Sing Once Again With Me Lyrics
It was hailed as a masterpiece the moment it appeared, dorsum in 2012. Seven years later, the Guardian made it No. one on a list of the 25 best artworks of the 21st century. Simply the past 18 months accept made Ragnar Kjartansson's video installation "The Visitors" more than merely great; they accept recast the work as a mirror for our current moment, making information technology seem breathtakingly prescient.
One time in a while information technology happens that fashion: Sure artworks merely rhyme with the zeitgeist. Manet'southward "Olympia." Picasso'due south "Guernica." Andy Warhol'south Campbell'due south soup cans. Arthur Jafa'due south "Love Is the Message, the Message Is Death." You lot can debate their merits equally much as yous similar; what you tin can't deny is the accuse they get from mainlining something bigger in the civilization at large.
To see "The Visitors" as the earth begins its tentative and fraught emergence from a still-evolving pandemic is to realize y'all are in the presence of merely such a work. The way Kjartansson's immersive exhibit echoes and distills our gradual, vaccine-assisted transition from prolonged isolation to summertime resumption of social life is uncanny.
This oral history, the commencement in-depth account of how "The Visitors" came to be, tells the tale — in the creators' own words — of how a at present-legendary, week-long house party produced an unlikely artistic triumph. It is a story of exploding cannons, flood bathtubs and skinny-dipping in waterfalls; a story of bohemian exuberance and poignant heartbreak; a story that collapses a rich by into an erotic, soulful present.
Recorded in 2012 at the end of a late summer week at Rokeby, a historic estate emanating poetically faded splendor in New York'south Hudson Valley, "The Visitors" is a multiscreen video installation that shows Kjartansson performing a song with 7 musician friends over the grade of an entire hour. Played on a continuous loop, information technology has been seen by millions of viewers at galleries and museums in dozens of cities around the world, including Perth, Prague, Nashville and Washington. It is showing at Boston's Institute of Gimmicky Fine art through Aug. fifteen and will be installed adjacent at the Gund Gallery at Kenyon College in Gambier, Ohio (Aug. 26-Dec. 12), too as in Moscow for a iv-month period this fall.
To feel "The Visitors," you walk into a darkened gallery with nine large screens, viii of which show a beautiful room at Rokeby. In that location's too a view of the front porch, where a grouping of friends has gathered, among them the house'due south owners, Ricky and Ania Aldrich. In each room, a musician plays and sings. The bearded, naked guy strumming his guitar in a bathtub is Kjartansson.
Connected by headphones, the musicians perform in unison. Some parts of the song are dreamy and sparse, others are more rousing, simply the piece continually reverts to the chorus, with the arresting lyric: "Once more I autumn into my feminine ways." The irksome, descending tune with rich harmonies sounds similar this …
As yous wander around the gallery (the audio coming from each room is stronger in front of its corresponding screen), the repetition of that refrain, the music and the performers' exquisite restraint becomes hypnotic. Then, about 10 minutes earlier the cease, the musicians take off their headphones, exit their instruments and gather around one of two grand pianos in the reception room. Champagne is uncorked, cigars are lit and the troubadours spill out of the house. The camera turns to follow them as, joined by the ad hoc choir on the porch, they cross a vast meadow in the gloaming, singing lustily all the while.
For all its preposterousness (and Kjartansson wields absurdity similar some painters wield a palette knife) this rousing finale — part Beatles, function Chekhov — has the feeling of a great thaw, a lifting of the siege. Function of its genius is that the performers' movements are unconsciously echoed by the audience: For virtually of the hour, you and the other viewers have been dispersed around the gallery, communing with the music in solitude. Only as the rooms are evacuated, the audience "follows" the performers, naturally congregating in front end of the screen showing their reunion. Huddling together in the nighttime, united by marvel and whatever strange spell has been cast, y'all watch on in a shared state of baffled joy.
Kjartansson, 45, acknowledges the additional layers of meaning his work has taken on recently but says he is as confounded by the success of "The Visitors" every bit anyone. "That's what's crazy near this piece," he told me on a Zoom call concluding wintertime. "It's a agglomeration of Icelandic White kids existence drunk in some fancy mansion and playing mediocre country. … It'southward weird that it really works."
