Desire – Venus counsels RealDoll
LAB51/ Johanna Vargas (Soprano) and Magdalena Cerezo (Piano)
silent green, Berlin

 

Desire – Venus counsels RealDoll (2024)  

for female voice, piano + iPad

Commissioned by KISSINGER SOMMER Internationales Musikfestival

Venus: possesses eternal youth and a loving heart, embodying the goddess of love and

beauty who delights the senses.

Harmony: on the other hand, is a “Realdoll”, an overused sex robot.

Venus attempts to understand and repair RealDoll, reflecting on and exploring the

redefinition of love in popular culture. Once rooted in a long historical tradition, pure love is

now under threat; against the backdrop of technological advancement, modern love has

undergone significant distortions and displacements, with desires and passions fading away.

The once precious frenzy and madness of lust became a culture of fast-food sex. How do we

find true love, establish trust, and support one another? Venus is in search of for answers.

Both, the consulted and the psychotherapists themselves, have shed their human bodies, yet

they face the same problems as all humans. Venus, facing our contemporary society, seeks

to redefine love, continuously experiencing self-awareness sacrifices on her path of finding

true love.

The piano and voice continually swap roles between deity and machine, seeking a common

understanding and medium for emotional expression. The eternal themes of love and death

are constantly questioned. In the background, the work uses cloning techniques to integrate

the voices of composers (singers) into the background. The musical style, like the evolution

of love, is entangled in layers of external expressions, losing its original form. The three-part

work uses long shots, medium and close-up to provide different dimensions of observation

and analysis for humans and machines, showcasing the layered stories of love through

sound.