Celine Daemen & Aron Fels | The Opposite of Being (working title)

“The Opposite of Being” is a multi-audience VR opera exploring the fragile ways in which we construct reality. Wearing a VR headset, audiences drift through a labyrinthine New York apartment building, unveiling “slice-of-life” vignettes of its inhabitants. A woman rewrites the story of a past abortion; brothers struggle to encapsulate their father’s life into a eulogy; and a role-playing game among friends takes a dark turn when it crosses a player’s very real boundaries. Among the inhabitants is your live-recorded body double. Throughout the experience, your doppelgänger, who believes they are leading an independent life, comes to realize you are puppeteering them. The fusion of the different layers of the experience confronts the spectators with the dissolution of an absolute reality. The work challenges visitors to reflect on realities, agency, and the power dynamics of truth, making tangible how our realities are shaped through our personal embodied experiences and relationships with others.

During the EMAP residency at the Onassis Foundation, Aron Fels, Celine Daemen, and composer Asa Horvitz will develop a prototype of the experience. This residency will serve as a crucial testing ground to iteratively play with audience interactions. Through live video captures of spectators, interactive soundscapes and music, and their integration into 3D environments of photogrammetry scans, the artists hope to gradually shape a sensory Gesamtkunstwerk.