Once Again I ve Fallen Into My Feminine Ways
It was hailed as a masterpiece the moment it appeared, back in 2012. Seven years later, the Guardian made it No. 1 on a listing of the 25 all-time artworks of the 21st century. Simply the past 18 months have made Ragnar Kjartansson'due south video installation "The Visitors" more only great; they have recast the work as a mirror for our electric current moment, making it seem breathtakingly prescient.
Once in a while information technology happens that way: Certain artworks just rhyme with the zeitgeist. Manet's "Olympia." Picasso's "Guernica." Andy Warhol's Campbell'south soup cans. Arthur Jafa'due south "Love Is the Message, the Message Is Death." You lot tin debate their merits as much as you like; what you lot can't deny is the accuse they get from mainlining something bigger in the culture at large.
To meet "The Visitors" every bit the world begins its tentative and fraught emergence from a still-evolving pandemic is to realize you are in the presence of only such a piece of work. The manner Kjartansson'south immersive exhibit echoes and distills our gradual, vaccine-assisted transition from prolonged isolation to summer resumption of social life is uncanny.
This oral history, the showtime in-depth business relationship of how "The Visitors" came to exist, tells the tale — in the creators' own words — of how a now-legendary, week-long house party produced an unlikely creative triumph. It is a story of exploding cannons, flood bathtubs and skinny-dipping in waterfalls; a story of maverick exuberance and poignant heartbreak; a story that collapses a rich past into an erotic, soulful nowadays.
Recorded in 2012 at the end of a belatedly summer week at Rokeby, a historic estate emanating poetically faded splendor in New York's Hudson Valley, "The Visitors" is a multiscreen video installation that shows Kjartansson performing a song with seven musician friends over the course of an entire hour. Played on a continuous loop, it has been seen past millions of viewers at galleries and museums in dozens of cities around the world, including Perth, Prague, Nashville and Washington. Information technology is showing at Boston's Institute of Contemporary Art through Aug. 15 and volition be installed side by side at the Gund Gallery at Kenyon Higher in Gambier, Ohio (Aug. 26-Dec. 12), as well as in Moscow for a four-month menstruum this fall.
To feel "The Visitors," y'all walk into a darkened gallery with nine large screens, eight of which show a beautiful room at Rokeby. In that location's as well a view of the forepart porch, where a group 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 vocal are dreamy and thin, others are more rousing, but the piece continually reverts to the chorus, with the arresting lyric: "Over again I fall into my feminine means." The boring, descending melody with rich harmonies sounds like this …
As you 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, almost 10 minutes before the end, the musicians have off their headphones, leave their instruments and gather around one of ii 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 every bit, joined past the advertisement hoc choir on the porch, they cantankerous a vast meadow in the gloaming, singing lustily all the while.
For all its preposterousness (and Kjartansson wields absurdity like some painters wield a palette knife) this rousing finale — part Beatles, part Chekhov — has the feeling of a peachy thaw, a lifting of the siege. Part of its genius is that the performers' movements are unconsciously echoed by the audition: For most of the hr, you and the other viewers have been dispersed effectually the gallery, communing with the music in confinement. Only equally the rooms are evacuated, the audience "follows" the performers, naturally congregating in front of the screen showing their reunion. Huddling together in the night, united by marvel and whatever foreign spell has been bandage, you sentry on in a shared land of baffled joy.
Kjartansson, 45, acknowledges the additional layers of meaning his work has taken on recently but says he is as confounded past the success of "The Visitors" as anyone. "That'southward what's crazy about this piece," he told me on a Zoom call last wintertime. "It's a bunch of Icelandic White kids being drunk in some fancy mansion and playing mediocre country. … It's weird that information technology actually works."
Don't be deceived. Kjartansson is an astute artist, and his collaborators include some of Iceland'due south most talented and creative composers and musicians. They are known for their work in bands such as Sigur Rós and Múm, for their pic 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 every bit the homeowners and cardinal people who assisted in the making of this 21st-century masterpiece.
