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        Review contents

		Introduction
		On Transcendence
  Footnotes
  

    
     
		
	

     REVIEW ESSAY
   
Identity, Loss, and Singing Transcendence after the End of the World

Review-essay of the film opera Upload and the chamber music theater piece
The Book of Water by Michel van der Aa.
        *
    

        

    Jelena Novak
    


    Sound Stage Screen, Vol. 2, Issue 2 (Fall 2022), pp. 137–48, ISSN 2784-8949. This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License. © 2022 Jelena Novak. DOI: https://doi.org/10.54103/sss19973.




	Upload (2019–20), film opera, 85’. Stopera (Dutch National Opera, Opera Forward
	Festival), October 1, 2021, Amsterdam.



  
    Cast, stage


    Julia Bullock—daughter


    Roderick Williams—father


    Ensemble MusikFabrik, cond. Otto Tausk


	Cast, film


    Katja Herbers


    Ashley Zukerman


    Esther Mugambi


    Samuel West


    Claron McFadden


    David Eeles


    Tessa Stephenson


Team


    Michel van der Aa—Composer, director, librettist


    Otto Tausk—Musical director


    Theun Mosk—Scenography & lighting


    Elske van Buuren—Costume design


		Madelon Kooijman, Niels Nuijten—Dramaturgs





	



	The Book of Water (2021–22), chamber music theater piece for actor, string quartet, and film, 60’. Dutch premiere: Muziekgebouw aan ‘t IJ, November 11, 2022, Amsterdam.
    Rotterdam performance: De Doelen, November 14, 2022. Video recording: live
    performance, November 16, 2022, Tivoli Vredenburg, Utrecht.

Cast and team

Samuel West—Narrator/Geiser (live)

Timothy West—Geiser (film)

Mary Bevan—Corinne (soprano, film)

Amsterdam Sinfonietta Kamermuziek

Michel van der Aa—Composition, director, script

Madelon Kooijman—Dramaturgy

Fergus McAllpine—Play out operator

Bart van den Heuvel—Light design

Judith de Zwart—Costume design

Joost Rietdijk nsc—Director of Photography

Film producer—Arjen Oosterbaan | Eastbound Films



	I dedicate this text to the memory
of my father Tomislav Novak (1951–2022)
		
		
	The father, without his daughter’s knowledge, and unable to bear the
    emptiness caused by the loss of his wife, decided to end his biological
    life and continue his existence in digital form. In a special clinic, he
    scheduled the process of uploading, which meant transferring his entire
    physical and mental being into a computer file. He then underwent a brief
    training designed to prepare him for the (im)possibilities of a potentially
    infinite digital existence. After the data transfer command was given, the
    father became an intangible being in perpetuity. He turned into a kind of
    avatar, a peculiar video entity that continues to live (so-to-speak) in a
    transparent screen two-dimensionality. The cognitive functions and
    emotional make-up of the father are preserved in this new variant, which
    continues to develop and “live.” In the father’s understanding of the
    world, everything remains the same even though his body no longer exists.
    However, his rejection of the body still led to some fractures, especially
    in his relationship with his daughter. She did not know about her father’s
    intention to move permanently to the digital sphere and resents him for not
    consulting her on such an important decision. She suffers greatly and is
    confused by her relationship with a father she will never be able to hug
    again.



    This is a brief plot summary of the film opera Upload, composed
    and directed by Michel van der Aa. Due to COVID-19, the performance of the
    opera was postponed several times. However, after the abolition of almost
    all social distancing measures in the Netherlands, it was finally possible
    to once again present concerts, as well as theater and opera performances;
    and on Friday, October 1, 2021, the performance of Upload took
    place at the Dutch National Opera in Amsterdam. It was a full house with an
    electric atmosphere, since we were all deeply moved and excited to be able
    to return to attending live performances. At a reception following the
    première of Upload, the director of the Dutch Opera Sophie de Lint
    spoke in a trembling voice about the damage done to the performing arts
    world during the period of pandemic isolation. It turned out to be the
    first reception held in this opera house in six hundred and thirteen days.
    The turbulent emotions in the air felt like a kind of epilogue to the
    performance itself: a feverish proof of the necessity of physical
    communication and togetherness.



    During the period when the performance was postponed, a film version of the
    opera was made, available on medici.tv. It serves a useful documentary
    purpose, but it is no substitute for a live performance, given that the
    work rests on a questioning of different media, and explores peculiar
    perspectives on, and relations between, these media on stage. All this is
    largely lost in the medium of film.



