SEAN BELL


Countertenor and Performance Artist
No Joy in the Brilliance of Sunshine
No Joy in the Brilliance of Sunshine is a multimedia performance piece, exploring the use of operatic early music in performance art. Inspired by the book ‘Heart of Darkness’ (1902) by Joseph Conrad, it re-imagines music by G. F. Handel (1685-1759) through sound, text, movement and voice.

By abandoning a traditional narrative, the elements and styles are invited to interplay. Light and darkness are now the main characters. Abstract combinations of sound and image encourage and allow the audience to experience their own story.

The piece seeks to realise different expressive possibilities by combining elements; audio and visual, movement and sound, operatic style and performative style, text and music. Through this I explore how different languages contrast, interfere and communicate with each other.

The space wherein the action takes place is shaped and coloured by the sound, and the sound is accompanied by the movement and presence of the performing body. By exploring the old, stylised music of Handel and its historic background, I broaden the pallet for modern exploration and look both backwards in time and forward to new ways of interpreting and experiencing performance.

No Joy in the Brilliance of Sunshine was developed through my artistic research at The Royal Conservatoire The Hague, NL.
Read more under Artistic Research.



“Going up that river was like travelling back to the earliest beginnings of the world, when vegetation rioted on the earth and the big trees were kings. An empty stream, a great silence, an impenetrable forest. The air was warm, thick, heavy, sluggish. There was no joy in the brilliance of sunshine.”
- Joseph Conrad, Heart of Darkness (1902)