kivu Ruhorahoza

Production: Radina Alexandrova

Photography: Pieter Kers