Act I. Laying the groundwork
Equally a child, Ragnar Kjartansson would watch from the theater wings equally his parents — famous actors in Republic of iceland — apposite the aforementioned scenes again and again. He afterward described the feeling as "divine boredom." By the time he graduated from the Iceland University of the Arts in Reykjavik in 2001, Kjartansson's theatrical upbringing had merged with an involvement in performance art, every bit practiced by the likes of Marina Abramovic , Chris Burden and Bruce Nauman . Above all, though, he loved music.
Ragnar Kjartansson Artist and co-composer of the music who plays acoustic guitar in the bathroom in "The Visitors"
You only do a slice like this once in your life. Yous don't want to strive to brand pieces that are loved by anybody. Then you're f---ed. But it's fantastic to take made a piece that people beloved and everybody tin can relate to. It'southward fantastic.
Davíð Þór Jónsson Co-composer of the music who plays piano, harmonica and hurdy gurdy in "The Visitors"
In 2007, Ragnar had this idea. He wanted to make an ongoing, choruslike song, a little mantra that would go along and on, and not change much. He wanted to practice it Tony Bennett-style, Frank Sinatra-fashion. You would see this young, beautiful man and an orchestra, then you lot would see a jazz trio and a harp. That became the first video piece we did together.
Repetition was a mode 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 information technology) 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-minute aria from the terminate of Mozart'due south "The Marriage of Figaro" for 12 hours . The aria's lyrics, which suggest the superior kindness of women and were sung more than 200 times, spoke to Kjartansson's long-continuing involvement in feminism.
Davíð Þór Jónsson Meet bio
We began to practise these endurance performances. We went to northern Italy to do Schumann for eight hours a solar day, ten days in a row. We and then did Mozart for 12 hours in New York. Making these pieces has destroyed my sense of time. I become onstage and I play an hour and information technology feels like 5 minutes because I've been doing these half dozen-60 minutes, 12-hour performances. It'due south given nascency to something.
Ragnar Kjartansson Come across bio
Feminism has been very vibrant in Iceland in the final 40 years. People used to talk a lot about "What is feminine? What is masculine? And what is bulls---?" Most of it is bulls---. A good friend of mine ever says, "You just need to be a woman to be an artist. The artistic 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 by the operation artist Ásdís Sif Gunnarsdóttir , Kjartansson's wife until their separation in 2012.
Ragnar Kjartansson See bio
Davíð and I wrote the basics of the vocal in 2010 when he and I and Ásdís were working on a radio play in an artists' residency on Long Island called Watermill. The song's lyrics were all based on performance and video pieces by Ásdís. They had these "wow!" sentences, like: "At that place are stars exploding and there'southward zippo yous can do." They all got sampled in my head and the song became a collage celebrating Ásdís's works.
Ásdís Sif Gunnarsdóttir Functioning and video artist who provided the lyrics and ex-wife of Kjartansson
All the sentences that I wrote were made to be cut and spliced together. You could say one sentence and answer with another and they would always work together. Every judgement was meant to be like the terminal judgement in a play, like a dramatic finale.
Davíð Þór Jónsson Encounter bio
Nosotros worked on it again in the summertime of 2012 during the dark. We were in that location with Ásdís and their almost ii-year-quondam daughter and we were supposed to exist practicing a theater piece with Ragnar's mother. Nosotros were singing "Once over again … I fall into … my …. feminine … ways," half-whispering it, because nosotros didn't want to wake anyone up. We were like two young girls trying to make a song.
Ásdís Sif Gunnarsdóttir Run into bio
The main lyric in the song — "once once more I fall into my feminine ways" — was from a performance I did in Iceland. Each fourth dimension I did the performance, I would enquire my friend, the curator, to have a full bucket of water and spill information technology over me and so there would be a more dramatic consequence. When I was writing the text, I was thinking most how sometimes women, when they fall in dear, are more set to leave everything backside and travel to follow their hearts.
