Ragnar Kjartansson in his suit. Photo by the author.Icelandic artist Ragnar Kjartansson walks around Berlin’s preppy district of Prenzlauer Berg dressed in an old pinstripe suit. This is normal, of course. He loves building pieces on multiple histories, including himself. Well-known for his piece of florescent signage that reads “Scandinavian Pain,” Kjartansson is used to stirring up the northern chill with informalities. At the Venice Biennale in June, he made a boat called S.S. Hangover where musicians tooted their horns in a strange, ever-circulating boat, not to mention a six month-long durational performance, painting 144 pictures in a row. He sings in the bathtub and gets his parents (who are actors and directors) to co-star in his videos. Now, the multi-disciplinary, Reykjavik-based artist is doing a theatre piece built on the words of Nobel Laureate Icelandic author Halldór Laxness, who wrote a book about a delirious artist who completely loses control of his life.
The Explosive Sonics of Divinity is a piece of theatre with no actors. That’s right. Composed by former Sigur Rós keyboardist Kjartan Sveinsson, it premiered on Wednesday with a performance by the German Film Orchestra Babelsberg and the Film Choir Berlin. Kjartansson painted the illustrious landscapes, which shift and change throughout the show, with his friends this summer in Reykjavik (they were shipped to Berlin in tubes). All in all, it’s a sexy, heartfelt sountrack to what looks like a life-sized, moving landscape canvas diorama. It’s about the romantic longing for beauty while paying tribute to the old school mechanics of theatre.
Set in one of the world’s most avant-garde theatres, the red marble in the front foyer is rumoured to be recycled from the Reich Chancellery offices of Hitler back when he was in power. “That background is really important for our modernity, I always think about that in relation to a place,” said Kjartansson, who spoke to us about being a romantic artist, stagehand jokes and non-asshole music.
VICE: Are you always dressed in stuff like this, a pinstripe suit?
Ragnar Kjartansson: Yes, when I turned 30 I was suddenly really scared of becoming a middle-aged guy in electroclash clothes. So I just decided to dress like an old man for the rest of my life. Can you tell us more about the piece you’re doing at the Volksbühne?
So the piece is called The Explosive Sonics of Divinity. It’s a piece I've been brewing a long time. It started when Henning Nass, director of the Volksbühne asked me… it’s so cool how they work, “Do you want to do something?” Just something, some idea. I started thinking about it. "Wow", I thought. I really love the Volksbühne, the first production I saw there was in 1989 was Hamlet with my parents. I have been there every five years for the past 25 years. When asked to do something, you really start to ask yourself what do you do with the Volksbühne? Its history is so hardcore, so avant-garde, so political. What’s poor me going to do there? Beauty. I wouldn’t do this at any other place. It’s a response to the repertoire of the theatre. Where is the title from?
The title is from this book my father, a theatre director, has. It's World Light by the Icelandic Nobel laureate Halldór Laxness, which is an epic story about an artist’s longing for beauty. It ends in everyone dying around him. He never takes a stand politically, becomes a child molester and commits suicide. It’s so much about explosive sonics of divinity. The story was written in 1937-40 at the crucible of modernism. It was written as a critique on romantic artists, he was a socialist, but went to Moscow and something broke in him. He’s our greatest writer.
For a theatre piece, it’s strange you decided to not include actors.
The stagehands always have the joke, when you have a technical run-through you say, “It’s so much better without the actors.” It’s this basic idea – doing theatre without actors, just sets and music. How did Kjartan Sveinsson get involved?
He is a composer who was in Sigur Rós, he quit the band a few years ago. He has been making music that goes straight to the heart and the guts. Music that is dealing with beauty, I think it’s really rare to do that without becoming an asshole. It’s not asshole music. He is creating beauty but he’s very aware of the truth. He was a perfect composer to work with. I said to Kjartan: “I’m going to create some theatre sets, I’m using this book for the title and you just create music in four parts.” What are the sets like?
They’re nature in theatre – painted mountains and woods; they’re really old school theatre sets. They’re inspired by Caspar David Friedrich. I tried to avoid making it totally Icelandic. Very banal. I painted these myself last summer with a few friends. The Reykjavik theatre lent us the space. We put it in a container and sent it here. Its painted canvas which hangs from the ceiling. It ties into the essence of theatre. I love it when canvas pretends to be tree. That’s what a person pretends to do when they’re onstage. Why are you so drawn to old school theatre? Is it because of your mother (Guorun Asmundsdottir)?
