Each Saturday at 8 pm, composer and artist Billy Bultheel’s composition Act I (Le rachat des cloches) resonates from the memorial’s carillon. Serving as a prologue to the latest chapter of his performance series A Short History of Decay (ongoing since 2023), the piece draws on research into the Nazi regime’s confiscation of church bells during World War II, a time when thousands of bells across Europe were melted down as raw material for the arms industry. This campaign of armament and suppression of dissent led to the disappearance of the centuries-old craft of bell casting from collective memory. Bultheel’s work not only engages with these historical traces but also draws a parallel to our present conjuncture, marked by the looming threat to democratic values posed by the rise of fascism. The research is a collaboration with the Lebanese writer Edwin Nasr. 

A Short History of Decay III will be performed at Mahnmal St. Nikolai on September 5, 2026, as the fifth edition of the Night Shifts artistic program. Curated by Rosanna Graf, Lisa Klosterkötter, and Gesa Troch.

Billy Bultheel was born in Brussels in 1987. He lives and works between Berlin and Brussels. 

Carillonneur: Werner Lamm