Polia & Blastema, E. Elias Merhige’s first foray into opera, is a 40 minute gnostic creation myth told through a visual tapestry which journeys into immensely desolate hellscapes of the inorganic as organic folding back onto itself in ever spiraling, fractally superimposing cataclysms of wormhole network (be)longing.
Aesthetically tempered by aspects of decay, rot, earth, and the meta- myth structure of human cognition, the multi-leveled world of Polia & Blastema is in-formed by Viennese Actionism as much as it is by Eugene Thacker’s notions of “the world without us”, of supernatural horror and dissolution, expressed in the separation and (re)union of two entities who in the end feast on one another in ritualistic ecstasy
Presented by
Century Guild Creative
Strangeloop Studios
The Teaching Machine
Polia & Blastema
a cosmic opera
Featuring
Nina McNeely
Jasmine Albuquerque
Libretto & Direction
E. Elias Merhige
Creative Direction & Visual Effects Supervisor
David Wexler
Cinematography
Jake Bloch
Composer & Sound Design
Gavin Gamboa
Vocalists
Micaela Tobin
Sharon Chohi Kim
Associate Producer
Ian Simon
Production Coordinator
Nick Maresh
Animation & Compositing
Alec Maassen
Aron Johnson
Nicholas Juister
David Wexler