inburgered - integrated
momo festival 2023
Inburgered (Integrated) is a performance about the struggles of outsiders who try to integrate as “Dutch” citizens. Humorously rooted in his first-hand experiences and questions of global disparity in economics and legal status, labor, and discrimination, Omid turns his focus toward Dutch society from his perspective of living in the Netherlands as an artist in this performance.
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inburgered REVISITED
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new radicalism festival 2024
Inburgered "REVISITED" took place during the New Radicalism Festival in October 2024, offering a participatory performance session that transformed the Dutch inburgeringsexamen into a collective site of inquiry and embodied resistance. Developed by artist Omid Kheirabadi and building upon his solo performance Inburgered—previously presented at Theater Rotterdam and Poortgebouw in 2023—the session invited participants to engage in a two-hour process of unlearning, dialogue, and physical exploration. Together, they deconstructed the bureaucratic rituals of integration, revealing how the inburgering system enforces assimilation through covert structures of control, white supremacy, and neoliberal logic. Against the backdrop of growing right-wing ideologies and persistent global conflict, this project created space for reimagining what belonging might look like beyond state-sanctioned narratives. Participants with varying relationships to the inburgeringsexamen—those who had taken it, were about to, never would, or had never heard of it—were brought together to reflect on the everyday violence of institutionalized inclusion and to question the so-called neutrality of Dutch societal norms. Through performative exercises and group discussion, the session exposed the silent mechanisms that uphold exclusion while proposing new, collective imaginaries of coexistence. It was a moment of embodied reflection, shared vulnerability, and radical hope.
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