An experimental opera on surveillance, pattern, and infrastructural absurdity. Shown two times during Malmö Gallerihelg.

’Shelf Life: An Opera (26092025)’ is an experimental opera that explores the absurd and often invisible infrastructures surrounding our lives. Through repetition, obsession, and satire, everyday protocols are transformed into a dreamlike landscape where memory, pattern recognition, and surveillance take center stage.

The piece follows characters caught in compulsive cycles: one fixated on expiration dates, another a guard navigating the edge between order and chaos. Their stories unfold in a parallel dimension—a “fourth world”—where ritualized surveillance replaces reality and infrastructure masquerades as public service.

Blurring the boundaries between fiction and reality, performance and institution, the work traverses the surreal, the magical, and the resistant. It is a contemporary opera infused with strong visual and performative elements that weave together art, sound, textile, poetry, and scenography.

Concept: Matilda Tjäder, Penny Yiou Peng, Mathias Tang, Thibaut Knapp


Script: Matilda Tjäder, Penny Yiou Peng


Scenography, light, video, installation: Mathias Tang


Musicians: Angelina Petrovic (flute), Rune Kielsgaard (drums), Niklas Tjäder (guitar), Thibaut Knapp (vocalist)


Sound engineering: Daniel Tjäder

Producer: Scaling


Residencies: MARC (Milvus Artistic Research Center), Inkonst, Country Town and Ane-Grete’s Hus in Fox-Amphoux

Shelf Life: An Opera

Schwarzwald Serie

Directed by, filmed by, edited by, and designed by: Greta Markurt
Costume design: Thibaut Knapp
Lighting design: Vitali Kirsch
Camera assistant: Hannah Kähler
VFX: Simon Guiseppe Floris
3D printing: Janek Markurt
Extras: Jana Saretzki, Lilith Krause, Polly Wedler, Julie Matthées, Hannah Kähler, Thibaut Knapp, Vitali Kirsch, Ciaran Plavać
Drivers: Vincent, Dierick, Ciaran Plavać

You make me feel alive 

Shelf Life: An Opera Performance Documentation

Written, mixed and produced by Alex Kassian
Vocals by Thibaut Knapp
Recorded & mixed at Opal Studio

Design by Richard Robinson
Artwork by Sang Woo Kim

Voices - EP by Alex Kassian

 is a song composed and performed by singer Mira Ceti. 

Emifamut Visualizer for Mira Ceti

The Ritual Hoodie Campaign

Album Cover for "Himest Mesi" by Mira Ceti (unrealised)

Photography, Light, Creative Direction, Make Up by Thibaut Knapp. 

This series was created for Mira Ceti's first official album called "Himest Mesi". In the end this portait was released for the artist's press images. 

Album Cover for Himest Mesi by Mira Ceti (unrealised)

A subversive vision of a National Geographic night expedition. Magical creatures stepping out of the darkness caught red-handed in their natural element. Like a spectral apparition an androgynus nymph begins their electrifying dance as the crystalline rain pours down.

A second creature passes by from the purple gloom carrying its metaphysical substance. Zombie or clairvoyant? Let the viewer find out.

Captured by photographer Paulina Otylie Surys for the Wanderlust Collection Campaign presented during London Fashion Week at 180 the Strand.

WANDERLUST Campaign

The spirit of Winter called back the snow and the bite of the wind. He let his frozen heart become a torrent and sacrificed himself to let the Earth bloom.

MASK ROUGE CENDRE BASED ON A SKETCH BY THIBAUT KNAPP

Sacrifice Music Video 

Natália Sykorová is photographed by Evelyn Bencicova and styled by Tatiana Makrinova wearing Thibaut Knapp.

 is an group exhibition curated by Alzbeta Cermáková presented at Acud Gallery Berlin.

Artist Natália Sykorová is portrayed engaging with the exhibition space containing her own sculptures as well as works from artists František Hanousek and Jakub Hájek.

There has to be something in the room

Thibaut Knapp is a French-German multidisciplinary fashion designer taking technical apparel into the metaphysical realm using eco-conscious textiles to sculpt otherworldly silhouettes. His avant-garde designs feature leathers aged with soil, real plants frozen in silicone and geologically layered, weatherproof drapings.

