Concert for Greenland

Verdensteatret, Oslo, Norway, 2005
Author: Verdensteatret
Directed by Lisbeth J. Bodd, Asle Nilsen

about the production

Greenland is the main focus point of this work. The material is based on travels and research around the Northwest-Atlantic countries from August till November 2003. (Greenland, Iceland, Faeroe Islands, Norway). … Our longest stay was in Greenland and it made a very deep impression on us. The ambivalence we often felt during our stay there has through the process transformed into a deep fascination.
Verdensteatret

On stage they have built machinery, simultaneously ambitious and primitive, a kind of hi-tech driftwood technology, which creates a theatre-machine, a machine the performers operate, as they simultaneously become a part of the installation. The sound-images floats or thunder synchronously with the visual images, while fragments of dialogues can be heard, but nothing like a dominant linguistics rhetoric.  Images are projected at the back wall, all intertwined with the stage-machinery which are constantly moving, where shadows, projections and visual echoes create a room the audience can contemplate, meditate upon.
Andreas Wiese, Dagbladet

Concert for Greenland contains some interesting and unusual elements which simultaneously are theatrical and resist theatricality and which in an unique way unite traditional theatre with modern painting, video, shadow theatre, music and "driftwood" art. The room is filled by sound images, which more or less transform into visual images and subsequently turn back to their original form. Everything interferes, new constellations of sound, image and movement arises constantly.
Jan H. Landro, Bergens Tidende

Rarely have I experienced that my words have been as inadequate as they are now. ... However, I think it is among the best things I have ever seen. ... At times we face an experience that does not deal with the parameters with which we usually categorize contemporary art. Concert for Greenland produces such moments, when art ceases to be a catalyst for further critical reflection, and instead turns into an aesthetic experience in its own right. … when I' am confronted with this production I as an observer loose my language, I literally become speechless, because the production doesn't ask for a commentary from me. It doesn't need an observer in order to gain importance. It simply shows me something and my job is only to see.
Jon Refsdal Moe, www.kunstkritikk.no

VERDENSTEATRET

Verdensteatret was founded in (has existed since) the mid 1980s. Asle Nilsen and Lisbeth J. Bodd are both key-members of the ensemble. Group of artists from different art-fields works together and make live-art and other related projects. Their work comprises different artistic disciplines, which they try to integrate as deeply as possible by letting the different professions, float into each other. Their productions may be characterised as performance, installation and theatre simultaneously, and the artistically expression is much closer to visual art than traditional theatre.

 

 

creators

artistic leaders: Lisbeth J. Bodd & Asle Nilsen
astists: Lisbeth J. Bodd, Asle Nilsen, Häkon Lindbäck, Piotr Pajchel, Ali Djabbary, Per Flink Basse, Corinne Campos, Oyvind B. Lyse, Lars Oyno, Morten Pettersen, Petter Steen, Trond Lossius, Bergmund W. Skaslien, Kenneth Korstad LangaÍs, Reinert Mithassel, Kjeld Kemp, Christian Blom, Jannicke Lie