StasiDuck Interactive Online Opera 2007-8
A website project presenting a live interactive opera. The project follows the struggle for freedom in the space of the panoptic gaze and demonstrates how multiple spaces trigger certain actions for both invisible spectator and performer. In this digital operatic landscape the viewers are invited to send their commands and requests for the next action to be performed by typing on a live feed blog and video.
The ‘Duck’ performer and command-inputer do the actions by instructions given in this panoptic matrix. The performer cannot see the identity of the viewer logging-in. The challenge is for both to see which space controls the anex environment. The Duck lives in confined Stasi, an old german prison, a prison cell where inmates may be submitted to tortured excercises and rituals like walking in a duck-fashion for 6 hours. The title incidently reverts to the disturbing connotation of the Secret Stasi who collected private information from its citizens controlling the lives they were living. The Opera translates from the latin ‘Opus’ meaning ‘to work’. The operatic performance is the idea of the event based on an interactive presence of the spectator sharing the space with the artwork in an ever-changing dynamic; with sounds, voices, video projections and props. The spectator can be passive, contemplative observer or become actively involved. Whether in front or further inside it, the artistic experience is the joint presence.
”A self is never simply either inside or outside, always both and neither” – M. Blanchot.
When there is a question, the art begins and with the opera thus presents the disorientations of navigating through the space, how to enter and exit it. The performer is a heroine character derived from v. Bellini called Norma, a leader and woman haunted by her personal discretions.
The ‘Duck’ performer and command-inputer do the actions by instructions given in this panoptic matrix. The performer cannot see the identity of the viewer logging-in. The challenge is for both to see which space controls the anex environment. The Duck lives in confined Stasi, an old german prison, a prison cell where inmates may be submitted to tortured excercises and rituals like walking in a duck-fashion for 6 hours. The title incidently reverts to the disturbing connotation of the Secret Stasi who collected private information from its citizens controlling the lives they were living. The Opera translates from the latin ‘Opus’ meaning ‘to work’. The operatic performance is the idea of the event based on an interactive presence of the spectator sharing the space with the artwork in an ever-changing dynamic; with sounds, voices, video projections and props. The spectator can be passive, contemplative observer or become actively involved. Whether in front or further inside it, the artistic experience is the joint presence.
”A self is never simply either inside or outside, always both and neither” – M. Blanchot.
When there is a question, the art begins and with the opera thus presents the disorientations of navigating through the space, how to enter and exit it. The performer is a heroine character derived from v. Bellini called Norma, a leader and woman haunted by her personal discretions.
Powell Opera, Berlin
“Powell Opera” that premiered in Berlin in 2008, in collaboration with Franck Leibovici and a group of amateurs. It is part of his ongoing project “Mini-opéra pour non musiciens (Mini-opera for Non-Musicians) by F.L. ”. In this sequence, the speech delivered to the UN Security Council in Geneva by Colin Powell, then the United States Secretary of State, in an effort to “build the case” for the 2003 invasion of Iraq is used as a matrix for the choir. Deploying strategies that parallel those developed by Cornelius Cardew in 1969 for the Scratch Orchestra, the singers work from the words in Powell’s speech and in the many illustrative media clips Powell played in Geneva.