Don't be deceived. Kjartansson is an astute artist, and his collaborators include some of Iceland'southward most talented and creative composers and musicians. They are known for their work in bands such as Sigur Rós and Múm, for their film scores and for other collaborations with Kjartansson.
In Zoom interviews conducted over several months, I spoke separately to all of the musicians who performed in "The Visitors," as well as the homeowners and key people who assisted in the making of this 21st-century masterpiece.
Act I. Laying the background
Equally a kid, Ragnar Kjartansson would scout from the theater wings as his parents — famous actors in Iceland — rehearsed the aforementioned scenes again and again. He later described the feeling every bit "divine boredom." Past the fourth dimension he graduated from the Iceland Academy of the Arts in Reykjavik in 2001, Kjartansson's theatrical upbringing had merged with an involvement in performance fine art, as expert by the likes of Marina Abramovic , Chris Brunt and Bruce Nauman . Above all, though, he loved music.
Ragnar Kjartansson Creative person and co-composer of the music who plays acoustic guitar in the bath in "The Visitors"
You just do a piece like this once in your life. You don't want to strive to make pieces that are loved by everyone. Then you're f---ed. Merely information technology's fantastic to have made a slice that people love and everybody can relate to. Information technology'due south fantastic.
Davíð Þór Jónsson Co-composer of the music who plays piano, harmonica and hurdy gurdy in "The Visitors"
In 2007, Ragnar had this thought. He wanted to make an ongoing, choruslike song, a little mantra that would go on and on, and not change much. He wanted to do information technology Tony Bennett-style, Frank Sinatra-way. You would see this young, beautiful human and an orchestra, so you would see a jazz trio and a harp. That became the first video piece we did together.
Repetition was a way for Kjartansson to turn performance into bliss, often via the absurd. A willingness "to linger in the beautiful foolishness of things" (as the Japanese scholar Kakuzo Okakura put it) became central to his sensibility. In 2011, he and Jónsson persuaded a cast of professional opera singers to repeat — in costume and without breaking grapheme — the same three-infinitesimal aria from the end of Mozart's "The Wedlock of Figaro" for 12 hours . The aria'southward lyrics, which propose the superior kindness of women and were sung more than than 200 times, spoke to Kjartansson'south long-standing involvement in feminism.
Davíð Þór Jónsson See bio
We began to do these endurance performances. We went to northern Italy to do Schumann for eight hours a day, ten days in a row. We then did Mozart for 12 hours in New York. Making these pieces has destroyed my sense of time. I get onstage and I play an hour and it feels like five minutes considering I've been doing these six-hour, 12-hour performances. It'south given birth to something.
Ragnar Kjartansson See bio
Feminism has been very vibrant in Iceland in the last xl years. People used to talk a lot near "What is feminine? What is masculine? And what is bulls---?" Nigh of it is bulls---. A skillful friend of mine always says, "Yous just need to exist a woman to be an creative person. The creative side is your feminine side."
"The Visitors" had grown out of a long history of friendships and reciprocal influences. Kjartansson wrote the music, which he has described as "a feminine nihilistic gospel song," with Jonsson, piecing together the lyrics from phrases written past the functioning artist Ásdís Sif Gunnarsdóttir , Kjartansson'due south wife until their separation in 2012.
Ragnar Kjartansson Encounter bio
Davíð and I wrote the basics of the song in 2010 when he and I and Ásdís were working on a radio play in an artists' residency on Long Island called Watermill. The vocal's lyrics were all based on performance and video pieces by Ásdís. They had these "wow!" sentences, like: "There are stars exploding and there's nothing you tin can do." They all got sampled in my head and the song became a collage jubilant Ásdís's works.
Ásdís Sif Gunnarsdóttir Performance and video artist who provided the lyrics and ex-married woman of Kjartansson
All the sentences that I wrote were fabricated to be cut and spliced together. Yous could say one sentence and answer with another and they would e'er work together. Every sentence was meant to be like the concluding judgement in a play, like a dramatic finale.
