Make Noise! More than 400 people join the performance for Belarusian political prisoners in Amsterdam

Wearing cardboard masks featuring the faces of real Belarusian political prisoners, participants turned pots, cans, buckets, lids and other everyday objects into percussion instruments. For around 30 minutes, individual sounds gradually came together into a collective soundscape across the NDSM Wharf.

There were no professional performers at the centre of the piece. The people who came created the work themselves. Each participant decided what object and what sound to bring. Together, these separate gestures created a temporary community through listening, responding and sharing the same space.

The performance was rooted in a simple question: what happens when a number stops being a statistic and becomes a human presence?

The masks represented real people imprisoned for political reasons in Belarus. From a distance, the participants appeared as one collective body. Seen up close, that body became hundreds of individual faces, movements and sounds.

“The work begins with hundreds of individual sounds – imperfect, untrained, completely different – and gradually turns them into one collective organism. For me, that is the essence of the piece: people remain individuals, but through listening and responding to one another they create something that could never exist alone. We cannot return freedom to someone by making noise for twenty minutes. But we can refuse to let their absence become invisible.” – says Maxim Tyminko.

Tatiana Kochubinska, who also took part in the project, highlighted the importance of bringing the faces and stories of political prisoners into public space:

“Political prisoners disappear very easily into statistics, especially when repression lasts for years. This work brings their faces back into public space and reminds us that freedom is neither permanent nor guaranteed. Solidarity matters precisely because those who are imprisoned are meant to feel isolated and forgotten. Today, people in Amsterdam made it clear that they are not forgotten. Solidarity begins when another person’s loss of freedom stops feeling like someone else’s problem.”

Among those present was Maksim Znak, Belarusian lawyer, academic and writer, and a former political prisoner who spent more than five years behind bars following the events of 2020. A member of Belarus’s Coordination Council, Znak was sentenced to 10 years in prison in 2021 and released in December 2025.

Reflecting on the performance, Znak said:

“Creativity and inspiration were key factors that made the regime powerless in 2020, and the MakeNoise event has exactly that spirit. As the great Belarusian writer Uladzimir Karatkevich said: ‘Do the unexpected, do what seems impossible, do what no one else does — and then you will be victorious!’”

From discussion to collective action

A Percussion Piece followed the sold-out public freedom lecture Inside the Lukashenko Prison System, held at De Balie in Amsterdam on 5 September. The event brought together Nobel Peace Prize laureate and human rights defender Ales Bialiatski, philosopher and researcher Olga Shparaga, artists and human rights defenders to discuss political repression, freedom and forms of solidarity.

At NDSM, these questions moved from discussion into a shared physical experience. Rather than simply watching the artwork, hundreds of people became part of it.

The project was developed and produced by Stichting antiwarcoalition.art together with its partners and participating organisations, including Libereco.

Remembering those behind the numbers

The performance draws attention to the hundreds of political prisoners who remain behind bars in Belarus following the disputed 2020 presidential election and the subsequent crackdown on civil society.

By bringing their faces into public space, A Percussion Piece created a visible reminder that behind every statistic is an individual person whose freedom has been taken away.

The performance was professionally recorded in video and sound and will continue beyond the live event through a planned audiovisual installation.

Event facts

• 414 participants
• More than 1,500 registrations
• Approximately 100 visitors
• 30-minute performance
• Location: NDSM Wharf, Amsterdam
• Artist: Maxim Tyminko

The project was supported by Art Power Belarus and funded by the European Union, with additional support from Het Cultuurfonds and Vfonds.

Organised and produced by: Stichting antiwarcoalition.art

Partners: Stichting NDSM-werf, LIBERECO, MÁRA, Politzek.me, Viasna, De Balie, PEN Nederland, JUST, Pavetra e.V. and Foundation Max van der Stoel.