Celine Daemen: Songs for a Passerby

Come to this internationally acclaimed experience by Celine Daemen, the young VR pioneer from Limburg.

On show: 23 to 27 October & 30 October to 3 November. Book a timeslot now.

Would you like to walk through an artwork yourself and be part of it? That’s the dream experience you can have in the virtual reality opera Songs for a Passerby (2023), directed by Celine Daemen (Schimmert, 1995). Wearing a VR headset, you walk through a musical dreamscape. Sound, vision and your own movements blend together to give an all-embracing experience:

…It’s dark outside and you’re walking down a busy street. Wait, where have you got to all of a sudden? Ah yes – a platform. You’re not on the street any more, but on a platform, and there in the distance comes an underground train. It stops and you realise you have to get on. You know it’s not real, but it all looks so realistic. Your fellow passengers are chatting, while others read a newspaper or stare ahead. When you get off, you see another train going by on the other side. If you look more closely, you see a familiar face. Yes, it’s you. Or in any case the spitting image of you. Songs for a Passerby works in accordance with dream logic: nothing is quite right, yet it all seems very logical to you and you let yourself be transported through time and space…

Dream or reality

How do we deal with a world in which everything passes by? Are we part of it ourselves, or are we just onlookers? Are we a body, or do we have a body? Maybe this ambivalence is the origin of all melancholy. Songs for a Passerby is a meditative quest, where you step outside reality for a moment and look at yourself. You become a puppeteer of your own body in a poetic space, where the melancholy question arises: is this me passing by moments, or is it rather the moments passing by me?

Director Celine Daemen says, “By placing spectators outside themselves and showing them the contours of their own 'self' through capture with live 3D cameras, I aim to create an experience that touches on a familiar sense of melancholy, wherein we are no longer at one with the world, but in some ways are opposite to it.”

VR-pioneer

Songs for a Passerby is a VR opera that uses the latest virtual reality techniques, some of which were designed especially for this work. As a viewer, you’re completely immersed in a new world. You see it, hear it and can even walk through it. The sets for Songs for a Passerby consist partly of fragments of the real world, people and buildings, which have become part of the VR domain through scans, and partly of miniatures designed especially for this VR opera. Virtual reality has already been around for some time in the gaming world, but it has previously struggled to gain ground as a serious art form. Daemen is a pioneer in this new art discipline. She mixes scans and computer-generated images with classical art forms like opera, poetry, film and installation art. In doing so, she shows the unprecedented possibilities of VR and lends weight to what will undoubtedly grow to become an important art genre.

International acclaim

Through her work -which is a mix of theatre, music, visual art and technology- Celine Daemen creates special experiences that invite the public to look inward. For her first VR opera Eurydice, a descent into infinity (2022), she was awarded the Swiss film prize Reflet D'Or, the Saudi Silver Yusr and the Grand Prize of the Venice Immersive Festival. She was also awarded the latter prestigious prize for best immersive experience for Songs for a Passerby, at the Venice Biennale. From October 2024 to May 2025, Celine Daemen and director Aron Fels (1992) will be Artist in Residence at the Lincoln Centre, a famous performing arts centre in New York.

Daemen is the founder of Studio Nergens, in Amsterdam, where she forms transdisciplinary crossovers with a variety of artists and production houses.

The press about Songs for a Passerby:

• NRC: ‘The virtual reality opera ‘Songs for a Passerby’ makes you long for the possibilities still to come in the future’
• de Volkskrant: ‘Acclaimed virtual reality opera continually confronts you with your emotions’
• De Groene Amsterdammer: ‘Celine Daemen’s VR operas immerse the viewer in a new world’

Book a 30-minute timeslot now. Be quick though, because there are only 90 screenings of Songs for a Passerby in total.

Note for the press:

For more information and visual material, please contact Kris Németh through pressoffice@bonnefanten.nl or on +31 (0)6 27 36 48 02.