In 1940, Adolfo Bioy Casares published The Invention of Morel, a visionary novella released at a time when Hollywood cinema was flourishing. Around the world, movie theatres were multiplying, and with them emerged a new form of human connection: the ability to share emotions, stories, and attachments with fictional beings—with images, simply projected onto a screen.

Since then, humanity has entered an era where our relationship to images has become central—eventually blurring the line between reality and its representation. This confusion, now intensified by digital networks and our growing desire for virtual existence, raises a question already posed by Casares: Can one fall in love with an image?

Author Frank Witzel takes up this question and composes a literary palimpsest, blending fragments of Casares with echoes of Shakespeare, Kierkegaard, Deleuze, Augé, Baudrillard… He leads us to an island outside of time, trapped in an endless loop, where three characters—one man, two women—attempt to make sense of an unstable world by confronting their thoughts and emotions. As in Tarkovsky’s Solaris, the ocean here is not a natural element but a thinking organism, a mental projection that has taken on a life of its own.

The musicians are also part of this strange world—through their sound, their physical presence, and their image. Gradually, other figures begin to appear on the main screen. Are they projections? Are real people being transformed into simulacra? Nothing is certain. What is pursued here is a strong ambiguity, leading to an impossible certitude about the definition of those presences. This performance invites us to question the porous boundaries of reality, and the monstrosity of images—those we endlessly recreate, until we no longer know what is real.

Insulæ was commissioned by éOle – studio de création musicale and PHACE ensemble with the support of SACEM.