Fingerprints premiere at The MAC, Belfast

March 2026

Documentation of Fingerprints at The MAC, Belfast — Friday 13 March 2026. Video copyright Chris McCann Videography.

As the audience entered, the projection was already alive — not announcing itself, exactly, but breathing at the edge of perception. Feet shuffling, chairs scraping, the small sounds of people settling into place were enough to stir the image. Some people noticed immediately; others only gradually realised that the wall was listening.

Then the screen dropped to black. From off-stage, a lone trombone sounded, and slowly the full ensemble entered the room as the visuals came back to life. What followed was a shared journey through a shifting environment: improvised music, responsive projection, performers moving through the space, and an audience surrounded by it all.

By the close, the performers had gradually disappeared again. A solo violin carried the final stretch alone, the projection winding down with it until the ensemble had vanished, leaving only a residual fingerprint of the performance on the wall.

In the light-filled space outside the theatre, another strand of the work unfolded at the same time. There, visual artist Heidi Nguyen improvised with pairs of musicians to create physical works in real time: another performance at the crossover between visual art and music, and another way the project moved between live action and tangible trace.

Fingerprints at The MAC unfolded across two linked spaces: the pop-up performances in The Crush and the immersive theatre performances upstairs. In the theatre, musicians moved through and around the audience while the projection shifted with the sound and movement in the room. In The Crush, Heidi Nguyen worked live with pairs of musicians to make physical pieces in public view. Together, these strands formed the public premiere of the work.

For more details about the background to the performance, the collaborators, and what audiences were invited into, see Fingerprints at The MAC, Belfast.

Matinee performance from Fingerprints at The MAC, Belfast — the first public performance.

Second performance from Fingerprints at The MAC, Belfast — the evening performance later the same day.

Ensemble

The ensemble for the performances at The MAC brought together:

Ioana Petcu-Colan — violin
Steve Meyfroidt — live visuals
Lina Andonovska — flute
Ross Lyness — trombone
Alex Petcu — percussion
Amy Prendergast — movement and performance
Heidi Nguyen — live painting and drawing in The Crush

Audience response

The remarks after the performances caught the shape of the piece precisely:

“I didn’t know what to expect but I thoroughly enjoyed the whole thing”

“Brilliant! Loved that!”

“I started facing the screen but after a couple of minutes I had to move my chair to see all the other things that were also going on.”

“Where are you doing another performance?”

The performance did not sit in one place, and neither did the audience’s attention. People watched the screen, then the players, then the movement around them, then the room as a whole. That shifting focus was part of the piece.