Research Catalogue

"Metamorphoses - The performance of process" is an exposition of choreographic objects. Operating in the realms of drawing, photography, and video, these objects each address a poetics of transformation. The collections expose the simple materiality of change; the wind scattering paper pieces - or being transformed into sound by the paper walls of an accordion. ::: Contextual note: Metamorphoses is the first cycle of the choreographic project Love, polyphonic. The Metamorphoses Cycle consists of four parts: 1. The Performance of Process 2. Performance object 3. International performance workshop tour 4. Choreographic Toolbox #1: Metamorphoses (publication) The project Love, polyphonic extends over six years. The work approaches movement, sound, geometry and language through the concept of "love" as a prism. A force that can only be recognized indirectly. A tool for listening to the world; polyphonic. The series "The Performance of process", which was shared on the Instagram account love_polyphonic and Black Box teater's websites through the spring of 2021, invites us into the process of Metamorphoses. The performance object that premiered at Black Box Teater September 18th 2021 was a collaboration with cellist and composer Lene Grenager and dancer Cecilie Lindeman Steen. The performance was presented in collaboration with Ultima Oslo Contemporary Music Festival. The collaborators for the international performance workshop tour was MAD, Firenze (IT), La Regarde du Cygnet, Paris (FR) and Dansekapellet, København (DK). The Choreographic Toolbox #1: Metamorphoses (publication) was launched at Norma T in collaboration with Mette Edvardsen on March 7th 2023, and is distributed nationally and internationally by Tekstallemenningen. ::: Janne-Camilla Lyster (b. 1981) is a Norwegian choreographer, writer and performer. She gained her artistic PhD with the project «Choreographic poetry: Creating literary scores for dance», and has a particular interest in pre-figurative practices, including scores, experimental notation and notation systems for movement. She has published a number of poetry collections as well as novels, plays, essays and performance scores.

Een artistiek onderzoek naar contact, verbinding en gemeenschappelijke grond.

The research project 'Lessons in the Shadows of Death' explores and exposes an almost lost tradition of public mourning - the Art of Lamentation. The project follows the structure of the 17th century musical genre 'Leçons de Ténèbres' – traditionally composed as vocal ‘lessons’ performed during Easter week contemplating the fall of Jerusalem in 586 BC and based on the Biblical Lamentations. The overall purpose is to create and promote an intra-active 'grief-entangled' music practice in relation to public mourning and wounds of loss. Previous artistic research on vocal mad scenes, lamentations and Nothingness (Laasonen Belgrano 2011) and performance philosophical explorations of apophenia and autopoesis (Price 2017) has since 2019 merged and developed into a growing archive investigating ‘ornamentation-as methodology’. The primary aim of this project is to transform the ornamented music and words of Michel Lambert’s nine Leçons de Tenebres from 1661 into nine video-essays. Together with an international network of artists and scholars we will bring the 17th century musical mourning to a contemporary Jerusalem – a city which lives as a symbol of any falling, wounded and embodied space-time. The project reconfigures the Art of Lamentation as a living practice for a wounded world in need of re-learning how to attend to existential consciousness and communal grief.The research project 'Lessons in the Shadows of Death' explores and exposes an almost lost tradition of public mourning - the Art of Lamentation. The project follows the structure of the 17th century musical genre 'Leçons de Ténèbres' – traditionally composed as vocal ‘lessons’ performed during Easter week contemplating the fall of Jerusalem in 586 BC and based on the Biblical Lamentations. The overall purpose is to create and promote an intra-active 'grief-entangled' music practice in relation to public mourning and wounds of loss. Previous artistic research on vocal mad scenes, lamentations and Nothingness (Laasonen Belgrano 2011) and performance philosophical explorations of apophenia and autopoesis (Price 2017) has since 2019 merged and developed into a growing archive investigating ‘ornamentation-as methodology’. The primary aim of this project is to transform the ornamented music and words of Michel Lambert’s nine Leçons de Tenebres from 1661 into nine video-essays. Together with an international network of artists and scholars we will bring the 17th century musical mourning to a contemporary Jerusalem – a city which lives as a symbol of any falling, wounded and embodied space-time. The project reconfigures the Art of Lamentation as a living practice for a wounded world in need of re-learning how to attend to existential consciousness and communal grief.