WANDERLUST Lookbook

A performative Narration to present the spooning symbol. 

Shot on a warm summer night smelling of fresh grass and golden twilight my partner and I embrace in natural unison. 

“The infinite stoutness of Love, cosmic force that shakes fathomlessly the individual and the masses. Through the frictional collision of two bodies, chaos appears in a blast wave. And we can all get hit by it. Our exploded destroyed body parts are creating new constellations that will guide the lost spirits, radiating light beams into wounded hearts.” 

CREATIVE DIRECTION THIBAUT KNAPP & JOSEPH KADOW 

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Shelf Life: An Opera Costumes

Interview with Adina Glickstein for Coeval Magazine

Thibaut’s creative journey began with narrative films made in the wilderness and a series of ephemeral installation-performances using torrents and trees alongside man-made materials. Now, it has evolved into a multimedia practice that captures the intense, emotional relationship binding the individual to the natural world.

Interview for Coeval Magazine

The Spooning Logo Campaign

Interview for Busch Magazine 

Cruising for Busch Magazine Issue 1 

Rhinoceros with photographer Viktor Namauvski and writer Tosia Leniarska

Rhinoceros is a collaboration between designer Thibaut Knapp, photographer Viktor Naumovski and writer Tosia Leniarska.

The appeal of watching a hot stranger in a bar is so similar to looking at a fantasy character. The same sleaziness is involved: to indulge in the 80’s nostalgia of cruising is to look at the sultry loner and read him. To observe the visual codes that mold his identity into a satisfying narrative, complete with chapters of certainty and leaving some uncharted territories to discover. You only need one look and you’re sold. One look and you’ve got your cue to fantasize, the signs speaking silently to make your story unwind as you keep staring.

These rows of theater seats pile up like a Warhammer terrain board. Fantasy is laced with the theatricality of a corporation. The flashlight beam reveals figures staged in a dreamscape between a conference room and a cave: Viktor Naumovski crops them up right in front of you, the first person shooter. Light excavates characters that don’t align with any stories we know, pre-programmed sense fails. They’re awkwardly alien, an uncanny jumble of codes we know from fairytales, taken out of context, with no backup and no match. Inadequate but clearly here on a mission, a party of heroes on their side quest: low risk, low reward. We can’t stop staring to drill the sense out of their intentions while they morph back and forth between animalistic prowess and the sensuality of a geology teacher.

They transgress, but it’s the genre of transgression found in the dreams of this office guy on the train who has been planning to wear his five-fingered shoes to work for years. A demanding awkwardness, like you’re already halfway in trudging through the swamp and holding your breath. Your date is ugly but you love him, your date is a caver and you’re holding the flashlight for him, you have excavated your date in this damp grotto and by tomorrow you’ll find out if he’s a werewolf or a vampire. Best UK Caving Videos. Tight Cave - Large Caver 4

Dangerous Cave Dig-Out: Extreme Claustrophobia Trigger Alert

Low risk, low reward, desperate survival, hopeless future. The desire to persiste spawns all stories: the dampness of nature that collapsed in dry air-conditioned rooms, rebirths as mould in the ventilation ducts. As your eyes meet, the eroticism of the stranger in your fantasy is the lushness of the fantastical creature flashed with lime-light, is the fertility of prehistoric soil that brought everything together into nature.

Thibaut Knapp’s clothes flirt with narration like riddles in folk songs. There are landscapes frozen in them, trapped slices of moments, artifacts kept for the survival of a dreamy apocalypse ,generous storytelling lead astray. Geological eras and chapters of ancestry are winding generously on an infinite loop. Stories about the entire world bring you back to yourself, again and again, into a dead end where you find your desires can only ever make sense when they are looped in with dreams of the Earth.

Rhinoceros for Buffalo Magazine

Where does clothing culture end and naked nature begin? This photo series is a wander into the woods to find out. This performative design research is documented by photographer Joseph Kadow. All garments were created live at the location on the day of the performance. 

Gruppe Magazine team: Fritz Marlon & Tim Heydruck

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