Building as Opera

The project Building as Opera consists of a site-specific audiovisual performance, a publication and a text intervention centered around the building Temple Tolstraat, a national monument from 1927, located in the Diamantenwijk in Amsterdam Zuid. 
The work is devised around the multiple histories and transitions of the building that served as a temple for the Theosophical Society, a synagogue, a cinema, a mosque, a public library as well as a temporary artist studio. I treat the building as a character articulating its own voice through  a permanent text installation on its facade as well as a collection of voices and sounds from its past and present. Within its strong architectural context and for the duration of a sunset, the  audience witnessed together the overlays of multiple spaces, imagined and real, constituting a space in transition.

Performance

Duration of performance: 32 minutes
Video excerpt duration: 4:35

Music: Persephone Abbot & Nina Glockner
Performance: Persephone Abbott (vocals), Nina Glockner, Levi de Kleer

Publication & Buttons
Images 1—5

Text Intervention
Images 1—2

The traces of my text intervention Come Closer, Further Away on the façade of the building have become part of the local environment acting like a record of the performance.