An x-ray and anaesthesia machine perform one magic trick in a blue room.
Amos Peled
Location: Nowhere, Circle Studio
duration: 40 min
- GENRE: Magic / illusionism, Multimedia performance, Music theatre
- THEME: Connection, More than human
- LANGUAGE: Language No Problem
- ACCESSIBILITY: Assistance dogs welcome, Genderneutral toilets, Toilet for wheelchair users, Wheelchair accessible
info
The Machine Sleeps Tonight is a performance by Amos Peled, in which medical technology and ideas are appropriated beyond their clinical function into instruments of expression. Explored with humour, freight and doubt.
For now, there is no one in the room; no doctor or patient. Only an anesthesia machine, breathing deeply, releasing air from its mechanical lungs, at a steady, gentle pace. A large shadow is cast over the room, an inflated balloon, singing in sync with the ventilator, its single black eye winking at its rescuer.
Biography
Amos Peled is a multidisciplinary artist whose practice explores the creative repurposing of medical technologies and concepts as a way to investigate the relationship between humans and technology. He graduated from the ArtScience MA program at the Royal Academy of Art, The Hague (KABK) and KC in 2022. During this period he developed Phantom Limb (2023) a work in which a medical ultrasound machine is used as an audiovisual performative instrument making his inner body into a stage. This approach is rooted in his personal experiences as a patient who was dependent on medical systems. With the support of the Stimulerings fonds talent development (2024–2025), Peled further developed this methodology. In 2025, he premiered The Machine Sleeps Tonight at the National Theatre in The Hague. This work employs medical technologies as speculative instruments, raising questions about medical environments. In the same year, his first solo exhibition, Operation Theatre, opened at Tetem in Enschede, presenting a series of artificial organs positioned outside the body as performers.
credits
concept & performance Amos Peled | dramaturgy Ariel Sereni Brown | light and sound design Yoel Peled | costumes Jojo Knowles | scenography and technical production Maarten Keus, Amos Peled
supported by Amarte Foundation
special thanks Residenties in Utrecht, Diane Mahín, Marijn Alexander de Jong, Inga Hirsch, Karel van Laere, Jacob Wallett, Job Sante, Hadas Kedar, Marlen Pflüger, Pelle Schilling, Lila Maria de Coninck, Beate Poikane, Instrument Inventors Initiative (iii), Patch studios
supported by Amarte Foundation
special thanks Residenties in Utrecht, Diane Mahín, Marijn Alexander de Jong, Inga Hirsch, Karel van Laere, Jacob Wallett, Job Sante, Hadas Kedar, Marlen Pflüger, Pelle Schilling, Lila Maria de Coninck, Beate Poikane, Instrument Inventors Initiative (iii), Patch studios