Barbara Wagner & Benjamin de Burca

Displayed at the centre of the exhibition is a 2026 video work co-commissioned by De Pont, Future of Yesterday. This new piece by Bárbara Wagner & Benjamin de Burca focuses on the German hardcore scene, with specific attention for the Straight Edge movement (sXe for short), a group that emerged on the east coast of the United States in the 1980s as a ‘clean’ counter-culture within the post-hardcore punk scene.

Wagner & de Burca place this work in a broader dialogue with other underground music scenes. One way they do so is by intentionally juxtaposing Future of Yesterday with an early key work from De Pont Museum’s collection, Estás vendo coisas / You are seeing things (2016), in which the duo explore the brega scene from Recife – a musical culture with local roots that emerged in the Northeast region of Brazil in the 1970s.

A core characteristic of Wagner & de Burca’s practice is their explicitly collaborative approach to making art. The communities depicted are not mere subjects but rather co-authors, with an active hand in developing the script, the set backdrop, the music, the choreography and the staging, collectively helping to shape the work.