Davíð Þór Jónsson See bio
We worked on it again in the summertime of 2012 during the nighttime. We were there with Ásdís and their almost 2-year-old daughter and we were supposed to be practicing a theater piece with Ragnar's mother. We were singing "Once again … I fall into … my …. feminine … ways," one-half-whispering information technology, because we didn't want to wake anyone up. We were similar two young girls trying to make a song.
Ásdís Sif Gunnarsdóttir Encounter bio
The main lyric in the vocal — "once once more I fall into my feminine ways" — was from a functioning I did in Iceland. Each time I did the operation, I would ask my friend, the curator, to take a full bucket of h2o and spill information technology over me so there would be a more than dramatic effect. When I was writing the text, I was thinking near how sometimes women, when they fall in love, are more ready to get out everything backside and travel to follow their hearts.
The house at Rokeby , where "The Visitors" was filmed, is near Bard Higher on the Hudson River. It was built between 1811 and 1815 by John Armstrong Jr., President James Madison'south secretarial assistant of war during the War of 1812. Armstrong was held responsible for failing to defend Washington, which was afterwards burned. He retired to Rokeby (and then called "La Bergerie"). By the fourth dimension Ricky Aldrich and his two younger siblings inherited it in 1963, Rokeby was rundown. Ricky and his Shine wife, Ania, share Rokeby today with relatives. The house continues to attract artists, musicians and miscellaneous guests.
Ragnar Kjartansson Meet bio
My friend Markús Þór Andrésson, who was doing a graduation prove at Bard College'south Center for Curatorial Studies, knew that a place like Rokeby was my biggest fantasy. When I was an exchange student in Sweden, I lived with an one-time aunt who lived in a crumbling castle outside of Stockholm. It'southward fantastic when these romantic places are actually real. I'g a total sucker for them. But Rokeby was beyond anything I've ever seen.
Ania Aldrich Artist who lives at Rokeby and is married to Ricky Aldrich
Markús calls me and says, "I'm doing my graduation project at Bard and I desire to bring my friend Ragnar from Iceland to practise a operation. I have no place to put them." I said, "You tin put them here simply I'k non going to change my behavior only because I have strangers in the house. If I'thousand fighting with Ricky, they merely have to ignore it."
Ragnar Kjartansson See bio
After staying in that location for a few weeks [in 2007], I started to daydream. You almost make these pieces simply to have an excuse to hang out in that location and be in the risk that is Rokeby.
Human action II. Settling in at Rokeby
For several years, Kjartansson returned to Rokeby, sometimes with his musical friends. By 2012, his idea for "The Visitors" had fully adult, and the troupe descended on the business firm in August.
Þorvaldur Gröndal Drummer in "The Visitors"
Nosotros arrived with a small bang. We flew into New York. We got into the center of town where they had rented this large van for nearly eight people. I've never driven in New York. Getting out of Manhattan alive with all these people was one of the biggest miracles I've always pulled off. But then information technology starts to get dark and it's raining, and of class, we got lost. So we were driving for ii or three hours actress, trying to find a way back onto the highway.
Ragnar Kjartansson See bio
We got terribly drunk on that bus.
Þorvaldur Gröndal See bio
Information technology was similar a funny movie scene. We came — vrrrr! — to a stop [in front of the house] and people rolled out. It must have been a funny sight.
Ragnar Kjartansson See bio
Davíð was like, "Hi!" and straightaway dropped the whisky bottle, which was supposed to be a souvenir, on the porch.
Ania Aldrich Meet bio
They arrived late. I was waiting. I was like, "Oh my God, that was expensive whisky!" In hindsight, I call up it was a gift to the gods.
The first days were spent rehearsing, exploring and soaking up Rokeby's ambiance.
Þorvaldur Gröndal See bio
And then this big, strange firm took us in.
Alex Kahn Visual artist who plays guitar and leads the "Peasants' Choir" on the porch
The slice itself was almost creating a sense of a firm that invites in this unknown, ever-shifting cohort of people who enmesh themselves in the history of the business firm. That'due south exactly what it was in existent life.
