Angels of Amsterdam convinces with 4 centuries of women's lives

If you get the urge to run your finger through the candle flame for a moment, a VR installation is already almost successful. Not only because of its technical prowess, but also because it convinces as a place to bivouac for half an hour.

I am standing at the bar of a seventeenth-century Amsterdam pub. There is buzz, music, a bartender who is not letting herself get off the hook. But above all, there are four women willing to share their life stories with me if I stare at them long enough. And what stories. A enslaved woman dances and fights her way to independence. A whore explains how it actually works, a woman. A young girl boards a ship to the East as a man and a young woman tries to make ends meet.

The stories feel real, even though they are theatrical. But that very theatricality makes there enough distance to go along with the intense women's lives. Or to feel more at ease when a woman talks about her sexuality. I understood that some male viewers found it uncomfortable anyway. Aim achieved, it seems to me.

Real women's lives

The four stories are based on real existing women, which creator Anna Abrahams tracked down in archives and books. For instance, you see the story of a girl who runs away from home to escape a marriage at 14. The girl, Maritgen Jans, finds out that a girl earns half as much as a boy and sells her dress, her only possession, and buys boys' clothes. Henceforth, she would go through life as soldier David and embark in drag for Africa. That can't end well, you'd think, but surprisingly, her exposure turns out to be no cause for jettisoning or rape in her male stronghold.

What I found most impressive was the story of Juliana, an enslaved woman searching for freedom in Amsterdam. In this segment, the makers do not use documentary style, or political statements. The woman dances, and in her performance she exudes such enormous power that words are no longer necessary. Her character feels most real. Also because of a detail: you can hear her feet moving on the floor. The tactile , physicality of dance is perfectly depicted through something seemingly simple (but technically complex, I'm told) like the sound of feet on the floor. Sound is leading in a 360 environment and in this VR experience, everything about it is right.

Why these stories still matter

Anna Abrahams explains that the women were chosen for their relevance to our times. Although some 400 years have passed since the lives of the ze women (Maritgen was born in 1611), the themes are still in play. Although the income gap is falling, 400 years later women are still paid less than men. Double sexual morality still exists. It is still difficult to survive without money in Amsterdam and live at a decent price. The Netherlands has still not apologised for its slavery past. Plus ça change.

The clever thing about this VR experience is that technology and content are equivalent to each other. The creators, Avinash Changa and Anna Abrahams, developed the work together, with Avinash Changa developing new techniques to make it feel as real as possible. Café 't Papeneilend, in a seventeenth-century building, was used as the location for the VR.

Using 3-D scanning techniques from construction, the café was mapped in the middle of the night, with an eye for detail. Candles as light sources, with the right warmth and incidence of light, deep saturation of colours making the red curtains almost tangible. It all adds up. This is a step forward in the whole VR world, where until recently either the technology left much to be desired or was so dominant that the whole experience produces a "look at what we can do" perception. Working as the brilliant (but made on an unfeasible budget) Carne y Arena, Alice and now Angels of Amsterdam show that VR can be a new, autonomous art form.

Venice

Angels of Amsterdam is the first Dutch entry for the prestigious Venice Biennale. The work can be seen at Eye from 1 to 12 September, together with the other competition entries from Venice. After that, it will be on show during the Dutch Film Festival (24 September - 2 October). It is worth going to see it at one of these places, as the picture quality is much better than can be achieved with consumer VR glasses. Also, the experience is more complete than it will be in Venice: the stories of 2 women contain nudity or scenes of a sexual nature. You, as a seventeenth-century woman, will tell something about sex! Even with the clothes on, this is still too shocking and has been censored. What about the double standard?