Youri Van Willigen Stefan — Emmerik Uit Tilburg

Their conversation turned toward more urgent matters when Stefan, after a few minutes of watching a late tram disappear into the damp night, said, “There’s something I need to show you. Not for anyone else. Just—come.”

Their conversation pivoted when Stefan brought up an old mutual acquaintance—an art curator from Eindhoven who’d once promised them both doors into a European festival circuit but had quietly retreated. “I bumped into her at a conference,” Stefan said. “She mentioned a residency in southern France. Thought of you.” youri van willigen stefan emmerik uit tilburg

Stefan explained, quietly and carefully, that he’d been collecting recordings—of trains, of conversations in cafés, of the bell that tolled near the university. “I’m stitching together a portrait,” he said. “A sound-map of Tilburg. Not documentary, exactly—more like a memory stitched with found objects.” Their conversation turned toward more urgent matters when

On an autumn evening, as the lamps came up and the tramline glowed faintly, Youri and Stefan walked the route they had first taken that week. They spoke of old promises, of unfinished songs, of places they might go. Tilburg hummed around them: the city had teeth, yes, but also a surprising tenderness. Youri reached into his pocket and fumbled out the little folded note with the phone number he’d been meaning to call—the one he had never called during the years when calls felt like commitments. This time, he let it remain folded. He had realized something else: some calls are for new directions, others are for rehearsals. “I bumped into her at a conference,” Stefan said

It was an emblematic comment: Tilburg as organism, resilient and sometimes stubborn. Their conversation curved from municipal projects into deeper terrain—childhood memory, failed projects, the lives they’d almost chosen. Youri confessed, with a candor he surprised himself by adopting, that he’d been thinking about leaving the city. “Not permanently,” he said, “but enough to press reset. I keep thinking about Amsterdam, maybe a small place near the water. Different rhythm.”

When he returned the call to the residency coordinator, he surprised himself by asking for one month instead of the full term: long enough to taste new light, short enough to assure the people he was rooted with that he wouldn’t disappear. He emailed Stefan about the exhibition, suggesting a title: “Tilburg as Palimpsest.” The word felt right—layers visible, traces of what had been written over still legible if one knew how to look.