The business firm at Rokeby , where "The Visitors" was filmed, is almost Bard College on the Hudson River. It was built betwixt 1811 and 1815 by John Armstrong Jr., President James Madison'south secretary of war during the War of 1812. Armstrong was held responsible for failing to defend Washington, which was later burned. He retired to Rokeby (so chosen "La Bergerie"). Past 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 concenter artists, musicians and miscellaneous guests.
Ragnar Kjartansson Meet bio
My friend Markús Þór Andrésson, who was doing a graduation show at Bard College's Eye 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 onetime aunt who lived in a crumbling castle exterior of Stockholm. It'south fantastic when these romantic places are actually real. I'grand a total sucker for them. But Rokeby was beyond anything I've always seen.
Ania Aldrich Creative person 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 want to bring my friend Ragnar from Iceland to do a performance. I have no place to put them." I said, "You can put them here but I'm non going to change my behavior just because I have strangers in the business firm. If I'm fighting with Ricky, they just have to ignore it."
Ragnar Kjartansson Run into bio
After staying there for a few weeks [in 2007], I started to fantasize. You nigh make these pieces simply to accept an alibi to hang out in that location and exist in the gamble that is Rokeby.
Act Two. Settling in at Rokeby
For several years, Kjartansson returned to Rokeby, sometimes with his musical friends. By 2012, his thought for "The Visitors" had fully adult, and the troupe descended on the house in August.
Þorvaldur Gröndal Drummer in "The Visitors"
We arrived with a small-scale blindside. We flew into New York. We got into the middle of boondocks where they had rented this big van for near 8 people. I've never driven in New York. Getting out of Manhattan alive with all these people was 1 of the biggest miracles I've ever pulled off. But then it starts to become night and it'south raining, and of class, we got lost. So nosotros were driving for two or 3 hours extra, trying to find a style back onto the highway.
Ragnar Kjartansson See bio
Nosotros got terribly drunk on that bus.
Þorvaldur Gröndal Encounter bio
Information technology was like a funny movie scene. Nosotros came — vrrrr! — to a stop [in front end of the house] and people rolled out. It must accept been a funny sight.
Ragnar Kjartansson See bio
Davíð was like, "Hello!" and straightaway dropped the whisky bottle, which was supposed to be a gift, on the porch.
Ania Aldrich See bio
They arrived late. I was waiting. I was similar, "Oh my God, that was expensive whisky!" In hindsight, I think it was a souvenir to the gods.
The first days were spent rehearsing, exploring and soaking up Rokeby'due south ambiance.
Þorvaldur Gröndal See bio
So this large, strange house took us in.
Alex Kahn Visual artist who plays guitar and leads the "Peasants' Choir" on the porch
The piece itself was about creating a sense of a firm that invites in this unknown, e'er-shifting cohort of people who enmesh themselves in the history of the firm. That's exactly what it was in real life.
Kristín Anna Valtýsdóttir Singer-songwriter who plays the accordion and audio-visual guitar in "The Visitors"
I instantly felt so at home in Rokeby. I remember on my outset visit I sat downward at the grand piano. The lord's day was going down, I was playing, and Ania said, "Living in a identify like this then oftentimes makes you think how life here should be. Right now, when you were playing, information technology was like that."
Ólafur Jónsson Plays electric guitar in "The Visitors"
It was the commencement time in the States for me. Information technology was a kind of cloudy, magical, movielike experience.
Þorvaldur Gröndal See bio
It about felt like we were kids doing something we shouldn't be doing, sneaking off, trying to go upwardly this staircase, down this hallway …
Ragnar Kjartansson See bio
Ricky and Ania are like characters from a Russian novel. They're larger than life. Rokeby is a bohemian castle and they're the king and queen of Bohemia.
Ricky Aldrich Co-owner 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 only carried on as normal.
Hákon Sverrisson AP and whistling cameraman
The mattress I slept on was made from horsehair. There was no air conditioning. It was very visceral, like what it must take been like on these farms 300 years ago.
Þorvaldur Gröndal Run across bio
We stayed up actually late, drinking and talking, making music and wandering around, letting the house just swallow us. Everything is a chip rundown. The paint is cracked, there'due south dust, and the piece of furniture is broken a piffling scrap.