    Van der Aa is one of the most prominent European creators of opera and
    music theater. He is a composer and director, and often also the librettist
    for his works. For Upload he wrote the libretto, composed the
music, and directed the piece. He assumed the same responsibilities for    The Book of Water, though in this case he wrote the script, not
    the libretto, since most of this music theater piece is not sung, though it
    involves music throughout. Van der Aa is interested in topics related to
    identity and technology. Thus, for example, in his opera One
    (2003), he explored the boundaries between a human performer and a
    vocal/visual cyborg to the point where it became impossible to distinguish
    who was actually singing on stage and where the boundaries of that person
    were drawn. Likewise, in the opera After Life (2005–06) the
    protagonists are deceased people situated in a kind of purgatory. They stay
    there for a short period as they search for their most decisive memory,
    since they have the right to take only one memory with them into eternity.
    The drama of this work is rooted in the difficulties of choice that the
    characters face, and in defining their new identity in relation to a single
    event/person/relationship. In the opera Eight (2019), which only
    one audience member at a time could experience in any one session, the
    boundaries between performers, audience, and technology are porous. With
    full VR gaming gear on, I experienced Eight guided by different
    female characters. Journeying from inaccessible mountain peaks and
    precipices, through caves and encounters with ghostly voices, I eventually
    found myself under the table with a virtual girl who sang while blinking
    with transparent, scary eyes. At some point, I realized that it was the
    decision of the artist that I should become myself one of the opera’s
protagonists.[1]    Upload arises from a science fiction world similar to the ones
    that informed these pieces.



    In The book of Water, however, there is no science fiction
context, only “rain … pouring down.”    [2]
    What happens on the level of the intimate human drama associated with the
    main character is superimposed, and with growing tension, on what happens
    outside, in nature, as the flood caused by extended periods of heavy rain
    creates the framework and the atmosphere within which the seven
    chapters/scenes of this piece unfold. The book of Water
    is based on the novel Man in the Holocene (1979) by Max Frisch.
The erosion of the mind (dementia) in the case of    The Book of Water takes place in parallel with the erosion of the
    planet and the climate, a topic that resonates with contemporary
    environmental debates. In both operas there is a precondition of sorrow,
    depression, loss, and melancholy. Dementia, which eventually overwhelms any
    sense of identity, is often preceded by depression. And maybe the fiction
    of Upload is a kind of future dementia, a dementia of the body,
    where it is the body itself rather than memory and cognitive functions that
    destroys a sense of individual identity.



    The main character of The Book of Water is an elderly widower
    called Geiser. He appears as an old man, played by Timothy West in the
    film, whose image is projected on various screens on stage. The character
    of Geiser as a younger (middle-aged) man, played by West’s son Samuel, is
    also featured in the live performance. An intriguing dialogue is
    established between past and present, old age and middle age. Since the
    actors are father and son, the physical resemblance between them is
    considerable, and this adds a particular piquancy to the basic concept, in
    which we observe them on film and on stage at the same time.



    Like the father from Upload, Geiser has lost his wife. He
    slowly sinks into the chasm created by grief, dementia, and a stroke, while
    the water levels at his house and everywhere else steadily rise. Conscious
    of his memory loss, the main character tries to keep an encyclopedic record
    of the ideas, images, and situations that are of special importance for
    him. As the water level rises, he slowly moves his important belongings
    from the ground floor to the attic. He is alone, although we see his
    daughter visiting him at the end of the piece. It appears that his only
    company at the time of the flood is a salamander that has sneaked into his
    bathroom. Symbolically, it suggests that the relationship with nature is
    fundamental—a given—on this planet. It is impossible to escape from it. We
    are never alone. Nature, the planet, climate change, and other global
phenomena (hyperobjects) are always with us.    [3]



    In the film we see an old Geiser, engaged in domestic activities, in his
    detached house, cutting up parts of the books, remembering his wife,
    watching TV, putting out the water, making pagodas of crisp bread in the
    kitchen, gardening, moving stuff upstairs, going out for a walk, and so on.
    It is only towards the end of the film that his daughter arrives, concerned
    that she had not been able to make contact with her father. The younger
    version of Geiser talks about his older self, comments on his behavior,
    complains about the weather, thinks about the golden section, amongst other
    things. At the beginning he shares with the audience a poetic typology of
    thunder:



    The twelve-volume encyclopedia explains what causes lightning, but there is
    little to be learned about thunder; yet in the course of a single night,
    unable to sleep, one can distinguish at least sixteen types of thunder:


			
    The simple thunder crack.