Kristín Anna Valtýsdóttir Singer-songwriter who plays the piano accordion and audio-visual guitar in "The Visitors"
I instantly felt so at abode in Rokeby. I remember on my first visit I sat down at the grand piano. The sunday was going down, I was playing, and Ania said, "Living in a identify like this and then often makes you call up how life here should be. Right now, when you were playing, it was like that."
Ólafur Jónsson Plays electric guitar in "The Visitors"
It was the first fourth dimension in u.s. for me. It was a kind of cloudy, magical, movielike experience.
Þorvaldur Gröndal See bio
It almost felt like we were kids doing something we shouldn't be doing, sneaking off, trying to go up this staircase, downwards this hallway …
Ragnar Kjartansson Encounter bio
Ricky and Ania are similar characters from a Russian novel. They're larger than life. Rokeby is a maverick castle and they're the male monarch and queen of Bohemia.
Ricky Aldrich Co-possessor of Rokeby and in charge of firing the cannon in "The Visitors"
For a moment, we were a location in the art world. Information technology didn't mean much to me, but information technology was fun. I but carried on equally normal.
Hákon Sverrisson AP and whistling cameraman
The mattress I slept on was made from horsehair. There was no air conditioning. Information technology was very visceral, like what information technology must have been similar on these farms 300 years ago.
Þorvaldur Gröndal See bio
We stayed up really late, drinking and talking, making music and wandering around, letting the house just swallow usa. Everything is a bit rundown. The paint is cracked, at that place'southward dust, and the furniture is cleaved a little flake.
Jacqueline Falcone Independent curator and baker who prepared the meals at Rokeby
We were dancing 1 night and Ricky said, "You can play records if you desire." He pointed over to a phonograph in the corner. We said, "Really? We tin touch that?" And he was like, "Yeah, it's fine." I looked at it and said, "Well, this is an Edison. That's crazy. It must be super old." And he was like, "Oh, yeah, he used to come here all the fourth dimension." It was a gift to the family from Thomas Edison.
Davíð Þór Jónsson See bio
There were these two huge Steinway pianos. I remember both of them have been in that location for 100 years.
Chris McDonald Recording engineer in accuse of mixing and mastering the sound
We'd just washed some rehearsals. Anybody was amped up and someone said, "I know the perfect way to relax. At that place's this crawly waterfall, we can go skinny-dipping." It turned out to be on the Bard campus. Nosotros idea school was out, so no one would be there. But actually quite a few parents were dropping off their kids for the first fourth dimension and some of them had taken a overnice long walk through the wood. They came upon this rowdy pack of a dozen crazy people naked in a waterfall. I think their kids were, like, "Yes! College!"
Relationships among the performers, the crew and the various visitors became deeper as the days passed.
Alex Kahn Encounter bio
It was such an interesting cantankerous-section of personalities. Ragnar wanted a footling chaos in the mix.
Jacqueline Falcone Run into bio
Ragnar needs to work with people he'due south amazed past. And there's nobody that can't have fun with Davíð. The two are like brothers. Their chemistry together is explosive.
Shahzad Ismaily Multi-instrumentalist who plays the banjo and electrical guitar in "The Visitors"
In May or June of that yr, I began a courting with this wonderful woman from Iceland, Gyða Valtysdóttir. She said, "Hey, I'm doing this fine art piece in Upstate New York in the summer. You should come and hang out and be with me during that fourth dimension."
Ragnar Kjartansson Run into bio
Gyða had said, "I really think you should invite my beau, likewise. He's really skilful." I was like, "Invite your young man? Really? Is that a good idea?" Then I Googled Shahzad Ismaily and I was like, "Oh, aye please! Tin can you invite your boyfriend?"
Gyða Valtýsdóttir Composer and multi-instrumentalist who plays the cello in "The Visitors"
It was this group of Icelanders. And then my partner [Shahzad] came in and he said, "Can I bring my mom?" It was kind of like, "No," he couldn't really. Simply he brought her anyhow — and her blood brother. They're both Pakistani. And then I didn't just show upward myself merely with a whole extended family. I was probably feeling a little fleck guilty and trying to take intendance of everybody. I was coming together Shahzad's mother for the showtime time.
