Celine Daemen is a director who connects a great passion for opera with a distinct love for Virtual Reality (VR). After completing her studies at the Toneelacademie Maastricht (2018), she made a first move toward creating her own signature in several productions in which immersion (immersion) in both music and virtual environments was the common thread. She sees herself as a creator of “transdisciplinary work,” where combined disciplines together create a new medium. Whereas VR often focuses on recreating the real world (as if you were actually standing in the Rijksmuseum or at the Grand Canyon), Celine actually wants to imagine new worlds and harness the infinite potential of VR to turn the observer’s gaze inward. Thematically, questions about “being” are central, with an emphasis on inner reality in all its manifestations: intuition, imagination and so-called “madness. In her project The Opera of the Falling Man (2018), for example, Celine searched for poetry within madness and looked at melancholy as a hopeful source of insight into existence. The journey inward takes the viewer into a realm where new associations emerge and new layers of being human are touched.
Photo credits: Aron Fels