Victory Over the Sun

presented by Sydney Chamber Opera and the 20th Biennale of Sydney

In 1913, the Russian Futurists unleashed this dizzying piece of canonical apocrypha: a psychedelic proto-science fiction saga of time-travelling revolutionaries and singing weaponry, set against a backdrop that included an early draft of the avant-garde painter Malevich’s iconic Black Square. The text: untranslatable. The music: lost to history. Alongside Stravinsky’s The Rite of Spring and Pirandello’s Six Characters in Search of an Author, it is one of the few artistic works whose premiere provoked a riot.

The 20th Biennale of Sydney brings together SCO and visionary Sydney artist Justene Williams to make a new Victory for the 21st century. The result is a masterwork of passionate strangeness for the digital age that shows us worlds the Futurists could never have imagined.

Drones soar, history collapses, and a pair of strongwomen battle over humanity’s fate in a glorious dream of tomorrow.

Welcome to the new future.

Image: Justene Williams, Your Boat My Scenic Personality of Space, 2012, video still. Courtesy the artist and Sarah Cottier Gallery, Sydney

Concept & Design: Justene Williams
Music: Huw Belling (after Mikhail Matyushin)
Writer-Director: Pierce Wilcox (after Aleksei Kruchonykh)
Lighting Design: Alexander Berlage

With: Simon Lobelson, Jessica O'Donoghue, Mitchell Riley, Sarah Toth, Hannah Cox, Danielle Maas, Eleni Schumacher, Jane Bishop, Joseph Manton, Jack Symonds, James Wannan, also featuring the Inner West Voices

Date & Time: 7:30pm Fri 18, Sat 19, Sun 20 March 2016
Venue: Building 15, Cockatoo Island, Sydney
Tickets: $27 Available here