Aspern Suite
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- Scenatet presents
- Interludium
- by Jeppe Ernst
- Passage Festival
- August 6, 2023
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In Scenatet’s staging of the Italian avantgarde-composer Salvatore Sciarrino Aspern Suite (1987) for soprano and ensemble which was premiered at KLANG-Festival 2018, the ensemble transforms an already highly phantasmatic piece into something that can only be described as hallucinatory.
Based on the American author Henry James’ novella The Aspern Papers (1888), which centers around a man who stoops to increasingly unscrupulous behavior to obtain the unpublished papers of a famous writer from his dying widow, Sciarrino’s work accentuates the enigmatic quality of the original text. Just as it is never revealed, in the novella, what is actually contained within the titular papers, the plot is rendered increasingly obscure by Sciarrino, allowing only the story’s darkly mysterious mood and the emotional tension to remain in his quiet and spacious piece.
In turn, Scenatet’s staging shrouds the work in a surreal and highly sensorial atmosphere created by light, video, and stage design, removing the piece from the story’s specific physical location – Venice – and thereby allowing the audience to immerse themselves in the abstract, ghostly realm of absence, isolation, and exile.
Reviews
Seismograf
“Scenatet’s lighting, video art and misty, watery darkness linked arms with the quietly melodramatic atmosphere on which Aspern’s events gain import and implication, and through which we might begin to imagine what they mean.”
Politiken
“KLANG Festival ended with an insanely beautiful combination of desperate bel canto in slowmotion and delicate, transparent sounds.”
Credits
Director and scenographer: Anna Berit Asp Christensen
Rehearsal conductor: Martin Nagashima Toft
Light design: Mikkel Jensen
Visuals: Feileacan McCormick
Production manager: Mette Hornbek Hansen
Performers: Scenatet
Soloist: Signe Asmussen
Supported by
The Danish Arts Foundation
Nice Guys Win Twice
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- Scenatet presents
- Interludium
- by Jeppe Ernst
- Passage Festival
- August 6, 2023
VÆRKBESKRIVELSE - DESKTOP
Nice Guys Win Twice is an experimental musical theater piece created in collaboration between Berlin-based composer Jessie Marino, performance ensemble Scenatet, and Romanian multidisciplinary artist Constantin Basica, who created the abstract and immersive video design that runs through the entire performance.
Nice Guys Win Twice is a three-part work for ten performers, live electronic sound, and video landscape, wherein the ensemble performs a series of highly stylized rituals accentuating the uncanny absurdism at the core of our mundane lives. In the first part, everyday gestures such as adjusting glasses or simply lifting an arm are compiled into increasingly complex, rhythmic frameworks. In the second part, the performers remodel the language of a political address by simply removing the vowels. What is left is a series of percussive sounds – aggressive and vaguely threatening – that suddenly resemble cultish incantations. And in the third part, the performers build a wall out of what turns out to be vibrantly blinking television sets, transforming the entire stage into one large screen and thus exploring the boundaries between the physical and the digital.
Meanwhile, the music that anchors the performance is constantly changing from one stylistic extremity to the next, revealing our everyday lives to be a seemingly unlimited source of artistic potential.
Commissioned by the Darmstadt Summer Course, La Muse en Circuit, G((o))ng Tomorrow, Borealis, Transit Festival Leuven and HCMF
A 50 min. experimental music theater piece for 10 performers and video projection mapping. Produced by La Muse en Circuit & Scenatet
Credits
Composition: Jessie Marino
Director of Video Production: Constantin Basica
Performance: Scenatet & Jessie Marino
Supported by
The Danish Arts Foundation and The Danish Conductors Association
Symphony for 20 Rooms
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- Scenatet presents
- Interludium
- by Jeppe Ernst
- Passage Festival
- August 6, 2023
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Symphony for 20 Rooms is Scenatet’s playful interpretation of the American Korean multidisciplinary artist and composer Nam June Paik’s legendary fluxus-piece of the same name. Although it was composed in 1961, Symphony for 20 Rooms was never performed in Paik’s lifetime. By the time of his death in 2006, the work had yet to transcend its existence as a text score – a series of poetic instructions describing what would take place in each room. The extremely difficult work of transforming the symphony from text to a fully realized audiovisual experience was carried out by Scenatet in collaboration with Den Frie Udstillingsbygning, who provided the physical location for the performance.
How does one transgress the boundaries between musical performance and musealized artwork? Between composer, performer, and audience? Symphony for 20 Rooms breaks away from traditional musical and artistic notions to create an experience that activates the complete sensory apparatus. The audience is invited to wander freely between small and big intimate worlds of sounds and sensory expressions. Every room has its own peculiar installation and participatory gesture, and it’s up to the audience to decide the chronology and composition of the work. Thus, the beginning and end of the symphony is an open question.
Reviews
Politiken
“It is an exquisite pleasure to parade around in ‘Symphony for 20 Rooms’. […] According to the literature, ‘Symphony for 20 Rooms’ has never been performed before, and the creation of a homogenous, truly successful exhibition that builds a bridge between artist and audience is therefore something of an achievement by the two directors. Today, the work is about creativity and co-creation”.
Credits
Musical director: Lore Lixenberg
Stage designer: Anna Berit Asp Christensen
Composer: Nam June Paik
Sound designer & Production manager: Janus Jensen
Sound and lighting technician: Mikkel Larsen
Dramaturg & Project Coordinator: Christine Walther Sørensen
Exhibition assistant: Maj Liv Holen
Communication and marketing: Melt
Supported by
The Danish Arts Foundation and The Bikuben Foundation