Underskog

Prøverommet breaks with its Monday-evening tradition for a stellar Sunday afternoon presenting two projects: ‘the space between us; retold’ is the culmination of a week-long workshop with artist/facilitator evi nakou and participating artists; A Frances Kormpala, Carol Stampone, Eleni Ieremia, Beate Poikāne, Erik Aran Brudvik, Emma Fuchs Sjövall, Guliz Portakaloglu and Nicola Waldron. This will be followed by an experimental solo performance using prepared piano called ‘Cây Đa’ by Susanne Xin. According to the archive, it’s the first time Prøverommet takes shape at Grieghallen, the ‘grand living room’ of the city. We thank them very much for the opportunity.

The event takes place between 13:00 – 15:00 and everybody is welcome!

Tickets cost NOK 50.

Questions? Contact Laurie (@bit-teatergarasjen.no)

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

photo: ‘Cây Đa’ by Susanne Xin (by Lars Kjemphol/TekstLab)

Cây Đa

Susanne Xin is a Norwegian-Vietnamese contemporary and experimental pianist and composer based in Oslo. At the moment she is focusing on various interdisciplinary forms and methods where she combines prepared grand piano with text and movement. Her recent work ‘Cây Đa’ is a musical and documentary solo performance about her father’s memories as a boat refugee from the Vietnam war. The performance explores how physical and emotional pain can translate into music, by addressing topics about escaping, vulnerability, identity confusion and love. This year she was one of the composers for Borealis Ung Komponist (Borealis Young Composer) where she transformed her solo work into an ensemble composition with the title ‘Nattasanger for flyktninger’ (Lullabies for refugees). As an artist it is important for her to create an atmosphere where the audience can connect, reflect and be in dialogue.

photo: Portrait of Susanne Xin (by Fride Nøstdahl Hjelle)

You can visit Susanne Xin’s website – www.duovrang.no

Susanne Xin’s project ‘Cây Đa’ is supported by Fritt Ord.

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

photo: ‘cycles’; a curated event by evi nakou and Liza Barley, January 2022

the space between us; retold

An informal sharing of work-in-progress materials and findings; a culmination of the week-long practice-based workshop ‘the space between us; retold’ with artist/workshop facilitator evi nakou (GR) and participating artists; A Frances Kormpala, Carol Stampone, Eleni Ieremia, Beate Poikāne, Erik Aran Brudvik, Emma Fuchs Sjövall, Guliz Portakaloglu and Nicola Waldron. During the encounters of the workshop ‘the space between us; retold’ we collectively explored the notion of gossip both as a practice and a vessel of togetherness. We improvised around ways to compose poetry together across diverse medial layers, such as sound, text, image and performance when those modulate and transform into one another. We got to know each other and work together through “gossiping”; a casual practice of our everyday lives, a process of reclaiming kinship through creating and sharing past and new narratives through sound, text, image and bodies. We playfully turned conversation into transmedia poetry and vice versa to share wishes, hopes, struggles, and dreams of the everyday. We imagined gossip otherwise, as a place of attending to the complexities and uncertainties of present times through attentive listening, observing, and responding to one another, to human and non-human voices.

The culmination of the workshop is an insight to unpredictable, non-linear and intuitive narratives and stories in the form of transmedia poems, composed and ‘woven’ together by the artist participants; a gossip that extends the verbal and inhabits the visual, the sonic and the corporeal.

photo: evi nakou

evi nakou is a musician and sound artist based in Athens. Guided by collaborative methodologies, her practice is a hotchpotch of listening and sharing gestures of sound, text and performance. Her work explores proximity and intimacy through accentuating situated stories in an improvised and semi-structured manner – stories often untold, unheard or erased. Evi is a co-founder of the music ensemble Breakfast Club quartet and has recently joined the Feminist Autonomous Centre for Research collective as a co-coordinator of the Art As Research: Visual, Performative, and Documentary Knowledges research area.

She has collaborated with organisations such as the Barbican Centre, Guildhall School of Music and Drama, Women for Refugee Women, Melissa Network, Goethe Insitut Athen, New York Philarmonic, CTM Festival, Greek National Opera, Athens Epidaurus Festival, Deutsche Oper, Onassis Stegi on the basis of conceiving and facilitating context-led pedagogies and performing-arts practices. She has coordinated workshops on music and sound improvisation and collaborative composition with people from diverse backgrounds and life paths, locally and internationally, namely Beit AlMusica (PS), La Sonora (ARG), Drum Works (UK), Male Prison of Korydallos, OKANA, schools, hospice, health care and detention facilities in Attica (GR).

The residency is organised by Onassis AiR in collaboration with BIT Teatergarasjen as part of the Transmissions project. Transmissions is coordinated by Onassis Stegi (Greece) in partnership with Ultima Oslo Contemporary Music Festival (Norway) and is supported by the EEA Grants program and the Norwegian Financial Mechanisms 2014-2021.

More about the workshop participants:

A Frances Kormpala, Carol Stampone, Eleni Ieremia, Emma Fuchs Sjövall, Erik Aran Brudvik, Beate Poikāne, Guliz Portakaloglu and Nicola Waldron will be published along with more information on the webpage…

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

PROVEROMMET.NO

Prøverommet 2023 is supported by Bergen kommune and Vestland fylkeskommune.