Born to Lose is a new sonic sculptural installation and performance exploring an impending sense of doom in the face of a new era of war and climate catastrophe. In this work, the artist combines the medieval fascination with the apocalypse with contemporary scientific understandings of our prominent role in destroying our own habitat. 

The work is performed and composed by the Publik Universal Frxnd with Liza Dries

The piece features a specially commissioned modular organ made by Seamus Cater entitled And Cut And Wreck And Burn And Bleed. It includes five prestant pipes crafted from an oak tree from the Vondelpark in Amsterdam, based on the 16th-century Organo di Legno that now resides in the Silberne Kapelle in Innsbruck. The pipes are carved using letterforms inspired by the Liber Chronicarum, a world history printed in 1493 that detailed the past, present, and future of the world by combining human and biblical histories. 

The organ is adorned with two-headed crows that tap out rhythms using embedded solenoids, engineered and printed by Dimi Wiertz.

These elements, the pipes and the birds that comprise the new instrument, are controlled via a computer interface (hardware and software) developed by Janne Kosmos.

This work is generously supported by the Mondriaan Fonds, Cultuurfonds and voordekunst.