Malika Taj Ismaily Retired dr. and Shahzad Ismaily's mother who is part of the choir on the porch
Information technology was a pleasure for me to be around those people. The musicians are very broad-minded and gratuitous, which is an first-class thing to be.
Shahzad Ismaily See bio
In retrospect, it was adorable, because here'south a strongly Icelandic-identifying group of people. I'm the one non-Icelander. I was also the only not-White kid in the little boondocks where I grew up, and I have a concrete deformity that's based on a genetic condition I had called ectodermal dysplasia. I have a strong experience of difference, of beingness vilified or removed or objectified through harassment or teasing. So I have an allergy to people maxim: "You are an apple, y'all are not an apple; you belong hither, you vest elsewhere."
Ragnar Kjartansson See bio
I think Shahzad and his family being there somehow took information technology out of this claustrophobic Icelandic scene.
Kjartansson and Gunnarsdóttir had separated ii months earlier. "The Visitors" ended upwards beingness named after ABBA'southward final album , which was recorded soon subsequently the legendary Swedish group's two couples had split up.
Chris McDonald See bio
I actually didn't know [Ragnar and Ásdís] had broken up. We had merely done a piece in Pittsburgh. Ásdís was there, and they had merely had their daughter. Suddenly Ragnar was not very fun to be with, and I could non figure out what was going on. I drove to their apartment to pick them up and it was dead silence in the car. I simply didn't put it together. Then when we were at the dinner tabular array at Rokeby, I said, "It's too bad that Ásdís couldn't go far." And Ragnar was like, "We got a divorce."
Jacqueline Falcone See bio
I didn't really realize the extent to which Ragnar was a hometown hero, a famous dude, until I got to Reykjavik. His and Ásdís's divorce was all over their version of People magazine, with a tear in the middle of the photo.
Ragnar Kjartansson Come across bio
The separation from Ásdís was still resonating. We had divide up in June and this was filmed in Baronial. Simply honestly, information technology was the opposite of hard times. I recollect we were both really relieved to be split upwardly. I had fallen completely in love with Ingibjörg Sigurjónsdóttir, who's now my married woman. There is that contradiction inside. It was actually all washed in the bliss of being in love and I remember that gave me this ridiculous conviction and vision to pull information technology off. It was non like, "Oh no, I'thousand getting divorced." It was similar, [shouts] "Life is happening!"
Davíð Þór Jónsson Run across bio
Life is happening through all the creativity, and y'all reverberate your life into the work as you practise it.
Ásdís Sif Gunnarsdóttir Meet bio
We decided to separate but I don't think people got to know until a month or 2 afterwards. Even then, we were even so doing things together. But we didn't interact very much afterward the divorce.
Shahzad Ismaily See bio
I was on the opposite side of all that because I was merely starting something, with Gyða. I went through some very difficult spaces later: separating for a while, coming back together. At the time, I thought: What a cute fashion, with ceremony, to end a relationship. Most of us end relationships with some level of chaos and discomfort. Very few of us are aware plenty or creative enough to terminate a relationship with a sense of ceremony that not simply might provide closure, but too actual dazzler.
Creating fine art in someone else's house can be fraught. Ane incident almost led to disaster.
Chris McDonald See bio
Ragnar decided to do a "bath rehearsal" 1 24-hour interval. I was doing a soundcheck for the rooms with no one in them. Everyone was outside, then it was quiet. I thought, "Goddamn it, there's something wrong. What room is that coming from?" And so I was like, "Oh my God oh my God oh my God!" I ran upstairs where Ragnar had turned on the bathtub. It was overflowing and leaking through the ceiling.
Ragnar Kjartansson See bio
I was scatterbrained. I could have destroyed the house. Gracious Ricky and Ania were like, "No worries."
Ania Aldrich See bio
Our plumbing is really old. We had redone the ceiling, so we were like, "Okay, let's not have whatsoever leaks."
The performers meshed the rhythms of daily life at Rokeby with lengthy merely deliberately loose rehearsals.
