In The Emancipating Opera Voluspa Jarpa draws on the musical form of the cantata, the sung piece, and uses this genre from European musical history in the form of a contemporary video cantata in order to unfold a narrative about power and emancipation. Voices come up against each other, singing of the hegemonial psyche (the psyche of the white, European, and later US-American patriarchal colonizers) and the subaltern psyche (the psyche of excluded elements of society). In the video, two protagonists mediate between these two poles: On the one hand the “arriero,” a traditional Chilean mule driver, and on the other the trans singer and actress Daniela Vega.

The “arriero” traveling through the mountain landscape of the Andes brings together various origins. On the one hand his roots are in the European colonialization of Chile, and on the other the “arriero” is a descendant of indigenous communities and closely intertwined with the untamed nature and early culture of the early inhabitants of the Andes. In this video, Jarpa contrasts indigenous cultures with her exploration of colonialist and racist writings in which a discourse of devaluation attempted to legitimate the subjugation of non-Western cultures. The singer Daniela Vega here operates as a multiple figure of rebellion against repressive concepts of identity. She not only turns against the colonialization of nature, culture, and people, but also against the limitation and taming of the body.