My mum and dad were trying to fight against this tradition. Some say: “We are not doing Shakespeare in pantyhose!” You see Shakespeare in military costumes. There is old school theatre but you don’t see it anymore. Is the concept of the romantic artist still alive?
Even a hardcore conceptual artist that shaves his head and always wears black, that’s a crazy romantic statement. Even though you’re non-romantic in what you do, taking black and white photographs of abandoned buildings, how romantic is that? Sorry. They don’t want to admit it?
We had to denounce words like romantic and beauty after the Nazis destroyed it. Every artist in the world had to, Nazis are basically artists on cocaine destroying everything in the name of romanticism. We had to avoid things like romantic and beauty. We called it other words like conceptual and minimal. Conceptual art is another way to be romantic.I hear ya – Thanks, Ragnar.The Explosive Sonics of Divinity runs at the Volksbühne in Berlin on March 1 and March 16, 2014.Follow Nadja on Twitter @nadjasayej
Annons
Ragnar Kjartansson: Yes, when I turned 30 I was suddenly really scared of becoming a middle-aged guy in electroclash clothes. So I just decided to dress like an old man for the rest of my life. Can you tell us more about the piece you’re doing at the Volksbühne?
So the piece is called The Explosive Sonics of Divinity. It’s a piece I've been brewing a long time. It started when Henning Nass, director of the Volksbühne asked me… it’s so cool how they work, “Do you want to do something?” Just something, some idea. I started thinking about it. "Wow", I thought. I really love the Volksbühne, the first production I saw there was in 1989 was Hamlet with my parents. I have been there every five years for the past 25 years. When asked to do something, you really start to ask yourself what do you do with the Volksbühne? Its history is so hardcore, so avant-garde, so political. What’s poor me going to do there? Beauty. I wouldn’t do this at any other place. It’s a response to the repertoire of the theatre. Where is the title from?
The title is from this book my father, a theatre director, has. It's World Light by the Icelandic Nobel laureate Halldór Laxness, which is an epic story about an artist’s longing for beauty. It ends in everyone dying around him. He never takes a stand politically, becomes a child molester and commits suicide. It’s so much about explosive sonics of divinity. The story was written in 1937-40 at the crucible of modernism. It was written as a critique on romantic artists, he was a socialist, but went to Moscow and something broke in him. He’s our greatest writer.
Annons
The stagehands always have the joke, when you have a technical run-through you say, “It’s so much better without the actors.” It’s this basic idea – doing theatre without actors, just sets and music. How did Kjartan Sveinsson get involved?
He is a composer who was in Sigur Rós, he quit the band a few years ago. He has been making music that goes straight to the heart and the guts. Music that is dealing with beauty, I think it’s really rare to do that without becoming an asshole. It’s not asshole music. He is creating beauty but he’s very aware of the truth. He was a perfect composer to work with. I said to Kjartan: “I’m going to create some theatre sets, I’m using this book for the title and you just create music in four parts.” What are the sets like?
They’re nature in theatre – painted mountains and woods; they’re really old school theatre sets. They’re inspired by Caspar David Friedrich. I tried to avoid making it totally Icelandic. Very banal. I painted these myself last summer with a few friends. The Reykjavik theatre lent us the space. We put it in a container and sent it here. Its painted canvas which hangs from the ceiling. It ties into the essence of theatre. I love it when canvas pretends to be tree. That’s what a person pretends to do when they’re onstage. Why are you so drawn to old school theatre? Is it because of your mother (Guorun Asmundsdottir)?
My mum and dad were trying to fight against this tradition. Some say: “We are not doing Shakespeare in pantyhose!” You see Shakespeare in military costumes. There is old school theatre but you don’t see it anymore. Is the concept of the romantic artist still alive?
Even a hardcore conceptual artist that shaves his head and always wears black, that’s a crazy romantic statement. Even though you’re non-romantic in what you do, taking black and white photographs of abandoned buildings, how romantic is that? Sorry. They don’t want to admit it?
We had to denounce words like romantic and beauty after the Nazis destroyed it. Every artist in the world had to, Nazis are basically artists on cocaine destroying everything in the name of romanticism. We had to avoid things like romantic and beauty. We called it other words like conceptual and minimal. Conceptual art is another way to be romantic.I hear ya – Thanks, Ragnar.The Explosive Sonics of Divinity runs at the Volksbühne in Berlin on March 1 and March 16, 2014.Follow Nadja on Twitter @nadjasayej