
PRELUDE Festival 2023
PERFORMANCE
QUALIA – You Matter to Me
Immersive Cinematic Art Installation Directed by Laia Cabrera & Isabelle Duverger Music and Sound Design by Nana Simopoulos With the participation of Catherine Correa
Multimedia
Non-Verbal
October 13-15 at Jersey City Theater Center
6:00PM EST
Friday, October 13, 2023
Jersey City Theater Center, Barrow Street, Jersey City, NJ, USA
This installation will be open on Friday Oct 13th (6pm-9pm), Saturday Oct 14th (12pm-6pm) and Sunday Oct 15th (12pm-6pm).
“Qualia” is a sensory voyage where the line is blurred between the physical and the digital world, between the real and the imaginary. The gaze is a visual poem, gravitational Qualia: anxiety shaped into Surrealism, a nightmare turned fantasy, spontaneous solidarity, feelings of solitude, suspension, an embrace, the beginning of a smile, a hand holding sand, falling and rising again.
Conceived as an immersive projection mapping design using cinematographic language and interactive dramaturgy, “Qualia” explores concepts of mental states, symbolism, and hope, creating a story that unfolds across a series of immersive scenarios drawing from the body, faces, urban patterns, nature and remains of activity. Underneath these mirrored imageries lie many stories about limits, freedom, and self-perception.
An ordinary tableau becomes a dreamscape; the brain is an airport, a train rail. The mind is a magician, and the body is the self, giving the audience an alternative experience where they are no longer passive spectators and actively enter the very heart of the piece where ‘universal time’ continues to exist in parallel with an inner perception of time — a back door — intimately associated with our sense of personal identity and unshakable condition that the future is still open to our chosen actions.
The brain is an alchemist where memories are the bedrock of consciousness.
The piece uses choreographic language, fragmentation, bioart, color, motion, music, drama, humor, light and darkness to confound expectations, dream-like scenes, and symbolic images, flattening space through animation and abstraction, or heightening the illusion of three dimensions.
The immersive experience - environmental video sculpture - is designed as a large wall with white canvases spread across, seemingly in random positions, creating video spaces. Using the concept of ideasthesia, a bridge that metaphorically links rational abstractions, we open a dialogue between the different film streams - within the canvases and throughout the wall - with an original music score and sound design, extending the installation in time and space.
Content / Trigger Description:
The piece uses choreographic language, fragmentation, bioart, color, motion, music, drama, humor, light and darkness to confound expectations, dream-like scenes, and symbolic images, flattening space through animation and abstraction, or heightening the illusion of three dimensions.
JCTC presents QUALIA – You Matter to Me
Produced by Laia Cabrera & Co.
Laia Cabrera (Filmmaker and video artist)
Laia Cabrera a multimedia artist working in immersive content experiences and visual storytelling. Her work includes traditional and experimental filmmaking, site-specific projection mapping, visual poetry, virtual reality and immersive interactive art installations. Identity and consciousness have been a long research in her work exploring concepts of mental states, symbolism and hope, creating stories that unfold across a series of immersive interactive scenarios. Her first interdisciplinary exhibition aimed to revitalize and strengthen the intercommunication of different artistic languages. Since then, her projects are searching new ways of using the space and the visual imaginary as a tool for narrative storytelling and audience connection. Interactivity and experienceability are intrinsically part of her new work, always challenging the conventional form and designed to be native to multiple platforms and exhibitions. Sculpting time through a looking-glass and creating a sensorial experience, her quest is to establish a language that makes this relationship possible and to invent stories to be told, stories that represent a profound exploration of the human experience in contemporary artwork. laiacabrera.com laiacabreraco.com
Isabelle Duverger (Visual artist)
Isabelle Duverger is a French Kabyle award-winning visual artist based in Jersey City for the past fifteen years. Her work as a painter and immersive interactive installation artist has been presented throughout the US, Asia and Europe. It includes public art with projection mapping on buildings, immersive interactive video and sound installations, projection art for theater and dance, video-art and animation. She is the recipient of the 2023 Artist Fellowship Grant awards by JCAC Trust Fund, 2021 Motion Award Nominee and 2022 Hybrid Vision Panasonic Digital Art Competition Nominee. Her work has been presented in Spring/Break Art Show, St John the Divine Cathedral, Time Square Plaza in New York, Nuit Blanche Washington DC, Fabra i Coats Contemporary Art Center, Barcelona, Spain and Tempietto Di Bramante, Roma, Italy, Hong Kong City Hall among others. isabelleduverger.com
Nana Simopoulos (Musician and Sound Designer)
Nana has been on the forefront of world fusion music with several recordings of original music, soundtracks, music for dance and theater. CDs include Daughters Of The Sun, After The Moon, Still Waters, Wings and Air, Skins and Live at the B&W Montreux Music Festival, Vol. II. She has performed with the New York City Opera and RAI Symphony Orchestra in Torino, Italy, and with her group at the Warsaw Electronic Festival, Symphony Space, Kennedy Center, Lincoln Center and St John the Divine NYC. Her musical quartet appeared in Lykavitos and Veakeo at the 1st Cultural Capital of Europe festival in Athens in 1985. She has created dance commissions for Dance Theatre of Harlem, the Joffrey Ballet, American Dance Festival, Ballet Hispanico, and North Carolina Dance Theater. She has conducted original works at the Joyce theatre in NYC, on Broadway and her score “Vessel” was performed by Westfield Symphony Orchestra. Her film scores are for Domain of the Senses; Touch and she has made music for theatrical productions of Antigone Through Time, Conversations With the Goddesses, by Soho Repertory Theatre. Musicals include An Absolute Mystery, Matrix Maison, Studs Turkel’s American Dreams, Lost and Found. She has written music for multimedia production Turbulence’s Tilt and is currently collaborating with Laia Cabrera and Co in creating music for live interactive immersive video art. nana.net
Catherine Correa (Performer and interdisciplinary artist)
Catherine Correa is an interdisciplinary artist and dance dramaturg hailing from Colombia and currently based in Brooklyn. Ms. Correa's illustrious journey includes active involvement in international programs dedicated to performance development, creative movement, and theater production. Her invaluable expertise has significantly contributed to the growth of theaters, performers, and workshops on a global scale, spanning South America, the United States, and Europe. catherinecorrea.com
Website: www.laiacabreraco.com Immersive Art: www.laiacabreraco.com/immersive-art Portfolio: www.laiacabreraco.com/portfolio Instagram: www.instagram.com/laiacabreraco