Jacqueline Falcone Independent curator and baker who prepared the meals at Rokeby
Nosotros were dancing one night and Ricky said, "You tin can play records if you lot desire." He pointed over to a phonograph in the corner. We said, "Actually? We can touch that?" And he was similar, "Aye, it'southward fine." I looked at it and said, "Well, this is an Edison. That's crazy. It must be super sometime." And he was like, "Oh, yeah, he used to come here all the time." It was a souvenir to the family unit from Thomas Edison.
Davíð Þór Jónsson Meet bio
There were these two huge Steinway pianos. I recall both of them accept been in that location for 100 years.
Chris McDonald Recording engineer in charge of mixing and mastering the sound
We'd just done some rehearsals. Everyone was amped up and someone said, "I know the perfect way to relax. There's this awesome waterfall, we can go skinny-dipping." Information technology turned out to be on the Bard campus. Nosotros thought schoolhouse was out, then no one would be in that location. But actually quite a few parents were dropping off their kids for the beginning time and some of them had taken a nice long walk through the woods. They came upon this rowdy pack of a dozen crazy people naked in a waterfall. I call up their kids were, like, "Yes! College!"
Relationships amongst the performers, the coiffure and the various visitors became deeper every bit the days passed.
Alex Kahn See bio
Information technology was such an interesting cross-section of personalities. Ragnar wanted a little chaos in the mix.
Jacqueline Falcone See bio
Ragnar needs to work with people he's amazed by. And at that place'southward nobody that can't take fun with Davíð. The 2 are like brothers. Their chemistry together is explosive.
Shahzad Ismaily Multi-instrumentalist who plays the banjo and electric guitar in "The Visitors"
In May or June of that year, I began a courting with this wonderful woman from Republic of iceland, Gyða Valtysdóttir. She said, "Hey, I'm doing this fine art piece in Upstate New York in the summertime. You lot should come up and hang out and be with me during that time."
Ragnar Kjartansson See bio
Gyða had said, "I really think you should invite my fellow, too. He's really good." I was like, "Invite your boyfriend? Really? Is that a good idea?" Then I Googled Shahzad Ismaily and I was similar, "Oh, yes delight! Can you invite your beau?"
Gyða Valtýsdóttir Composer and multi-instrumentalist who plays the cello in "The Visitors"
It was this group of Icelanders. And and so my partner [Shahzad] came in and he said, "Tin I bring my mom?" It was kind of similar, "No," he couldn't really. Only he brought her anyway — and her blood brother. They're both Pakistani. So I didn't just evidence up myself but with a whole extended family. I was probably feeling a little scrap guilty and trying to accept intendance of everybody. I was meeting Shahzad'south female parent for the first time.
Malika Taj Ismaily Retired dr. and Shahzad Ismaily'south female parent who is part of the choir on the porch
Information technology was a pleasance for me to be around those people. The musicians are very broad-minded and free, which is an excellent thing to be.
Shahzad Ismaily Run into bio
In retrospect, information technology was ambrosial, because hither's a strongly Icelandic-identifying group of people. I'm the i not-Icelander. I was also the only non-White kid in the little boondocks where I grew up, and I have a physical deformity that's based on a genetic status I had called ectodermal dysplasia. I have a strong feel of difference, of being vilified or removed or objectified through harassment or teasing. So I have an allergy to people saying: "Yous are an apple, y'all are not an apple; you belong here, you vest elsewhere."
Ragnar Kjartansson See bio
I think Shahzad and his family unit being there somehow took it out of this claustrophobic Icelandic scene.
Kjartansson and Gunnarsdóttir had separated two months before. "The Visitors" ended upwardly beingness named after ABBA's final album , which was recorded soon after the legendary Swedish grouping's two couples had carve up up.
Chris McDonald Come across bio
I actually didn't know [Ragnar and Ásdís] had broken up. Nosotros had just washed a piece in Pittsburgh. Ásdís was in that location, and they had just had their daughter. All of a sudden Ragnar was not very fun to be with, and I could not figure out what was going on. I collection to their flat to selection them up and it was dead silence in the motorcar. I just didn't put it together. Then when we were at the dinner table at Rokeby, I said, "It'southward too bad that Ásdís couldn't make it." And Ragnar was like, "Nosotros got a divorce."
