Object Collection: Innova

Innova is an ecstatically urban opera for the 21st century by the members of Object Collection. With text collaged from gangster films, political manifestos, and plagiarized performance art, five vocalists sift through a baroque landscape of objects and tools triggering a barrage of action, images and sound.

Dissolving the boundary between the innovative and the residual, the five performers of Innova maintain an extensive live/work space that becomes an urban grotto of revised and invented topographies. The performers engage in a range of pastimes, intricate sequences of action, diagrammatic displays, projects, and unconventional vocal techniques such as notated speech and rhythmic whispering, while live projected video refracts their activity across the greater room.

The score is influenced by a range of music subcultures, from hip-hop/dancehall’s booming sub-bass to updated musique concrète, noise-rock and experimental improvised music. In addition to the five vocalists, Innova is performed by three musicians on cello, guitar, bass, woodwinds, percussion, piano, samples, field recordings, computer, and objects. Texts are appropriated from sources as varied as Michelangelo Antonioni, Jello Biafra, Claes Oldenburg, and William Shatner.

Performed in English, Turkish, German, French, Spanish, Mandarin, and Hebrew, with English supertitles.

Presented with Incubator Arts Project.