Kickstarter

LightVVORK is an original experimental opera, the first creation of Collectif Experiencia.  We try to find a certain spirituality in hard, electronic devices that currently surround us.  We are working with reverb and feedback in music as well as the bodies of our performers, leading workshops that push the body to a limit enveloped in a borderline trance state.  We are beginning to question what an error actually is, be it a crackling guitar amplifier or a performer not following the instructions that our choreographer gave her.  In addition, we will create an opening for the third gender that destabilizes the binary social construction today.  This exists as a mental space and as an idea.  We feel that instead of rejecting the negative elements of gender, we should deconstruct it and re-appropriate a new mental space.  We propose an androgynous gender, an egalitarian foundation for identity.  Our mise-en-scene serves these two reasons:  gender destabilization and machine spirituality.

Our creation is collective because we have no single person to dictate a command for every creative element. We let the set design, choreography, and music evolve together while maintaining their proper distance.  The prevailing idea is that we are interested in the moments that arrive when our creations intersect as opposed to letting one voice dominate all other aspects of production.

Our team is comprised of an American musician, an American-Romanian set designer and co-director, and a French choreographer and co-director.  Additionally, our three other performers on the stage are French and our technician Algerian.  We believe that the cultural differences in the team make our project this much stronger, finally using Kickstarter as a truly global platform for receiving aid.

We will perform the anti-opera in Paris at the end of March and the beginning of April. In the summer, we foresee a tour in the United States and Europe. We are avoiding theater spaces and focusing on stages, be they in a squat or in a museum.  We have created our performance so that it is mobile and adaptable, giving us the ability to perform in improvised spaces.  We believe that opera is a powerful discipline and that we should reclaim the form by updating it to contemporary standards and by making it accessible to to a vast public.  We are doing everything we can to break free from the traditionally pompous and ancient connotation of Opera.  Furthermore, our creation activates the unconscious of the spectator, we do not make "difficult" art, we make sensory art.  Every element present in the performance aims to activate a different part of the spectator's unconscious, but we do not give direct messages, this is not a piece made for being analyzed and critiqued.  LightVVORK is above all a sensory experience, we use our ideas as a vehicle for delivering our total creation.

We have a fundraising goal of $15,000.

The funds we will receive will help offset the cost of renting rehearsal and workshop space, to buy miscellaneous technical items like cables or cameras.  We will use the money to develop quality costumes for the performers, to buy the material that we use for our screen structures, or to rent the equipment we need to perform the work in non-traditional spaces.  Considering that we are comprised of six individual members, your contributions will also help with the costs of traveling and going on tour, our food and housing, our plane and train tickets.  Your funds help us promote our event, down to the smallest item, a small flyer or a coffee for a journalist writing an article on us.  

Furthermore, the only way to make this new style of opera open to a vast public is to travel and perform in various spaces, be they prisons, squats, or community centers.  Unfortunately, these spaces do not usually have the ability to pay for the transportation and housing of visiting artists.  Your contributions make it possible for LightVVORK to enter into spaces never before accustomed to opera.  

We thank you in advance for your contributions.

Collectif Experiencia