Samiir Saunders

Mind Control Victims Anonymous (MCVA) 

Mind Control Victims Anonymous (MCVA) is an interactive poetry performance taking the form of a fictional mind-control support group. The performance navigates themes of free will, coercion and the relationship between an audience and a performer. Saunders explores the conditions of emotional endurance, vulnerability and care required for a completely improvised performance. This event encourages audience interaction. 

This performance draws on the tools gained through participation in Melati Suryodarmo’s performance art laboratory, Present to Presence, at Ikon in May 2023. 

“I am excited by the opportunity to learn from Melati’s meditative and physically embodied approach to performance. I aim to expand my toolkit with strategies for deepening my artistic freedom, improvisation, and connection to my body.” Samiir Saunders 

Presented as part of Melati Suryodarmo’s exhibition Passionate Pilgrim (17 May – 3 September 2023).

Connections Through Culture grants programme, Birmingham City University, University of Leeds, and the Melati Suryodarmo Exhibition Circle: A.I. Gallery; ShanghART, Tanya Michele Amador and Michiel Verhoeven; and Michelangelo and Lourdes Samson.

It is developed in collaboration with Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art in Nusantara (Museum MACAN), Jakarta, Indonesia.

About the artist 

Samiir Saunders (b. 1996 – he/they) is a multimedia poet based in Birmingham, working primarily within the realms of spoken word, hip-hop, live coding, poetry film and performance art.  

Saunders’ creative work is dedicated to modelling playful vulnerability, in order to arm individuals with the tools to be curious, compassionate and vulnerable in their own daily lives and relationships. This work often lands on themes of Black joy, queer love, climate justice, shame, (mis)communication, intimacy and the Internet.