Us, (k)now Dalilla Hermans/hetpaleis & NTGent

2020 was the year of Covid. But also of the Black Lives Matter movement. Events with a big impact on young people. How does it feel to grow up in this strange mix of social unrest and oppression? In Us, (k)now  eight black teenage girls give their view on the future.

Dalilla Hermans is a writer and regular columnist with De Standaard.  In February 2020, she made her debut as a theater maker at NTGent with Her(e). To do so, she went into seclusion with about thirty black women for a weekend. On the basis of their conversations, she wrote a text about their lives in Belgium. About challenges and hope, work and theater, family and sisterhood.

(read more after the video)

Her(e)  inspired Hermans to go one step further. During the lockdown in the spring of 2021, she retreated with a group of black girls for a multi-day work session. Again, the experience of these conversations was magical. The girls got to know not only each other, but themselves better. The facilitating team discovered how much this generation of black youth is guiding itself into a new awareness.

Us, (k)now  will be a powerful, hopeful performance about black consciousness and the empowerment of today's generation of teens. A generation that has so much to say. A generation that still feels hampered by the chains of the past but also has the courage and encouragement to cut it all loose. A generation that makes each other stronger.