	
    Stuttering or tottering thunder: this usually comes after a lengthy
    silence, spreads across the whole countryside, and can go on for minutes on
    end.

	
    Echo thunder: shrill as a hammer striking on loose metal and setting up
    a whirring, fluttering echo which is louder than the peal itself.

	
    Roll or bump thunder: relatively unfrightening, for it is reminiscent of
    rolling barrels bumping against one another.

	
    Drum thunder.

	
    Hissing or gravel thunder: this begins with a hiss, like a truck tipping
    a load of wet gravel, and ends with a thud.

	
    Bowling-pin thunder: like a bowling pin that, struck by the rolling
    ball, cannons into the other pins and knocks them all down; this causes a
    confused echo.

	
    Hesitant or tittering thunder (no flash of lightning through the
    windows): this indicates that the storm is retreating.

	
    Blast thunder (immediately following a flash of lightning through the
    windows (…)

	
    Groaning or lath thunder: a short, high-pitched crack, as if one were
    snapping a lath, then a groan, short or prolonged (…)

	
    Chatter thunder.

	
    Cushion thunder: this sounds exactly like beating a cushion with flat
    hands.

	
    Skid thunder: this leads one to expect either bump or drum thunder, but
    before the windows begin to rattle, the noise slips over to the other side
    of the countryside (…)

	
    Crackle thunder.

	
    Screech or bottle thunder, often more frightening than blast thunder,
    though it does not make the windows rattle (…)

	
Whispering thunder.    [4]




    The text of the script is rambling and prolix, and it sometimes approaches
    the absurd, as in this example. Its length and density also carry meaning,
    arguably expressing the trauma of memory loss, of the loss of the house,
    and indeed the loss of the whole planet/world as we know it. The text
    intersects with various situations in the film and on the stage itself, and
    it is that intertwining of different realities, quite different from a
    conventional narrative, that actually tells the story. Just as in our daily
    lives, we jump from analogous (we might say old-fashioned) activities such
    as cooking to all kinds of screens, mediated meetings, typed talks,
    delegated tasks, projected gatherings, transmitted performances, postponed
    presences, delayed intimacies, resulting in a radical reinvention of what
    used to be called “togetherness.” And this fractalization of life, its
    transmission to all kinds of screens acting together and performing
    togetherness on our behalf, is actually the central theme of both pieces.



		
On Transcendence



    Upload
    begins in a darkened hall. Only the voices of a daughter and her father are
    heard, almost whispering (in English) the names of body parts and the
    stereotypes associated with them:



  
    (…)



    Daughter 


    Expand - lungs


    Support - bones


    (…)


    Taste - tongue


    Sprain - ankle


    Grab - wrist


    Shake - heart


    Bash - fist


    Carry - weight


    Reach - arm


    Father 


    Spread - fingers


    Blink - eyes


    Light - smile


    Daughter


    Sweat - fever


    Father 


    Race - thoughts


    Aim - view


    Pick up - scent


    (…)


    Daughter 


    Tingle - cheek


    (…)


    Father 


    See - crimson


    Hear - chirping


    Relish - memory


    Daughter 


    Hug - shoulders


(…) [5]


  




    Physical and emotional intimacy and tenderness are displayed in this
    remembrance of body parts and of the memories associated with them. The
    scene gradually lights up and we see the daughter and the silhouette of the
    father. She remembers growing up with her father and the closeness they
    built. That closeness is deeply grounded in bodily reciprocity. She
    remembers her father’s shoulders carrying her when she was tired, his hands
    holding her as she learned to walk, the prickle of his unshaven beard when
    he kissed her. We also see the father-avatar on stage. Although it exists
    as a projection on the screen, this projection is larger than the natural
    size of the human body and is prone to “wasting,” a pixelation of the
    image, and some other distortions that make it dynamic and create the
    illusion of some special “living” entity (see figure 1). Physically, the
    projected father looks like, and does not look like, himself, but his voice
    remains unchanged and his thoughts and feelings are intended to remain true
    to the “original.” During the opera, we sometimes see the singing father
    (Roderick Williams, baritone) only as a projection, but at other times we
    see Williams on stage, albeit with his singing voice synchronized with a
    projection of the digital father.





