Rehearsing Posthumanism

Abstract

In this paper, I explore the rehearsal process of a new opera production about mind uploading by the composer, librettist, and director Michel van der Aa, called Upload. It was produced at the Dutch National Opera in Spring and premiered at the Bregenzer Festspiele in July 2021. As an ethnographer and writer for the Opera Forward Festival, I attended two months on site in the rehearsal spaces in Amsterdam and conducted twelve interviews with the production team. Drawing on Upload as the main case study for this presentation, my key intervention lies in proposing a methodology for examining operas that explore new, digital technology not only on stage but in processes of rehearsal. By focusing on an opera on posthumanism, I seek to shed light on how nonhuman and human materialities collide and learn to intertwine – beyond the dichotomy of vision and with a focus on the sonosphere of the rehearsal space – over the course of eight weeks. Due to Upload’s extensive use of new technology in the rehearsal space, this production challenges operatic production logics. It brings both wanted and parasitic sounds to the rehearsal. The posthuman, or after-human, setting disperses agential connections between humans and machines. By eliciting new modes of collaborating with machines within the operatic framework, this piece offers ways of reconsidering the notion of the Gesamtkunstwerk in 21st-century operas. Focusing on rehearsal ethnography, I extend the concept of the operatic work beyond the score and the performance. By theorizing present rehearsal practices in their moment of emergence, I explore what it means to rehearse with an avatar in a posthuman setting. To enter this debate, I explore ways of knowing through the audible space, drawing on Steven Feld’s concept of acoustemology, as well as Jane Bennett’s notion of ‘vibrant matter’ that argues for the agency of nonhuman materialities. Moreover, I investigate the figure of the avatar, one of the epitomes of posthumanism, through taking on a science and technology studies lens. By drawing on the notion of experimental systems introduced by Hans-Jörg Rheinberger, I dissect how the avatar turns the operatic rehearsal from a production machinery with technical objects into an experimental system with unknown variables, called epistemic things. The opera deals with uploading your mind to a server, turning it into an avatar, and losing your physical body in the process. In the opera, the father turns into an avatar while his daughter remains in the world we know. Content-wise, this operatic work circles around the human in their entanglement with new media, specifically focusing on virtual realities. It sheds light on the friction arising when technology and human collide in novel ways, leading beyond binary discussions of non-human or human, virtual, or material. How does the artistic focus on a tech-driven chimera reconfigure the entire rehearsal process – even to the extent that I scribbled 'silent' as the very first fieldnote?