Commission to Pierre Jodłowski

INSULAE is a performative installation for six musicians, video and electronics, composed by Pierre Jodlowski for the ensemble PHACE. Inspired by Adolfo Bioy Casares’ novel The Invention of Morel, the project explores the meaning of image and representation.

In Bioy Casares’ book, a group of people are transformed into holograms and trapped in a time loop, condemned to repeat the same actions over and over again on a deserted island. Against the backdrop of the growing spread of film media in the late 1930s, when the book was written, a social transformation emerges in which the image of a person becomes more important than the person themselves. It is a development that remains extremely relevant today, in a world where we maintain a multitude of digital identities, where generative AI creates deceptively real avatars at the touch of a button, and where we are more obsessed than ever with our (self-)representations.

In reference to this, the musicians of PHACE are also caught in a loop in this project, playing with their own audiovisual projections and questioning their identities. Light, scenography and video play a central role in this project. Through shadow play, real-time video looping and dynamic projections, an unstable environment is created in which it becomes increasingly difficult to clearly distinguish human roles and functions. Pierre Jodlowski’s energetically charged, dense soundscapes, closely linked to gestures and visual imagination, further challenge the boundaries of media reality. Images obscure images, sounds obscure sounds, a constant state of transformation that makes every element part of a fragile balance.

The commission to Pierre Jodlowski is made possible by the Ernst von Siemens Music Foundation.

Further information:
phace.at

Dates

September 24, 2025
Warsaw Autumn Festival

November 5, 2025
Wien Modern

March 28, 2026
Osterfestival Tirol