Watch it live on Youtube. Click here to see the full performance

Performers inhabit a large aquarium in a visceral large-scale performance-installation that embodies the trauma of global climate change.

Lars Jan’s Holoscenes is a large-scale performance-installation that embodies the trauma of flooding. It is a visceral, cross-disciplinary project born out of the widely-shared concern that our troubled relationship to water will become the central issue of the 21st century. The project directly connects the everyday actions of individuals to global climate change, while contemplating the evolution of our capacities for empathy and long-term thinking.

Presented in public space, the centerpiece of Holoscenes is a large aquarium that floods, drains, and floods again. The flooding aquarium is inhabited by a rotating cast of performers conducting everyday behaviors sourced from collaborators across the planet. Lars Jan is a director, writer, visual artist, and the founding artistic director of Early Morning Opera (EMO), a genre-bending performance + art lab whose works explore emerging technologies, live audiences, and unclassifiable experience.

Created by Lars Jan / Early Morning Opera

Produced by MAPP International Productions

Presented in association with Abu Dhabi Art.

What is Holoscenes?

See what happened in Miami, watch the video below.

ABOUT THE ARTISTS

Lars Jan is a director, writer, visual artist, and the founding artistic director of Early Morning Opera (EMO), a genre-bending performance + art lab whose works explore emerging technologies, live audiences, and unclassifiable experience.

While living in Kyoto, Jan trained and performed as a Bunraku puppeteer under Abe Hidehiko, designated an “Intangible Cultural Treasure” by the Japanese government. He has since developed projects in Afghanistan, Germany, Ukraine, Poland, Haiti, Canada and the US.

Jan’s multi-disciplinary original works — including ABACUS, HOLOSCENES, and TIMe — have been presented and exhibited by The Whitney Museum, BAM Next Wave Festival, Under the Radar Festival, Sundance Film Festival, Experimental Media and Performing Arts Center (EMPAC), The Hammer Museum, REDCAT, Ringling Museum of Art, Toronto Nuit Blanche Festival, Portland Institute of Contemporary Art’s TBA Festival, and the Istanbul Modern.

His work has been supported by multiple awards from the NEA and Center for Cultural Innovation; MAP Fund; Rauschenberg Foundation; Adam Mickiewicz Institute; Surdna Foundation; NEFA’s National Theatre Project; NPN’s Creation Fund; New York State Council on the Arts; and the Sherwood Award. He has spoken at The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Performa, and the 92nd St. Y, and held residencies at the MacDowell Colony, Lower Manhattan Cultural Council, Princeton Atelier, CalArts, Headlands Center for the Arts and the Center for the Art of Performance at UCLA, where he was an inaugural artist-in-residence.

His performance installation HOLOSCENES — a triptych of massive aquariums inhabited by performers — explores the evolution of human endurance and habitual behavior in the context of natural catastrophe, particularly through the lens of mythic, contemporary and coming deluge.

Jan’s most recent performance, The Institute of Memory (TIMe), will be presented internationally and across the US in 2017. He is the son of émigrés from Afghanistan and Poland, and is a TED Senior Fellow.

For Holoscenes come anytime between 4pm & 9pm.

We invite you to spend the day discovering all our Saadiyat Island campus has to offer, conveniently located just minutes away from Abu Dhabi Art’s home base at Manarat al Saadiyat.

Bring your family and friends. Begin your day with a visit to the Invisible Threads exhibit at The Art Gallery before heading over to watch the performers take to the Holoscenes aquarium. From there visit Above Below and Below Below an exhibit by John Torreano, NYU Professor of Art. Top it off with Rooftop Rhythms poetry open mic night (Friday, Nov 18 @ 8pm).

LOCATIONS AND TIMINGS

- Holoscenes – Campus Central Plaza

A large-scale performance-installation that embodies the trauma of global climate change. Between 4pm to 9pm.

- Invisible Threads – The Art Gallery

This exhibition explores the tensions that emerge in our everyday relationships with technology. Open 12pm to 8pm.

- Above Below & Below Below – Project Space

John Torreano’s observations and fascinations with the city of Abu Dhabi. Open 3pm to 10pm.

- Rooftop Rhythms – The Marketplace

Poetry open mic night. Spoken word done right. Nov 18, 8pm to 10pm.

Easy access to parking. Wide selection of food and beverages. Free admission.