(assemblage)
Undrar om hästar
sjunger blues
(2023)
In the work UNDRAR OM HÄSTAR SJUNGER BLUES Klas Trollius and Andreas Engman reflect on situations when communication breaks down or when a rift occurs in the relation between image, hearing, sight and language. Trollius and Engman have collected material from communicative encounters between the human and the more-than-human, and from situations of translation, misunderstanding and mishearing. The audience follows a number of scenes of a ceremonial nature, where the soundscape claims the centre stage.
The work can be seen as an exploration into camp aesthetics and logic where Trollius and Engman deploys two main protagonists to guide the audience through a series of elusive rituals. One of the characters is a horse figure that borrows its appearance from Jean Cocteau’s film from 1960, Testament of Orpheus and the other is an ambiguous master of ceremonies, a mystical envoy – aka ’The Messenger’. Embedded in the soundscapes the protagonists unfold a non-linear, broken narrative that moves across registers of absurdity, overambitiousness, humour, seriousness and failure, in a series of spatial tableauxs for you to project your daydreams onto.
Trollius and Engman creates an assemblage of sound, text, scenography and performance, insisting on a non-hierarchy between the different elements of the work.
Sound and text: Klas Trollius & Andreas Engman
Scenography: Klas Trollius & Andreas Engman
Choreography: Klas Trollius & Andreas Engman
Costume: Klas Trollius & Andreas Engman
Light design: Fabian Roos, Klas Trollius & Andreas Engman
Duration: 60 min.
Premiered at Skogen, Gothenburg in May 2023.
