I enter the Romaeuropa Festival space in the Rome Mattatoio Pavilions, where Leon Rogissart and Paul Boereboom’s “Ascension VR” experience will take place. The setting is a particular area of the Pelanda called “Gallery of the Tubs.” Here concrete tanks once used for processing pigs alternate in the darkness. The room is inhabited only by the voices of the authors.
I read the room program and learn that the digital space is inspired by sensory deprivation tank technology, a tool invented in the 1970s to improve the state of mental and physical well-being by simulating a space devoid of sensory stimuli and the effect of gravity. This suggests to me the connection that exists between the tubs alluded to by the authors and space that houses this exhibit.
I sit down, wearing the visor. Other viewers sit at stations located in the semi-dark space. From this moment the experience begins, all digital. It starts with a triangular corridor suspended in the void of a gray desert and filled with the timid breaths of the soundtrack. If in the first five minutes the aforementioned gray desert of the opening scene seems interesting to me, being almost liminal-that is, a transitory place devoid of subjects-after that it becomes almost hostile. Over the course of the performance the narration presents me with screens, plains and stairways, but they are all flat. Although the viewer allows me to see the whole surrounding world, my interest is captured by a single fixed point in front of my eyes.
When the VR sequence ends, an outside voice asks us to take off our visors. The time comes for soprano Marie van Luijk and countertenor Arturo den Hartog. I am surprised by the lack of distance with the singers: they move through the space and approach the chairs as they perform their melody. Without words, they manage to interconnect all parts of the performance: explanation, preparation, meditation, entering and exiting the digital world and the meditation itself.
The word meditation, in fact, is not uttered. The performance offers us an introspective and transcendent journey, isolated from outside noise, until the chanting invites us back into the real dimension. The chanting is wordless, and the Eastern-flavored music is soothing and leads to meditation.
I fix in my memory a list of key words immediately after the performance: triangular shape – screen with sky – staircase – jungle – beating heart – return to the initial hall – black screen – singer’s whisper – singing. I have already gone through these words, now I need them to do a meditative exercise, to be able to return, at least in part, to the world of the “tank” ofAscension.
Anton Tkalenko, 11 ottobre, 2024
Paul Boereboom, Leon Rogissart, Ascension VR,2024
Digitalive. Romaeuropa Festival, curated by Federica Patti, Rome, 11-13.10.2024
images (cover 1): Ascension VR, print (2-3) Paul Boereboom, Leon Rogissart, Ascension VR. Romaeuropa Festival 2024
The article by Anton Tkalenko is part of the Intraspaces editorial project, the sixth edition of Backstage /Onstage, born from a partnership between the Academy of Fine Arts of Rome, Romaeuropa Festival, and Arshake to bring, since 2018, a group of students from the Academy of Fine Arts of Rome behind the scenes of the Romaeuropa Festival. Each year a different editorial project has emerged to flow into the dedicated page that grows as one big archive. The 2024 edition, Intraspaces, ventures into the intrastitial spaces, that is, all those places of connection that connect technologies, artists, space, spectators, sometimes even extending to the territory, where the different institutions that this event manages to involve are located. Participating in this edition were: Giovanni Bernocco, Daniele Bucceri, Stella Landi, Lidia De Nuzzo, Francesca Pascarelli, Anton Tkalenko. Visit the project homepage and the archive of past editions here.
