And All the Questionmarks Started to Sing
And All the Questionmarks Started to Sing is a composition in the form of a hybrid between installation, performance and concert.
A transparent though complex work with an overhwelming richness of details. It might be described as an art-machine played by musicians, performers and robots.
This work is presented in different ways depending on the context.
There are at the present three versions:
Live version: Performance/concert where performers/musicians play on and operate all the machines/sculptures and mechanical instruments.
Installation version: A fully automated version for exhibitions.
Hybrid version: A combination where live sequences alternate with automation. For instance 1 hour automation – 45 min live sequence – ½ hour automation and so on….
Questionmarks is a work that only slowly reveals all it’s secrets, it’s underlying stories and inner logic.
Many artists of different backgrounds have left their prints on this work. Ensuring a multitude of ideas threatening to tear the work apart, artistic magnitude and in consequence an articulation of the composition.
The elements are tied together by kinship, proximity, simultaneity and the belief that differing materials appear as a well moulded whole under the composition.
By treating the whole room and everything in it as the material, the group has created a vast intermedial composition where visual art, sound art and music are combined with the theatrical potential in our material.
The work also demonstrates the deep fascination Verdensteatret has for all kinds of animation – this strange and somewhat miraculous activity of breading life into dead objects, stiff figures and frozen images.
As a spectator you witness the actual creation of moving images at several levels.
A dive into the core of the physical building of images, down to where the image arises, takes on solid form, twists and winds into constellations and compounded images.
Physically the work appears as a landscape of highly original kinetic sculptures, that activate a diversity of animation techniques, micro puppetry, music, lights and shadowplay. All objects produce art and are also a part in it. The idea of simultaneous perspectives and multiple functions tied to each object creates a work of works.
A conglomerate of connections across media and layers. Some obvious, planned and controlled. Others seen by the single spectator only, weaving her story, from available threads.
This landscape of kinetic sculptures creates a room in constant transformation.
A room with violent shifts between micro and macro perspectives. From the grand to the miniscule. Each component available as a separate cosmos, an opening for a miniature suspended inside the grand piece.
The sonic expression stretches and contracts dephts and distances by moving physically in the room through a network of loudspeakers. The work makes full use of the capacity sound has to create new rooms in the room, make shifts in direction, twist and bend the dimensions.
The sound creates a spatial dynamic that pushes beyond the physical and visual scale of the room.
Sound, image and movement has melted into one unit and cannot be separated from each other again.
And All the Questionmarks Started to Sing was first presented at Guangdong Museum of Art in Guangzhou, China, in march-april 2010.
A live-version was first presented at the festival Theater der Welt, Essen, Germany, in July 2010.
The premiere of the final live-version was at Black Box Theatre, Oslo, in the beginning of September 2010.
After being shown in Wroclaw, Poland, and Bergen, Norway, Questionmarks went to The 2010 Shanghai Biennale and a hybrid version was made especially for the first week. For the rest of the biennale, Questionmarks was exhibited as an automatic installation until 1 january 2011.
In February 2011, the work was touring in Canada and US with shows in Quebec, at Empac, Troy, and in NYC at DTW/ Futureperfect. In
May 2011, it was presented all through the month at Festival Fabbrica Europa, Florence, Italy, both as an installation and as a concert/performance.
For more information www.verdensteatret.com
The artists:
Asle Nilsen, Lisbeth J. Bodd, Håkon Lindbäck, Piotr Pajchel, Christian Blom, Kristine Roald Sandøy, Hai Nguyen Dinh,
Ali Djabbary, Øyvind B. Lyse, Gjertrud Jynge, Espen Sommer Eide, Thorolf Thuestad, Eirik A. Blekesaune, Hans Skogen.
The project is a co-production between Verdensteatret and Theater der Welt, Black Box Theatre, BIT Teatergarasjen, Festival Avant Art.
The project is supported by:
Arts Council Norway, OCA/Office for Contemporary Art Norway, Norwegian Ministry of Foreign Affairs/DTS, Fond for Lyd og bilde, Fond for Uttøvnede Kunstnere.
Verdensteatret is supported by Art Councli Norway.
