PANDORA INVITE is a research project that includes a series of interrelated interactive installations that reimagine and renew the role of the spectator, transforming them into an integral part of a work of art and exploring a range of roles that they can play.
The pieces that comprise the work transfer notions of theater to the gallery space that create a more direct and participatory communication between the piece and the audience, without which the pieces are incomplete. PANDORA INVITE_Phase 1 encompasses two series: The Karaoke Pieces series and the Playing the Victim Pieces series, which together present a total of three interactive installations (THE END, Playing James Dean, and Playing Marilyn Monroe). These three installations are interconnected by a shared theme: a reflection on our icon-based pop culture, which addresses topics such as identity and death.
I’m interested in everything related to the “Re-“: re-creating, re-interpreting, re-presenting… because it allows me to give a new perspective to the existing, to what is familiar to us, to what we all recognize, to what we can all connect with. It’s the re-appropriation of that shared culture and history that allows us to transform the universal into the private and vice versa, the unknown into the familiar and vice versa, to become aware of ourselves and of what unites us with others through an empathic experience with what we call “otherness.”
Pandora Invite is a work by iara Solano Arana
Produced by the Montehermoso Cultural Center
ORIGINAL IDEA, SET DESIGN, AND PRODUCTION: iara Solano Arana
ADVISOR AND AUDIO EDITING ASSISTANT: Sammy Metcalfe
TEXTS FOR THE END: lthe authors
TEXTS FOR PLAYING THE VICTIM JAMES DEAN: iara Solano Arana; VOICE-OVER: Albert Pérez
TEXTS FOR PLAYING THE VICTIM MARILYN MONROE: iara Solano Arana and Cristina Redondo; VOICE-OVER: iara Solano Arana
THE END is part of The Karaoke Pieces series where, using a karaoke format, the actor-spectator brings to life a repertoire of endings, both fictional and real, to reinterpret them. The endings to choose from include suicide notes that have been made public, final diary entries, donated breakups, and movie endings.
Playing JAMES DEAN and Playing MARYLIN are part of the Playing The Victim series and are based on recreations of real-life scenarios where icons of our pop culture died, with the victim re-embodied by the audience. Both pieces are channeled through audio that can be heard through the radio in the case of the car and the telephone in the case of the bedroom.