Davíð Þór Jónsson See bio
It felt like a vacation but, at the back of our minds, we knew we had to somehow create the circumstances that would let people to settle in and "accidentally" stumble onto an instrument and kickoff playing. That would be the essence of information technology.
Þorvaldur Gröndal Meet bio
Ragnar came upwardly with these drawings, well-nigh similar a treasure map. Each of us got one.
Davíð Þór Jónsson Run into bio
I couldn't write a score for information technology, similar, "This is your part, nosotros have a 4/4 vanquish, it'southward allegro, and so an adagio, and and so this is in B major." It had to be an art piece. So, on a huge canvass, Ragnar drew what would be the structure and the form and the story of the song. We tried to convey to the musicians that it would be actually open. So, if you wanted to, you could decide to finish playing the drums and only call back abstractly and relish the room, you know?
Shahzad Ismaily See bio
We collected in one of the main spaces, with amps and drums and instruments all around, and we played through the song over and over for hours. It's basically a three-minute object. But we would do these 8-hour rehearsals. We would go for ii or three hours, accept a break, consume some nutrient; iii or four hours, take a intermission, eat some more than nutrient.
Kjartan Sveinsson Composer, former fellow member of the Icelandic band Sigur Rós who plays pianoforte and bass guitar in "The Visitors"
But nosotros didn't rehearse too much because then you get stuck repeating what yous do every time.
Gyða Valtýsdóttir See bio
A part of it is also having dinner and listening to albums and dancing. That felt like it was function of the rehearsals. It was the art of living.
Davíð Þór Jónsson Meet bio
We were listening to such dissimilar music: Wagner's "Lohengrin" and "Tristan and Isolde"; Townes Van Zandt and B.B. King; Stockhausen and David Bowie. The horizontal line, musically, with Ragnar, is countless. That's why we ended up doing a slow state and western song, with him in a bathroom and me smoking downstairs playing an sometime grand piano. For me, to think near it is absurd.
Human activity III. Shooting for something magical
In a nod to Tchaikovsky'southward 1812 Overture, the performance was to be punctuated at its ii near climactic moments past the firing of a modest, antique cannon. Getting the timing right required days of trial and error.
Jacqueline Falcone See bio
1 morning I was up early, and Ricky asked me if I wanted to get into town with him and go gunpowder.
Kristín Anna Valtýsdóttir Meet bio
Exploding this really onetime cannon was another office of everything in this former house coming alive. Nobody had shot this cannon for ages.
Ragnar Kjartansson See bio
There are all these stories most how this cannon was shot at these '60s parties they had at Rokeby, with Bob Dylan showing upward and whatnot.
Ricky Aldrich Run into bio
The cannon recoiled virtually six feet. There was a boyfriend who was drunk … and he well-nigh lost a foot, merely [the cannonball] went between his legs. No i paid much attention since everyone was having a skillful time. We but fired once more!
Both the scale and the age of the house meant that Chris McDonald, who was in charge of audio, Tómas Tómasson, the cinematographer, and his assistant Hákon Sverrisson had to overcome numerous technical challenges to fulfill Kjartansson'due south vision. Tension increased as the performance drew closer.
Shahzad Ismaily See bio
If Ragnar felt force per unit area, he never showed it.
Ragnar Kjartansson Come across bio
But this is the luxury of being a visual artist: If at that place is a mistake, if it's a failure, that's artistic! That's the artistic statement, right? If information technology f---s upward, and then it f---s up. We'll find out!
Ania Aldrich Run across bio
Ragnar leads very softly. He has incredible enthusiasm and optimism. He's willing to scroll with the punches.
Chris McDonald Run across bio
I remember definitely a few times over the course of the shooting beingness almost on the verge of tears, thinking, "Oh my God, it'southward not going to piece of work. And if information technology doesn't piece of work, information technology's my error, because everything else is looking really adept." In the stop it comes down to: Does some stupid piece of equipment crash?
Tómas Örn Tómasson Cinematographer in charge of the video recording
We gear up everything up on the day we recorded. The cameras we'd rented came the day before. I had my two assistants with me synchronizing them all. It was very well planned. But still, on the day, it's like having a premiere at the theater. You lot never know what'southward going to happen.