    Fig. 1. Roderick Williams and Julia Bullock as father and daughter.
    Michel van der Aa, Upload, still frame.



    In this multi-layered performance—shifting between the performer singing
    live, interacting directly with the character of his daughter (Julia
    Bullock, soprano), and their more complicated interaction through the
    introduction of screen projections—van der Aa literally performs the drama
    of postponed and displaced realities on stage, while at the same time
    “talking” about them in connection to the father’s and daughter’s new
    virtual relationality. The drama between father and daughter is punctuated
    by parts of the story that unfold in the upload clinic. Through these
    encounters, the audience is confronted with the true implications of the
    father’s decision—legal, moral, and other. These scenes, unlike the family
    dialogue, are cinematic, and are spoken rather than sung. They convey a
    Lynchian aesthetic marked by both absurdity and humor. One candidate for
    upload, for example, is a researcher who has received a grant to digitize
    himself because it is allegedly in the interest of the status quo to
    preserve his invaluable knowledge of the Holocene in this way. Here, and
    elsewhere, van der Aa represents humor as one means of refuting the
    absurdity caused by the tendency of Homo sapiens to complicate both its
    individual existence and life on the planet in general.





    Fig. 2. Roderick Williams and Julia Bullock as father and daughter.
    Michel van der Aa, Upload, still frame.



    In the key scene of the opera, the final one, all the vertical screens and
    splintered perspectives are turned off and suddenly, in a darkened hall, a
    huge, partly stretched canvas is lifted like a sail over the audience. On
    it, we see the original, pre-digitized father and daughter in close-up,
    lying facing each other, singing again those words depicting parts of the
    body, as at the beginning of the opera (see figure 2). The size and
    intimacy of the image and the abrupt shift of perspective come as a
    sobering blow. Stripped down in form, and conveying an almost painful
    melancholy, this scene conveyed to me a sense of the characters as almost
    palpable in their intimacy. It was as if members of the audience had
    sneaked in like voyeurs. Many questions related to the new relationships
    and new circumstances caused by physical distancing are raised by this
move, not least those relating to the warmest moments of    The Book of Water, when Corrine, the daughter of Geiser, finally
    finds him, towards the end of the opera.



    The interrogation of identity, fear, memory, loss, nature, knowledge,
    erosion, and singing all takes place in The Book of Water in
    dialogue with an unexpected extension of the performance into a fluent 3D
    illusion created on stage. On the right side of the stage, we see the
    string quartet and the sound technician, while on the left we see an
    angular structure with translucent glass forming a kind of cabin. That
    structure provides tridimensionality with the film projection. It gives the
    projected image profundity, drawing the spectator and the live protagonist
    on stage, into the reality of the film. This intriguing game between
    different spaces and realities is seductive, and in many ways it is the
    motor of this piece. The game of involvement and in/dependency between all
    of them becomes palpable while making us part of the simulacra.


		


    Fig. 3. Timothy West and Samuel West, as old and young Geiser. Michel van
    der Aa, The Book of Water, still frame.



    Among the impressive, hyper-realistic moments is the one when Samuel West
    as young Geiser enters the angular glass structure and initiates the
    projection of the rain storm. At that moment, he starts talking
    about various types of thunder (as in the text quoted earlier). This
    illusion of a storm appears to be so accurate in its faithfulness to the
    original natural spectacle of the rainstorm that it conveys a sense of
    Kantian sublime. It is not the audiovisual theme, the rain storm itself,
    but the way it is performed—its efficiency, sharpness, elegance,
    velocity—that produces this effect of transcendence.



    The forcefields in Upload—between simultaneous screens, projected
    and living entities, father and daughter, technology and art, speech and
    singing—are resolved through music. The ensemble Musikfabrik, placed on
    stage and led by the conductor Otto Tausk, presented a convincing and
    finessed reading of a musical score that oscillates between electronic and
    symphonic sound. In recent works, the musical language of van der Aa have
    slipped into various non-classical environments. Here he makes reference to
    techno music, which, by sharpening the edges and the volume of the sound,
    excitingly conveys the psychological state of the characters. The
    daughter’s slow aria is touching and reminiscent of Henryk Górecki’s
    melancholic gestures, notably in his Symphony of Sorrowful Songs 
    (1977). It is as though all the sorrow and loneliness that the protagonists
    might feel is somehow absorbed by the music, in gestures of melancholy but
    not of pathos.



