INSULÆ

Pierre Jodlowski, concept – composition
– video – lights
Frank Witzel, text
Louise Sari, stage design

Polish translation: Zbigniew Naliwajek

PHACE
Doris Nicoletti, flute
Michael Krenn, saxophone
Ivana Pristašová Zaugg, violin
Roland Schueler, cello
Manuel Alcaraz Clemente, percussion
Stefan Obmann, trombone
Alfred Reiter, sound design

Voice Performers
Véronique Caye, Frank Smith, Maria Cristina
Mastrangeli, Xavier Maurel, Ulysses Mengue,
Vanessa Bettane, Philippe Langlois

Camera crew
Pierre Jodlowski
Markus Bruckner
Michael Eder

Video extras
Barbara Eder, Michael Eder, Reinhard Fuchs,
Petra Fuchs-Jebinger, Simone Göbel,
Nikolas Heep, Mia Kim, Maximilian Ölz,
Wolfgang Winter, Elfriede Wuschko

Production
Reinhard Fuchs, artistic director PHACE
Markus Bruckner, production PHACE
Emilie Roupnel, production éOle

Pierre Jodlowski

INSULÆ for six musicians, video, lights and electronics, 2024/25
commissioned by PHACE and éOle studio de création musicale & with the support of the

   and   

a production by PHACE & éOle in co-production with Warsaw Autumn, Wien Modern, Osterfestival Tirol and GRAME – Centre National de Création Musicale

In 1940, Adolfo Bioy Casares published The Invention of Morel, a visionary novella released at a time when Hollywood cinema was flourishing. Around the world, movie theaters were multiplying, and with them emerged a new form of human connection: the ability to share emotions, stories, and attachments with fictional beings—with images, simply projected onto a screen.

Since then, humanity has entered an era where our relationship to images has become central—eventually blurring the line between reality and its representation. This confusion, now intensified by digital networks and our growing desire for virtual existence, raises a question already posed by Casares: Can one fall in love with an image?

Author Frank Witzel takes up this question and composes a literary palimpsest, blending fragments of Casares with echoes of Shakespeare, Kierkegaard, Deleuze, Augé, Baudrillard… He leads us to an island outside of time, trapped in an endless loop, where three characters—one man, two women—attempt to make sense of an unstable world by confronting their thoughts and emotions.

As in Tarkovsky’s Solaris, the ocean here is not a natural element but a thinking organism, a mental projection that has taken on a life of its own.

The musicians are also part of this strange world—through their sound, their physical presence, and their image. Gradually, other figures begin to appear on the main screen. Are they projections? Are real people being transformed into simulacra? Nothing is certain. What is pursued here is a strong ambiguity, leading to an impossible certitude about the definition of those presences.

This performance invites us to question the porous boundaries of reality, and the monstrosity of images—those we endlessly recreate, until we no longer know what is real.