Collaborations with Jenny Hval
Iris Silver Mist (2024-2025)
Screenshot from NRK-scenen, DOP: Sølve Sæther
Music by Jenny Hval
Live concerts in Europe & UK 2024-2025
Live performance at NRK-scenen
Music performed by
Jenny Hval, Håvard Volden
and Jenny Berger Myhre
Ghost: Orfee Schuijt
Commisioned by Henie Onstad Art Center
Premiere: 10. February 2024
Jenny Hval
Music, lyrics, text, vocals, guitar, performance
Jenny Berger Myhre
Video, scenography, synths, backing vocals, performance
Håvard Volden
Producer, synths, electronics, guitar, performance
Linn Nystadnes
Sound tech, backing vocals, voice, guitar, performance
Nemanja Cadjo
Light design
Charlie Selvig
Costume design (Livid)
Henie Gamborg
Scents
I want to be a machine is an interdisciplinary music performance with new music written by Jenny Hval, performed by Hval, Jenny Berger Myhre, Håvard Volden and Linn Nystadnes.
It is also an essay, written on stage, with words, images, acoustic and electronic instruments and non-instruments. This text is about what it means to be on stage.
As a young art student, Hval was introduced to the play Die Hamletmaschine (1977) by the German playwright and poet Heiner Müller. This play creates a modern, post-dramatic machine out of Shakespeare's famous Hamlet, but for Hval it was more than that. The characters resembled what she hoped pop musicians could be: broken pieces of fallen greatness, heroic tales and the human experience, put back together into something resembling people. Voices that can tell other, stranger and more absurd stories.
I want to be a machine asks what kind of stories the artist can tell in a time where music, and perhaps art in general, has lost almost all value as a physical, corporeal and philosophical experience.
Review in Klasskampen (NO)
I want to be a machine traveled to:
06. April 24 - Rewire festival, Den Haag (NL)
10.-13. April 24 - The Pit, Barbican, London (UK)
20. April 24 - Donaufestival, Krems (AT)
27. August 24 - Theater Spektakel, Zürich (CH)
16. November 24 - Alternativa festival, Prague (CZ)
I want to be a machine (2024)
Photographed by Pieter Kers at Rewire festival
Jenny Hval: Classic Objects (2022)
Photographed by Vera Marmelo at Culturgest, Lisbon, 23. November 2022:
For Jenny Hval
live shows
Live visuals created for the tour of the Classic Objects album in 2022-2023, performed throughout Europe, UK and US.
The visuals were 3D videos made of photogrammetry models, animated in Blender. They were played back live on stage while performing the music.
Many of the models were made of Annie Bielski's artworks, created as dioramas, becoming scenography through the videos.
Some were of Jenny.
Some, like the video to the left, where animations of real-life places. This was made for the song "Buffy", with photogrammetry from a Lisbon cemetary. Some mixed all three into a blend of art-world-scenes.
The Classic Objects band:
Jenny Hval (vocals)
Håvard Volden (bass guitar)
Kyrre Laastad (drums)
Johan Lindvall (keys)
Daniel Meyer Grønvold (guitar)
Jenny Berger Myhre (backing voals, percussion, synth and video)
The Practice of Love (2019-2020)
Photo by Signe Fuglesteg Luksengard
Covic-cancelled shows:
02.apr.20 - Constellation, Chicago (2 shows)
04.apr.20 - Longboat Hall, Toronto
06.apr.20 - National Sawdust, New York
07.apr.20 - National Sawdust, New York
09.apr.20 - Bob Baker Marionette Theatre, Los Angeles (2 shows)
11.apr.20 - Gray Area Grand Theatre, San Francisco
13.apr.20 - Illsley Ball Nordstrom Recital Hall, Seattle
Commisioned for Ultima Festival & Blackbox Teater
Premiere: 20. September 2019
Music, lyrics, text, direction: Jenny Hval
Video & visuals: Jenny Berger Myhre
Choreography: Orfee Schuijt
Producer, sound design: Håvard Volden
"The Practice of Love" is an interdisciplinary piece created by Jenny Hval in close collaboration with Håvard Volden, Jenny Berger Myhre, and Orfee Schuijt, as well as Vivian Wang, Espen Reinertsen and Natali Abrahamsen Garner. It is also Jenny Hval's 5th studio album.
The piece came to be in a collaborative and fluid workflow between the ensemble. We all got to dive into Jenny's world, associating, relating, and creating a Practice of Love together. The piece premiered at Ultima Festival of Contemporary Music in Oslo, september 2019.
The piece investigates the connection between life and art in a specific way – an umbilical magic, which brings together the possibility of creating art, creating life, and relating to other people, looking for empathy and a common language through speaking, singing, writing together. It also looks at the relationship between voice / presence / life and written word / absence / death: The voice comes from a living body, it is how we first relate to other humans, hearing our mother’s voice and responding to it … Whereas the dead body can no longer say “I”, and the written words are the remains that are chiseled into our tombstones. Is being drawn to words a death drive?
The Practice of Love travelled to:
2019
29.sept.19 - Milton Court, The Barbican, London
16.oct.19 - Künstlerhaus Mousonturm, Frankfurt
30.oct.19 - Centre Pompidou, Paris
09.nov.19 - Le Guess Who?, Utrecht
17.nov.19 - Huddersfield Contemporary Music Festival
23.nov.19 - Ars Cameralis Festival, Katowice
11.dec.19 - Ask Helmut, Kampnagel, Hamburg
13.dec.19 - nyMusikk, RIMI IMIR, Stavanger
2020
15.feb.20 - HAU Hebbel am Ufer, Berlin
16.feb.20 - HAU Hebbel am Ufer, Berlin
17.feb.20 - HAU Hebbel am Ufer, Berlin
19.feb.20 - STUK, Leuven
20.feb.20 - STUK, Leuven
