Nederlands      
 Vasco Araùjo


Sabine/Brunhilde
2003
  Oude Stadsfeestzaal (Old Municipal Festive Hall)
 
Portugal
°1975, Lisbon
lives in Lisbon


http://www.vascoaraujo.org
Araùjo gets a kick out of opera diva’s, the well-acclaimerd singer, the heroine with the dramatically heaving bosom, of the big romantic aria’s. He is so excited about them that he sometimes puts himself in their place. It is not about travesty, but more about blurring the boundaries between male and female and also between everyday banality and the glory of fiction being sung.

In Sabine/Brunhilde he makes an explicit transition between reality and staging. Sabine is pathetically real, Brunhilde exuberantly Wagnerian. Sabine is a German woman living in Portugal. She sees her life as a string of repeated setbacks: a bad relationship with her parents, a failing love life, a disappointment of a husband, in short, depressing situations. Nothing cheers her up except for opera, but also here she is thwarted by her surrounding. Nevertheless, she perseveres. To her, singing is an act of resistance, a short escape from the disillusionments, an imaginary transit zone into to which she retreats from time to time for a sense of freedom and happiness.

Brunhilde is a rebellious child of god from the Germanic legend that inspired Richard Wagner to write an opera in four parts, Der Ring des Nibelungen. In the second part, Die Walküre, about the nine daughters of Wotan, she plays the leading part. She violates the ban of her father to help a pregnant sister, he degrades her to a plain mortal, and, put to sleep, she is forced to marry the first man to find her. Sabine and Brunhilde become one, as a woman deprived by fate and confronted with the harsh and earthly reality.

In the first video Sabine we see how Sabine tries to master the difficult and demanding main aria by Brunhilde in Die Walküre. In the second video Brunhilde Sabine tells the story of her life to a psychiater, subdivided into acts and scenes, like in a Wagnerian opera.



Participating Artists

Vasco Araùjo
Catherine Sullivan
Kerry Tribe
Ellen Cantor
James Fotopoulos
Cui Xiuwen
Sam Taylor-Wood
Pipilotti Rist
Chantal Akerman
Manon De Boer
Runa Islam
Ana Poliak
Hito Steyerl
Anouk De Clercq
Dara Birnbaum
Gülsün Karamustafa
Dany Deprez
Katrien Vermeire
Honoré ð’O

Venues

Oude Stadsfeestzaal
Stadhuis
Schepenhuis
nOva


Sint-Romboutskathedraal
De Garage


Theaterkapel
Sint-Katelijnekerk

Maria-Magdalenakapel
Manufactuur De Wit
Home Astrid
Sint-Janskerk
Lamot