Performance festival at Velferden 2016
The mouth expresses thoughts. The landscape renders its tone!
The mouth expresses thoughts. The landscape renders its tone!
is an interdisciplinary project that took place in Denmark, Norway and Sweden in 2016 and 2017. A group of Nordic artists were invited by curator Nico Anklam (DE) to respond to works by Danish Fluxus artist Henning Christiansen and to develop new performative works with sound, landscape and language as recurring themes.
The background to the project is a text that Henning Christiansen wrote in 2000: Der Mund spricht die Gedanken aus. Die Landschaft gibt Ihren Klang! The text illustrates how the sounds of the Scandinavian languages emerge from the landscape: the flat Danish fields and islands, the Swedish forests and lakes and the Norwegian mountains and fjords. It ends with a pictorial representation of the three soundscapes that form the title of the project: The mouth expresses thoughts. The landscape renders its tone
The project was first shown in June at Møen at Kunsthal 44, between idyllic cornfields and thatched village houses. On August 27, 2016, we presented the project in a completely new context; in the post-industrial landscape that surrounds Velferden at Sandbekk. As a cornerstone of the event, we showed Henning Christiansen's video work "A Wandering Voice" (1991).
ARTISTS:
SVEN-ÅKE JOHANSSON
Born in 1943 in Mariestad, Sweden and living in Berlin since 1968. A composer, poet, percussionist and visual artist, he has been and continues to be a pioneer of European genre-free improvisational music.
Sven-Åke performed in Sokndal Church with the work Solostück für konzertbecken, and in Velferden, solo and together with LOL Beslutning with Klingend und festgehalten.
ARTURAS BUMSTEINAS
Born in 1982 in Lithuania and lives in Vilnius. Arturas works as a composer of acoustic and electronic music and does collaborative projects with both musicians and visual artists. His musical works have been released on Bolt Records, Cronica, Con-v and Semplice Records. His exhibition-related works are represented by Galerie Antje Wachs in Berlin, and in 2013 he received the "Palma Arts Acustica" award for his radiophonic works.
Arturas presented the work Mess(a) for trees and insects in Sokndal Church.
CAMILLE NORMENT
Born in 1970 in Maryland USA, lives and works in Oslo. Norment works with sound, installation, drawing and performance. These forms of expression connect through form, space and physicality to create a critical aesthetic and a conceptual experience.
Camille performed in Velferden via Skype from Oslo with the interactive work
A skype duet for two pianos: Oslo and Sandbekk.
LINDA PERSSON
Lives in London and Stockholm. Linda problematizes what has been forgotten or hidden in history, such as certain languages and technologies. She uses a variety of materials and forms of expression such as sculpture, textiles, 16 mm film, HD technology, photography and sound.
Linda showed an outdoor performance at Velferden called (S)tone Tensions, followed by a so-called time collapse; a live video and audio streaming from Tasmania where artist Pip Stafford used electromagnetic frequencies to give voices to various stones.
LOL DECISION.
Consists of seven artists and musicians from Denmark; Asger Valentin, Simon Latz, Emil Elg, Lasse Latz, Bjarke Valentin, Asger Hartvig and Holger Hartvig. LOL Beslutning creates music, dance, visual art, performance and text works. They call themselves a rock group that wants to dissolve the traditional band form, and create new compositional approaches to the modern; a cross between chamber music and boy band aesthetics.
In Velferden, LOL performed a 40-minute opera version of a TV crime story.
The work was called Destina and Destine and the eight-eyed scorpion.