BAR OMI turns into a stage where nothing is quite as it seems. Artists Omid Kheirabadi, Shardenia Felicia, and Ariela Bergman take over the bar for an ongoing interactive performance. The trio, who last collaborated on Carnisse in Flux, a two-month artistic research in Rotterdam Zuid exploring displacement and gentrification, arrive at OMI with a new experiment in collective storytelling and improvised interaction.

This open-ended work resists the “smooth city” ideal, those urban environments engineered for seamless efficiency, where everything works without friction and life runs on schedule all the time. That polished perfection is seductive, while it hides the instability, struggle, and inequality that underpin city life. In reality, things break, people stumble, and systems fail. And it is in those moments of failure that real human connection can be formed, and sometimes resistance, can surface.

Through the night, the myth of affordable housing, the feeling of being trapped in a money-making machine, and the absurdity of living under the system of debt, loans, and wages will hum beneath everything. The whole bar becomes a shifting set; visitors become part of the performance; and each “wrong order” becomes a moment of connection or disruption.