#leidseplein — Public Fediverse posts

Trapped inside technology?

De Balie, Saturday, November 7 at 06:00 PM GMT+1

ZEG Festival is back. With live storytelling, music and conversation, we’ll explore how a handful of tech entrepreneurs have come to dominate the game and what we can do to curb the influence of big tech and their all-encompassing systems.

A small pack of tech billionaires appear to have mistaken our world for their chess board and the rest of us for pieces. Their strategy: raise enough money to move faster than anyone else, capture infrastructure that everyone depends on, become so central the governments react to you instead of regulate you, make the rules and force everyone else to live inside them.

Through live storytelling, music and conversation, this event will explore how technology is rewriting the rules of power, how a handful of tech entrepreneurs have come to dominate the game and what we can do to curb the influence of big tech and their all-encompassing systems.

ZEG Supra
Stay for ZEG Supra: After the main program, experience our twist on one of humanity’s oldest storytelling traditions: a Georgian feast where delicious food is served alongside stories, connection, and dissent.

Natalia Antelava is a journalist, co-founder and publisher of Coda Story, and co-founder of ZEG Network, a global platform for live journalism, storytelling and cross-disciplinary gatherings. An Emmy-nominated and award-winning journalist originally from Tbilisi, Georgia, she began her career reporting in West Africa before joining the BBC, where she served as a correspondent across the Caucasus, Central Asia, the Middle East, Washington and India.

Alix Dunn is the founder and CEO of The Maybe, a critical consultancy, collective, and media studio challenging the power and politics of tech. She hosts the Computer Says Maybe weekly podcast, sits on the board of Foxglove and is an advisor for AI Now and the AI Collaborative.

Powered by award-winning journalism from Coda Story, ZEG’s original parent company, ZEG Network unites investigative reporters, artists, activists, and thinkers to explore the stories shaping our collective future. The natural evolution of ZEG Festival, Tbilisi’s renowned storytelling festival, this initiative creates spaces for urgent, cross-border conversations that challenge dominant narratives. Through deep journalism and creative collaboration, we work to amplify voices and ideas that reimagine what comes next for our world.

https://offbeat.amsterdam/event/trapped-inside-technology

CinéDialoog: On High Water

De Balie, Tuesday, November 10 at 07:30 PM GMT+1

Along Louisiana’s disappearing coast, families are working to hold on to a way of life shaped by the water.

Commercial fishermen, tribal leaders, educators, and young families confront a future marked by economic uncertainty, land loss, and increasingly powerful storms. Yet even as the landscape changes around them, they continue to rebuild homes, revive traditions, and pass hard-earned knowledge from one generation to the next.

Filmed over two years in the bayous of southern Louisiana, On High Water: Holding Ground on a Vanishing Coast is the latest film from the award-winning team at Bertelsmann Foundation Documentaries. As communities around the world face the consequences of rising waters and the possibility of losing the land they call home, the film raises questions that reach far beyond the Louisiana coast. After the screening, we will speak with the director about the film and the communities at its heart.

https://offbeat.amsterdam/event/cinedialoog-on-high-water

Luca St

Paradiso, Thursday, November 26 at 07:30 PM GMT+1

As a rapper and producer, Luca St has always kept things fresh by moving between different sounds. With his latest release, ‘Mascotte’, he adds a new dimension to his sound: more pop, more energy and a sound that harks back to the distinctive productions of the 2000s, but entirely in his own way.

Following his previous show in 2025, Luca St returns to Paradiso on 26 November. It will be a show where the old and the new coexist: from the tracks that started it all to new music that showcases the direction he’s heading in now.

https://offbeat.amsterdam/event/luca-st-1

Keshavara

Paradiso, Thursday, March 4 at 07:30 PM GMT+1

The four-piece band Keshavara grew up listening to the soundtracks of Tamil films and clearly have no intention of rolling the credits just yet. Led by the German-Indian Keshav Purushotham, the band blends psychedelic pop with dub and disco, singing in English, German, Tamil or simply making up their own words.

On their forthcoming fourth album, ‘Moondram Sevi’, Purushotham’s niece, Sahana Naresh, features on three tracks. In ‘Pambu Mookan Uncle’, they jointly pay tribute to the film characters from their childhood with a disco groove and a dash of house. There are also hints of psychedelic folk, whilst the tension of Italian horror films seeps into the music. In the Bovenzaal, the band will carry that cinematic atmosphere through, complete with colourful costumes and daring headwear.

https://offbeat.amsterdam/event/keshavara