MEDIATHEK

Project Solaris is a visual and musical location performance, based on the novel Solaris (1961) by Stanislav Lem. It interlaces visual arts, cinema, music and theatre.

Every audience member is handed out an iPod with video and a voice-over. The audience is invited to follow main character Chris Kelvin who is presenting herself on video. The video serves as a guide, and shows the same route as the audience is about to walk.

Because this love story plays out in both video and the actual surroundings, the audience will walk through several versions of reality. The live performance and music, as well as the images and sound on the iPod, intertwine. It’s up to the spectators mind to combine both. A magical, visual spectacle unfolds between reality and illusion. What is real; The images on the iPod or the things they see before their own eyes? De Jong and De Witte increasingly question reality and play with the perception of the audience, until nothing is what it seems.

The Quantum Mechanics is a physical theory, describing the behavior of matter and energy on a sub atomic scale. This theory talks about ‘parallel worlds’, being able to cross our reality, explaining that matter on a molecular level, does not crash with matter from the invisible world.

Also 90 % of our body is constructed out of these ‘invisible building blocks of the spirit’. It can become a very real thought that our ‘being’ is not only present in our own reality, but can at the same time be present in many different levels and kinds of reality.

Based on the story of Solaris, we try to reveal and question this invisible and undetectable parallel world. A world in which everything that has ever happened might still be happening, and exist.

With the theory of the Quantum Mechanics we try to clarify the phenomenons of Solaris: the sudden appearance of Chris Kelvins ex-lover, who died many years ago by suicide.

The experiments of Chris Kelvin and her team, actually do not show her any new world. The only thing they reveal is the reflection of her own unconsciousness. We all know the immense force of being attracted to the unknown, with the idea to leave it all behind. But no mater how far we travel, in everything we do, think or create, it always is unknown in ourselves that we however get in touch with.