Ragnar Kjartansson See bio
I didn't take so many technical worries because I really trust Chris and Tómas, the cinematographer. I thought, "They'll effigy it out." My worry was mainly, "What if this is s---? Is this but us playing a sentimental song in a house?"
Alex Kahn See bio
I call back moments when I thought Ragnar was beginning to fray a little. The porch was like a carnival atmosphere. At that place were dogs barking and running in and out of the business firm. Ragnar was get-go to get exasperated.
Ragnar Kjartansson Run into bio
I think Ania sensed some fearfulness of this all falling autonomously. So she did this pagan ceremony, blessing the cameras and the sound equipment.
Ania Aldrich See bio
I had a big cigar made out of sage. You light it and you blow information technology out and then it's but smoke, then yous go around and pass information technology over a person's head, front end, back and easily. I might have smudged some instruments, besides.
Finally, with everyone in place, a hush descended on the house and the performance began.
Gyða Valtýsdóttir See bio
We had been spending all this time together and this was the first fourth dimension nosotros were each alone in a room. And so maybe there was a vulnerability that as well plays a role in the piece. Y'all're isolated and you're trying to hear the others, just you can't run into anyone. Y'all just effort your all-time to stay in the magic of the realm yous've created together over the week, and not to let the photographic camera lens break the spell.
Davíð Þór Jónsson See bio
It was easy rehearsing in the living room because I could give cues like a conductor. But in the piece, we're scattered throughout the business firm and I couldn't give whatever cues. That was the most challenging thing. It's a simple vocal, but the magic of music, which happens in between people, sometimes happens when you're non playing. This is what the musical world has been missing during the pandemic because everything is washed separately.
Ólafur Jónsson See bio
We did two run-throughs. They felt totally akin. Merely y'all felt the 2d one was destined to be the one.
Þorvaldur Gröndal Come across bio
In my memory, the take we did was like a meditation. When something clicks, it feels and so proficient. I played really light. When I sentinel it, I tin can encounter myself getting overwhelmed, tears flowing. I'm most losing it. It was like I was listening to something else. I recall it was … bliss.
Ragnar Kjartansson Meet bio
I remember being in the bathtub and hearing the cannon go off and I realized, "This is actually happening. We're actually shooting this!"
Shahzad Ismaily See bio
I had the feeling that if I closed my optics we would all be almost physically coalescing effectually this sound, which I knew was existence made past a person I could picture in a certain identify in the house. In your listen's center, you move toward people and toward a new architecture of audio.
Toward the cease of the hour-long vocal, as the chorus repeats, each performer leaves the room they are in to gather downstairs in the drawing room.
Þorvaldur Gröndal Run across bio
We talked almost how nosotros should meet downstairs and then walk out. Óli was to wake up with Jacqueline, who was lying in the bed. Information technology was a bit romantic. The atmosphere was loving. They met me and I walked down the stairs with them and we all showed up in the big room. Ragnar was in that location in the [bath] towel and someone had champagne and cigars and yet we kept on singing. Then Ragnar opened the door and nosotros walked out.
Ania Aldrich Encounter bio
A friend told me he was admittedly disgusted that Ragnar took off his towel and was naked. I said, "Well, yeah! He took off his towel to wipe spilled champagne from the floor." I'm very happy he did that! He takes care of the damage. Never mind that he was naked for a few seconds.
Tómas Örn Tómasson Run into bio
At the end, my assistant Hakon goes around and turns off all the cameras, and he'due south whistling the song, similar a serial killer, turning them off 1 past one. That was not planned at all.
Act IV. A time to remember
With the performance over, the celebrations began.
Þorvaldur Gröndal See bio
The feeling at the stop was … victorious. It was beautiful.
Kristín Anna Valtýsdóttir See bio
It was like the performance was just the foreplay for the real yard finale.
Davíð Þór Jónsson See bio
Nosotros had no clear thought of what we had made, simply the feeling was that nosotros had really done what nosotros came to do. So it escalates into the night and into a fire … a tension release.
Chris McDonald See bio
It was madness. Full-blown revelry. It started at the end of the piece, everyone running around outside. And it ramped up until dawn.
