Sun and Sea Listening House has been derived from the opera-performance Sun and Sea. It is a portable audio version of the performance that allows one to experience it in nearly solitary mode. The Listening House features a replica of a solitary beach cabin, which is meant to be placed outdoors, and houses the captured bits of the opera-performance Sun and Sea originally performed at the 58th Venice Biennale. The booth offers an opportunity for the listener to not only attend in isolation, but also to privately engage in the nostalgia and the karaoke of memory. Recorded voices spinning on a single vinyl in a wood-pannelled room invite one to embrace the pandemic and post-pandemic existence.

In the context of societal collapse caused by human-induced climate crises and global pollution, the playful yet dramatic performative opera Sun & Sea (2019) became a milestone reflection on the anthropocene. This pocket installation version inside a beach cabin offers a version of the work for solitary listeners who can retreat from the outdoor world onto an indoor beach where they are protagonists and no longer audience in a memory theatre which is an elegy to a lost world of ecological balance.

— Carolyn Christov-Bakargiev

The work has been selected by the Dutch Commissioning Committee 2021/23 and acquired through the Hartwig Art Production | Collection Fund. It will subsequently be donated to the Dutch state, becoming an integral part of the national art collection (‘Rijkscollectie’), available for institutions in the Netherlands and abroad. As of June 2024, the artwork is on a two-year loan to Museum Beelden aan Zee (NL)

Mixed media installation
Wooden cabin (2.5 m x 2.5 m x 2.5 m), found objects, sound (67’ loop)
Dimensions variable
Edition of 3 + 3 AP