    In recalling those performances—trying not to be influenced by the
    recordings of Upload and The Book of Water that have
    since become available—I clearly remember that actual singing appeared only
    twice in The Book of Water. And I remember, too, the special
    atmosphere of those arias—typical of Van der Aa’s vocal writing—with their
    combination of sustained notes sung non-vibrato, their sometimes
    considerable leaps in melodic line, and their quasi-improvised,
    non-directional rhythms, all informing and seemingly hovering over the
    ever-present feeling of melancholy. However, and not to my surprise, I did
    not immediately remember if both arias were sung from the screen or if it
    was just one of them. Actually, in my memory I had started to doubt whether
    there was any live singing in the piece at all.



    In fact, we hear both arias coming from the screen. In the first, we do not
    see who is singing. The singing comes from the film, and the song appears
    as a memory, as it occurs in Geiser’s head while he comes across the photo
    of his deceased wife (Scene 3). In the second, the singer is Geiser’s
    daughter Corrine. We see her in the house in the film, while at the same
    time we hear her voice (Scene 7). She is sometimes synchronized with her
    voice, so that she appears to be singing in the house of her father. At
    other times we hear her singing, but we only see her silent image, with
    closed mouth, going around the house. The figure of the daughter was
    incorporated so smoothly into the whole experience that I became
    indifferent to whether she was projected on screen or performing live on
    stage. In my memory she was there, although I was not sure how
    exactly. Her presence and the aria she sang constituted the most tender
    moment of the performance and embodied the warm hug she gave to her father
    when she finally found him.



    My difficulty in remembering the media and protocol of singing is telling.
The world we live in has changed, it seems to tell us. The notion of    liveness still keeps evolving, even as the modes of re/mediation
changes. We all learn the new rules and adapt as we evolve. Both    Upload and The Book of Water are about loss—loss as a
    learning process. They are about how we learn to lose (father, memory,
    home, body, planet) while at the same time entering new worlds. The final
    verses sung by Corrine are optimistic, although they introduce the pain of
    loss. Despite the rays of divergent light (between digital and analog, life
and death, memory and loss) the generosity of the sun is sustained:[6]



    My father,


    smiles at me in an unknown language.


    My father smiles at me.


    You diverge here,


    your intuitive gaze,


    imagined, understood, and lost.


    You diverge here,


    in shifting shadows,


    between sleep and dream.


    Eternity,


    the sea fled away with the sun,


between sleep and dream.[7]



    

    

    
        
            
                *
            
             The short review “Humor, apsurd i melanholija” that I wrote after the Dutch premiere
of Upload for the Belgrade weekly Vreme, October 7, 2021, served as a departure point for the present article. This article
was made possible through the support of CESEM—Centro de Estudos de Sociologia e Estética
Musical da NOVA FCSH, UIDB/00693/2020, and LA/P/0132/2020, and the financial
support of FCT—Fundação para a Ciência e a Tecnologia, I.P., through National funds. Norma
Transitória—DL 57/2016/CP1453/CT0054.
        

    

	
        
            
                [1]
            
             For more details about Eight, see Jelena Novak, “Eight, aus Licht,
            and The Unbearable Lightness of Being Immersed in Opera,” The Opera
            Quarterly 35, no. 4 (2019), 358–71.
        

    

    
        
            
                [2]
            
             Quote from the unpublished libretto of The Book of Water by Michel
            van der Aa.
        

    

    
        
            
                [3]
            
             Hyperobjects, according to Timothy Morton, are “entities of such
            vast temporal and spatial dimensions that they defeat traditional
            ideas about what a thing is in the first place.” Some of them are
            global warming, climate, evolution, planets, capital, nuclear
            radiation. See Hyperobjects: Philosophy and Ecology After the End
            of the World (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2013),
            summary.
        

    

    
        
            
                [4]
            
             Michel van der Aa, The Book of Water, libretto, unpublished
            document.
        

    

    
        
            
                [5]
            
             Michel van der Aa, Upload, libretto, unpublished document.
        

    

    
        
            
                [6]
            
             This reading of the generosity of a sun that is always giving, and
            not asking anything in return, is inspired by Oxana Timofeeva’s
            book Solar Politics (Cambridge: Polity Press, 2022).
        

    

    
        
            
                [7]
            
             Michel van der Aa, The Book of Water, script, unpublished
            document.
        

    

    
    
    
    
    
    
    
    
    
    
    




                

                

            

                

            

          
          
        
        
        