Þorvaldur Gröndal See bio
Ania was in the kitchen. Everyone was drinking exterior on the porch. Spirits were high, and so something happened. We heard that she had dropped this big knife onto her pes. Everything stopped. There wasn't a lot of blood, but she went into stupor. … We had to call 911, and it was police and ambulance and crazy commotion. But then we carried on. It was kind of fitting to the whole feel.
Ania Aldrich Encounter bio
There was a very sharp knife, which fell and cut deeply into my pes. … Afterward I thought, "Well, that was also a sacrificial thing, like the broken whisky bottle at the beginning, this time at the stop."
Ragnar Kjartansson See bio
It was all very traumatic and cinematic. But then everything was okay and Ania went upstairs to watch "Downton Abbey." The political party continued, and at daybreak, nosotros blasted Wagner through a guitar amplifier nosotros took out into the field, looking at dawn breaking on the Catskills.
Kristín Anna Valtýsdóttir See bio
The next twenty-four hour period, we collection to this waterfall that we had bathed in a couple of years before, and all of a sudden we're all singing and taking our clothes off and bathing in the waterfall. The energy from the performance only stayed. When we came back from the waterfall, it was similar, "Wow, how wonderful life can be!"
The performers dispersed and reunited three months subsequently at the Migros Museum in Zurich for the premiere of "The Visitors." When it moved next to Luhring Augustine, Kjartansson's New York gallery, it rapidly became the talk of the boondocks.
Chris McDonald Run across bio
We all showed upwards again in Zurich for the opening. One by i we came into the room and people started crying.
Ásdís Sif Gunnarsdóttir See bio
It makes me really happy to see information technology. It's so nice to hear your words sung. When I walked through the piece, I only regretted not being in information technology.
Jacqueline Falcone Encounter bio
Ásdís's presence was very much there. It's in the work, but information technology'due south too in the energy of the people in that location.
Roland Augustine Co-owner of New York's Luhring Augustine gallery and Kjartansson's U.S. art dealer
So much of Ragnar's work is about the feminine voice. I recall of his piece "Bliss," which was kickoff performed in 2011. The final aria from Mozart'southward "The Marriage of Figaro" is all most the count pleading forgiveness for his infidelity and she's responding past proverb, "I forgive you, because I am kinder than you." In my mind, information technology's a parallel to what Ragnar achieved in "The Visitors": that same sense of pathos, that same sense of irony. And I always come back to the idea of him in the bathtub. He is the lead character — and he's reduced himself to this buffoon in the bathtub! It's and so humbling.
Shahzad Ismaily See bio
When y'all're in Ragnar's company, you can tell that he's playing with the earth. There is humour and lightness. Merely what'due south interesting, perversely, is that this is exactly how you get to the deepest space. If you're lighthearted and have a sense of sense of humour, then you open a portal to a vulnerable place within yourself.
Ania Aldrich Come across bio
I saw information technology with my niece in New York and I remember her standing next to me and crying. And I said, "Why are you crying?" She said, "Because this is how life ought to be. This is the fashion it always should be."
Hákon Sverrisson See bio
I've worked in this business for 27 years. Very, very occasionally, you striking some kind of magic. It was such a pure experience. Information technology was so serene. Painful, too, and yet cute. What'due south amazing is that those emotions seem to be delivered to the public somehow.
Davíð Þór Jónsson See bio
I was really happy that people were moved. I'k also happy when people walk out, when they can't bear to see it. And then I know something is there.
Hákon Sverrisson See bio
When I look dorsum on life, I'1000 pretty sure that this piece, that week, volition be something that I will think on my deathbed. It'due south one of those things — a beautiful buss from the universe. It sounds sappy. Just it was a gift.
Kristín Anna Valtýsdóttir Run across bio
Later, nosotros joked near the abuse of offering such an experience. Because when you go dorsum to your everyday life you at present have this huge contrast. Yous've been naked in waterfalls and bursting out in song and and so it's like, "Oh."
Near this story
Source: https://www.washingtonpost.com/arts-entertainment/interactive/2021/the-visitors-ragnar-kjartansson-oral-history/
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