Songs for a Passerby (VR, 2023)
In Songs for a Passerby, you walk independently, equipped with VR goggles, through a musical dreamscape. You follow your own 3D reflection and pass by various scenes: a dying horse, a choir of people muttering, two dogs playing. Eventually, you meet your own virtual copy, face-to-face.
Songs for a Passerby is a meditative quest, where you briefly step outside of reality and look at yourself. As the puppeteer of your own body, you enter a poetic space where melancholic questions arise: am I passing by moments, or are moments passing by me? How do we relate to this world of passing things? Are we part of it? Or do we merely observe it? Are we a body, or do we only have one? And does this ambivalence perhaps lie at the root of all melancholy?
Songs for a Passerby won the Venice Immersive Grand Prize at the 2023 International Venice Film Festival.
More information
Artistic Team
Director: Celine Daemen
VR art director: Aron Fels
Composition music and sound: Asa Horvitz
Libretto: Olivier Herter
Sound & mix: Wouter Snoei
Complete credits of cast, crew and funders, click here.
Presentations
2023 La Biennale di Venezia (IT)
2023 Muziekgebouw aan ‘t IJ (NL)
2023 De Doelen (NL)
2024 Nationale Opera en Ballet (NL)
2024 South By Southwest (USA)
2024 Spring Festival (NL)
2024 Bifan, Bucheon (KOR)
2024 Nowe Horyzonty IFF (PL)
2024 Sonica (SCT)
2024 Dutch Film Festival (NL)
2024 Kaohsiung Film Archive (TWN)
2024 Bonnefanten Museum (NL)
2025 Lincoln Center NYC (USA)
2025 De Singel (BE)
2025 ILT Festival (DEN)
2025 Bozar Brussels (BE)
2025 Wonderland Festival (IT)
Songs for a Passerby - An immersive VR experience about transient reality.
2023