PROJECTS
Photo: Jan Christensen
THINGS WE USED TO HOLD ON TO
Duration: 60’
Status: In progress - premiere January 2023.
Description: This project takes place at a time where major social and economic crises are
shaping the global agenda.
Climate changes, COVID-19 and rising economic inequality are examples of challenges that require action, both locally and globally, and we are convinced that the Nordic tradition of collaboration, gender equality and democracy contains significant answers to how we, as a
global society, can deal with these challenges.
One of the most important tools we have for strengthening the democratic and transnational
dialogue is art.
While developing THINGS WE USED TO HOLD ON TO, the six composers and six guitarists
will explore each other's musical footsteps and give each other tasks and challenges, which
open up new aspects of their artistic work, and which provide insight into the musical roots they are rounded off.
The purpose is to explore what connects and separates them, thereby creating a
musical scrapbook that collects and intertwines personal experiences and references.
The result of this travelogue forms the basis for the final work, which first and foremost
depicts a multifaceted portrait of what it means to be a Nordic person in 2021, but which will
also sharpen the understanding of our Nordic future seen through the participants' own
experiences, their personalities, and their artistic practices.
Timeline:
Workshops: September 2021 & January 2022.
Performances: Throughout 2023 in the Nordic countries.
Collaborators:
Composers Pernille Sejlund (DK), Zoe Efstathiou (SE), Anna Katrin Egilstrøð (FO),
Kristin Bolstad (NO), Bergrún Snæbjörnsdóttir (IS), Maija Hynninen (FIN).
Louise Beck (curator).
RUDY
Duration: 45’
Status: In progress - premiere 2022
Description: Celebrating 100 years of James Joyce's iconic novel "Ulysses",
CRAS stages a mini-ballet that uses the optical illusion "Pepper's Ghost"
to bring the deceased son of protagonist, Leopold Bloom, back to life and appear on top of the guitars in the shape of a 20 centimetre hologram.
Collaborators:
Lasse Schwanenflügel Piasecki (composer), Hearmyeyes Production
Company, Black Box Theatre & Dance, The Danish James Joyce Association, the Irish
Embassy in Copenhagen, The James Joyce Centre (Dublin).
OUT OF THE CAGE
Duration: 45’
Status: First performed: September 14, 2020
Description: A performance that deals with the topic of online bullying amongst teenagers.
A multifaceted artistic expression is created by combining music, dance and pre-recorded voices of more than 60 pupils from Danish public schools telling their stories in interviews conducted by members of CRAS.
Collaborators: Pupils from Holluf Pile skole, Pedersborg skole, Køge Gymnasium,
Lykke Møller Kristensen (author and social media expert), Aske Knudsen (hiphop-producer),
Clara Wärme (dancer).
IN OUR TIME
Duration: Infinite
Status: Chapter 1 first performed: January 30, 2020
Chapter 2 first performed: August 6, 2020
Description: Inspired by the iconic Doomsday Clock, “In Our Time” is a potentially endless
piece of music initiated by global events such as international security, climate change and
the threat from nuclear weapons.
Every time the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists sets the Doomsday Clock, a new musical
“chapter” will be added to this ongoing creative process. Over time different composers from
every part of the world will contribute to “In Our Time”, each one taking over where the
previous one ended, so that ultimately we’ll have one long, uninterrupted piece of music that
goes on forever.
Chapter One (2 minutes to midnight) took its starting point at the birth-place of the atomic
bomb: New Mexico, USA.
Collaborators: José Luis Hurtado (composer and Assistant Professor of Theory and
Composition at the University of New Mexico), Ejbybunkeren (Cold War facility in
Copenhagen), Carina Ann Meyn (Assistant Professor at the Royal Danish Defense College).
Chapter Two (100 seconds to midnight) was premiered on Hiroshima Day 2020, and
featured the first ever screening of a film created especially for this event, as well as the
launching of a petition aiming to make the Danish Parlaiment sign the UN Treaty on the
Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons.
Collaborators: Ruta Vitkauskaite (composer), Benjamin Henriksen (film maker),
The Cinematheque,
"BAN NUCLEAR WEAPONS" (Danish Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War, NOAH,
Copenhagen Peace Watch, The Danish Ministry of Peace).
SIX SENSES SUITE
Duration: 25’
Status: First performed: October 10, 2019
Description: A musical interpretation of the five traditionally recognized senses and the
mysterious sixth one.
Collaborators: Composers Christos Farmakis (hearing), Ivan Olsen (sight), Hugi
Gudmundsson (smell), John Frandsen (taste), Jeppe Just (touch), Peter Bruun (6th sense).
MACHINERY
Duration: 8’30
Status: First performed: April 18, 2018
Description: A performance which puts the increasing amount of machines in our society
into perspective through the motions of the human body – which itself is a kind of machine.
Collaborator: Ida Langkilde (new-circus artist).
Pictures
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