New, wordy and on the edge.
Enemy of the people is a new performance by LEMUR and actor/playwright Kate Pendry, cutting through Ibsens text with the ensembles own sounds, lines and music whilst struggeling to remember the script and score of a well known american shark movie and fragments of Grieg’s cello sonata. The romantic celebration of truth against authority is pitted against the ramblings of mass murdering cult leader Jim Jones. The result is instantly contemporary and heartbreaking political.
The project welcomes an emotional landscape and an ideological minefield: presenting a politically relevant performance in the intersection between music and theatre borrowing from the direct presence of an improvised concert and the carefully selected direction of a theatrical text.
Almost 140 years after Ibsen wrote the play, Pendry + LEMUR use his themes and conflicts as a starting point to explore if and how the paradox between the direct meaning of the word, together with the abstract music can answer the problems we face today, even though the Norwegian relationship with our national poet seems to be worn.
A site specific concert for the old Athens Stock Exchange, ensemble and electronics.
Out of the Dark combines performances in several rooms, field recordings from the surrounding area and a bespoke sound system to articulate the space of the old Athens Stock Exchange. Using data from the hours leading up to the 2008 crash, a detailed score structures the activities of the four musicians, the sound processing and the spatial design.
Commissioned by Onassis Foundation.
Premiered June 7th as part of Tectonics Athens
Samtaler om rom
Seven sonic interventions at the National Museum,
January – October 2018
LEMUR is Ensemble-in-Residence at the of National Museum of Art, Architecture and Design in 2018. The project Samtaler om rom is a dialogue with the museum’s rooms, programs and priorities in the period. Installations, performances, new productions and concerts are wedged in between the ordinary exhibitions, as an experimental and interdisciplinary approach to presenting architecture.
The project uses the institution’s natural ebb and flow as a framework: The first intervention takes place in an empty Ulltveit Moe Pavilion in January and February, followed by tailored performances, productions and events around the exhibitions «Visning» and «Boligideer”.
EVENTS
Polytop – a site specific sound installation for Ulltveit-Moe Pavilion is displayed in the period 20.1.-5.2.
The concert installation Lemuria – for ensemble, two singers, electronics and a mobile audience, is shown 9.2. kl. 19:00 and 10.2. kl. 1:00 p.m.
Hjemme hos – A series of house concerts in private Oslo apartments appear in June-October
Leilighetsportretter, a sound and video work by Ellen Røed and Lemur will be created in connection to the exhibition “Visning” and displayed towards the end of the project period.
More information about the project at http://www.nasjonalmuseet.no
Leilighetsportretter
A series of sound and video works by LEMUR and artist Ellen Røed for living environments, musicians, microphones, cameras and videographer.
Røed’s subtle and slow panoramic strokes through the apartments portrays the relationship between performed sound and living environments. It tells the story both of the rooms, their owners, the performers’ actions as well the videographer. As a combination of image, sound, action and concept, Leilighetsportretter is part concert, part video art, part site specific intervention and part ethnographic field trip in Oslo apartments.
The project is one of four elements in Samtaler om rom – Spatial conversations, where Lemur works in and around the National museum´s exhibitions on Norwegian housing architecture. As such the work is part of an interdisciplinary effort to explore new strategies for the presentation of architecture.
Ellen Røed (1970) examines the terms for production of meaning in the video format by constantly questioning the technology and the photographer’s role and influence on material. Her works are characterized by a distinctive musicality, a sense of the performative, for the action aspect of art making . Røed and Lemur have previously collaborated in connection with the project “Happy Birthday, John Cage!”. Ellen is currently a Profile Professor at the Stockholm University of the Arts.
Premiered at the National Museum of Art, Architecture and Design, fall 2018.
