Sky Burial
Meditations on death and natureA haunting video projection juxtaposes the Tibetan death rite of ‘sky burials’ and a dystopian environment set in an inner-city tower block with a live performance of Fauré’s Requiem, creating a powerful and thought-provoking meditation on our relationships with both nature and death.
- Mat Collishaw is one of the key figures of the Young British Artists (YBA) movement that emerged in the 1980s and has gone on to international acclaim
- Available for projection with live orchestra and choir
- Can also include an accompanying projection for the outside of the venue
- Performances include Baden-Baden, October 2021 (world premiere); De Singel, Antwerp with Brussels Philharmonic and Vlaams Radio Choir, November 2021; Moscow, February 2022
- A production by Pont Neuf Performing Fine Arts, co-produced by Festspielhaus Baden-Baden, erda–Insula Orchestra and Choir, Paris, and deSingel, Antwerp
‘My intention for Faure’s Requiem is to present a large video projection that echoes the themes evoked in the music and resonates with broader issues and concerns in the contemporary world. I decided to create an ambiguous environment with a dystopian feel in which existing death rites have been placed in uncommon settings. My starting point was ‘sky burials’, a practice carried out in countries such as Tibet; where the ground is too hard to dig a grave and the altitude too high for trees to grow and burn on a pyre, leading people to use what resources they have; native vultures, in the ‘burial’ of their dead.’
