John McIlduff , the Co-Artistic Director of Dumbworld introduces their Scorched Earth Trilogy, a trio of 'Street Art Operas for the end of the world' coming to Dublin later this month in partnership with Irish National Opera.
Opera and street art: two art forms seemingly at different poles of our cultural lives. Who would have thought that they could have a love affair? I can't help imagining them as a young couple who've just tumbled out of the pub late one night. Mutual adoration that spills out of their mouths. (Soon they will kiss for the first time)
"You speak right to the heart to things."
"But you have complexity."
"You are smart and funny."
"But you touch our emotions"
"You are there for everyone"
"Who says you can't be? Come with me tonight into the city. I'll bring you places you've never been before."
A number of years ago Ruairí Ó Cuiv, curator and Dublin City Council's Public Art Manager, a man well worth a stroll around the city with, helped start us off on a journey of discovery about where and how, opera could encounter and enter into conversation with audiences.
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Listen: RTÉ Arena on The Scorched Earth Trilogy
This journey, has led us to the streets and to street art. It's not by chance that advertisers have assailed us with images outside. They have long understood the power of art in public spaces. As have street artists, from Basquiat to Banksy, who have made a significant contribution to our visual culture worldwide in the last thirty years. If art wants to be part of the cultural and political conversations that are happening today, sooner or later it must end up in the street.
So beyond the spectacle and laughs to be had at our new work The Scorched Earth Trilogy, which will have its premiere in Dublin at the end of March, we hope that our TikToking polar bears and politicians taking a leak against the wall can be part of urgent cultural conversations happening today. We've tried to be inquisitive; wriggling our way through ideas into the uneasy and darker corners. Sometimes provocatively, sometimes humorously but always led by the overlapping emotions and infinite complexity of the world around us.
The Scorched Earth Trilogy has been created to appear on buildings around a city with its soundtrack beamed to wireless headphones. Three projected worlds painted with a grotesque, exhilarating, poetic sound full of wild flamboyant orchestral outbursts and ethereal overlapping waves of sound. The works play with the notion of opera and all it is and isn’t - traditions embraced and rejected simultaneously.
Our trilogy ends with a work called Revival, inspired by the writings of Bruno Latour, someone else well worth taking a stroll with. We like to think of it as a call to action. One that we feel confident to stand behind which isn't simple in these contradictory and hyperbolic times. One that is more about vulnerability than strength. One that rejects false optimism and strength of purpose for what Latour sets out as the human qualities that may save us, "care, scruple, cautiousness, attention, contemplation, hesitation and revival."
The Scorched Earth Trilogy is presented free to view on the walls of Trinity College Dublin on Friday 25th and Saturday 26th March, but advance booking is required - get your tickets here.
