Opera Workshop – Insight session no. 2

Bregenz, 4.12.15. How does an opera come into being? The Opera Workshop provides a window on the intensive process of creating a new work – Zesses Seglias’s To the Lighthouse, which will receive its world premiere at the Bregenz Festival in 2017. The work's new stage designer, Jakob Kolding, introduced himself at the second insight session on 3 December at Kunsthaus Bregenz. The Danish artist said he regarded the opportunity of working on the stage set for a new opera, in collaboration with other artists of different backgrounds, as an extremely important and exciting development. During the session two compositions by Steve Reich were performed that are especially significant for Kolding's way of working. Kolding was joined at the session by the composer Zesses Seglias and the librettist and stage director Ernst M. Binder.

In his collages, sculptures and installations Jakob Kolding (b. 1971) explores the fundaments of social, physical, psychological and political conditions. Starting from an early interest in visual studies on the phenomenology of cities, he has been working since the 1990s on social and political aspects of space and architecture. Most recently he has translated the concept of the collage into spatial arrangements and abstract compositions. The result are showcases which look like models of fragmented urban spaces. They are miniature constructions, enclosed spaces for memory and association, where the constellations and perspectives allow multilayered narratives to arise. Psychology is as much as theme here as literature, for instance in references to Jorge Luis Borges and Julio Cortázar.

SHORT BIOS

Jakob Kolding comes from Albertslund in Denmark. He studied sociology at Roskilde University and the Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts. He lives and works in Berlin. His works have been exhibited in museums and galleries all over the world, including the Museum of Modern Art in New York, the Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago, Stedelijk Museum Bureau, Amsterdam, at the Kunstverein in Frankfurt am Main, Graz and Hamburg, at the Liverpool Biennial, the CCA Wattis Institute for Contemporary Arts, San Francisco, Wien Museum, Palais de Tokyo, Paris, Louisiana, Humlebæk, Denmark, the Museum of Contemporary Art, San Diego, and The University of Michigan Museum of Art, Ann Arbor. He is represented by Galerie Martin Janda (Vienna), Galleri Nicolai Wallner (Copenhagen) and Team Gallery (New York).

The Greek composer Zesses Seglias studied in Thessaloniki under Dimitris Papageorgiou and in Graz under Beat Furrer. His works have been performed by Klangforum Wien and the Diotima Quartet. In 2014, his first chamber opera hystéra was premiered at Graz Opera.

The author, musician and stage director Ernst Marianne Binder has written many plays and prose texts. From 1987 to 2003 he was artistic director of the Forum Stadtpark Graz, and has directed the theatre dramagraz since 2003. From 1995 to 2003, as house director at Mecklenburg Theatre in Schwerin, Binder staged premiere productions of a number of plays by Einar Schleef.

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