This exposition contains bonus material (audio-visual) on the doctoral project "To Start from Scratch" by Karl Salzmann (ARC - Artistic Research Center, University of Music and performing Arts in Vienna, Austria, 2024). It presents a selection of documented artistic works, prototypes, performances and materials developed during the research process.

DK abstract: (scroll down for UK abstract) Projektet “Genklangen fra den væltede fjerde væg” forsøger at bygge broer mellem kunstmusikken og fællesskabet, her repræsenteret ved den danske sangbog ‘Højskolesangbogen’. I et hybridt koncertformat, skabt til projektet, hvor en intens, abstraheret tilgang til det musikalske materiale er gennemgående, opstår i løbet af koncerterne adskillige passager med fællessang, hvor publikum synger med på sange de kender. Projektet har blandt andet undersøgt hvordan vi kunne skabe et musikalske miljø, der kan bygge bro over de forskellige positioner (kunstmusik og fællessang), hvordan ideer om lytterens/tilskuerens roller kan genforhandles indenfor forskellige kunstdomæner, og hvordan projektet fra et genre-teoretisk perspektiv kan opfattes som et møde mellem bekræftende og destabiliserende kræfter. Det, der bliver gentænkt i projektet, er ikke så meget selve fortiden og heller ikke nødvendigvis etablerede fortællinger om fortiden, men snarere mulige samtidige og fremtidige fortællinger om, hvordan vi kan genfortolke sange fra fortiden – sammen. Og det der opdages, er ikke så meget skjulte perspektiver i fortiden, men derimod skjulte potentialer i, hvordan en majoritetskulturel ’assemblage’ som Højskolesangbogen kan genforhandles. Samtidig nedbrydes barrierer mellem udøvende og lytter, og der etablere nye måder at opleve ny musik på. Og vi mindes om, at vi aldrig ved, hvordan vores kulturelle fortid bliver fortolket i morgen. UK abstract: The project “Echoes from the torn down fourth wall” aims to build bridges between contemporary-music-as-an-art-form and community singing within songs from the Danish songbook ‘Højskolesangbogen’. In a hybrid concert format created for the project, within the context of an abstracted approach to intense, improvised concert music, several passages with community singing occur, where the audience sings along in songs they know. The research process has investigated how to create a musical environment that might bridge the different positions (art music and community singing), how the idea of the listener/spectator can be negotiated within different art domains and how, from a genre perspective, the project can be narrated as a meeting between confirming and destabilising forces. What is being reimagined in the project is not so much the past itself, and not necessarily established narratives about the past, but rather possible current and future narratives of how we may reinterpret songs from the past – together. What is being revealed is not so much specific perspectives in the past but rather hidden potentials in how a majority cultural assemblage like Højskolesangbogen may be renegotiated.

The project “Echoes from the torn down fourth wall” aims to build bridges between contemporary-music-as-an-art-form and community singing within songs from the Danish songbook ‘Højskolesangbogen’. In a hybrid concert format created for the project, within the context of an abstracted approach to intense, improvised concert music, several passages with community singing occur, where the audience sings along in songs they know. The research process has investigated how to create a musical environment that might bridge the different positions (art music and community singing), how the idea of the listener/spectator can be negotiated within different art domains and how, from a genre perspective, the project can be narrated as a meeting between confirming and destabilising forces. What is being reimagined in the project is not so much the past itself, and not necessarily established narratives about the past, but rather possible current and future narratives of how we may reinterpret songs from the past – together. What is being revealed is not so much specific perspectives in the past but rather hidden potentials in how a majority cultural assemblage like Højskolesangbogen may be renegotiated.