Jacqueline Falcone Run into bio
I didn't actually 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 mag, with a tear in the middle of the photograph.
Ragnar Kjartansson Come across bio
The separation from Ásdís was still resonating. Nosotros had split up in June and this was filmed in Baronial. But honestly, it was the reverse of hard times. I think we were both really relieved to be carve up upward. I had fallen completely in love with Ingibjörg Sigurjónsdóttir, who's now my married woman. There is that contradiction within. It was actually all done in the bliss of being in love and I call up that gave me this ridiculous confidence and vision to pull it off. It was not similar, "Oh no, I'm getting divorced." It was like, [shouts] "Life is happening!"
Davíð Þór Jónsson Run across bio
Life is happening through all the creativity, and you lot reflect your life into the work as y'all do it.
Ásdís Sif Gunnarsdóttir Run into bio
We decided to divide but I don't think people got to know until a month or two later. Even and then, we were however doing things together. But we didn't interact very much later the divorce.
Shahzad Ismaily Encounter bio
I was on the opposite side of all that because I was just starting something, with Gyða. I went through some very hard spaces later: separating for a while, coming back together. At the time, I thought: What a cute fashion, with ceremony, to cease a relationship. About of u.s. end relationships with some level of chaos and discomfort. Very few of us are aware plenty or artistic enough to cease a relationship with a sense of ceremony that non only might provide closure, but too actual dazzler.
Creating art in someone else's firm can exist fraught. 1 incident almost led to disaster.
Chris McDonald See bio
Ragnar decided to exercise a "bath rehearsal" 1 day. I was doing a soundcheck for the rooms with no one in them. Everyone was outside, and then it was repose. I thought, "Goddamn information technology, there'southward something wrong. What room is that coming from?" So I was similar, "Oh my God oh my God oh my God!" I ran upstairs where Ragnar had turned on the bathtub. It was flood 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, and then nosotros were like, "Okay, let's not take whatsoever leaks."
The performers meshed the rhythms of daily life at Rokeby with lengthy but deliberately loose rehearsals.
Davíð Þór Jónsson See bio
It felt like a vacation simply, 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 start playing. That would be the essence of it.
Þorvaldur Gröndal See bio
Ragnar came upwards with these drawings, most like a treasure map. Each of us got 1.
Davíð Þór Jónsson See bio
I couldn't write a score for it, like, "This is your part, we take a four/iv beat, it'south allegro, and then an adagio, then this is in B major." Information technology had to be an art piece. Then, on a huge canvas, Ragnar drew what would be the construction and the form and the story of the song. Nosotros tried to convey to the musicians that it would be really open. And then, if you wanted to, you could make up one's mind to end playing the drums and merely think abstractly and savour the room, you know?
Shahzad Ismaily See bio
We collected in one of the main spaces, with amps and drums and instruments all effectually, and we played through the vocal over and over for hours. Information technology's basically a three-infinitesimal object. Only we would do these eight-60 minutes rehearsals. We would go for two or three hours, have a intermission, eat some food; three or four hours, take a intermission, eat some more nutrient.
Kjartan Sveinsson Composer, old member of the Icelandic band Sigur Rós who plays piano and bass guitar in "The Visitors"
Simply nosotros didn't rehearse too much because then yous get stuck repeating what you practise every time.
Gyða Valtýsdóttir See bio
A part of information technology is also having dinner and listening to albums and dancing. That felt like information technology was office of the rehearsals. It was the fine art of living.
Davíð Þór Jónsson Encounter bio
We were listening to such different 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 boring country and western song, with him in a bathroom and me smoking downstairs playing an old grand piano. For me, to think about it is absurd.
Act III. Shooting for something magical
In a nod to Tchaikovsky'south 1812 Overture, the performance was to exist punctuated at its two near climactic moments by the firing of a pocket-size, antiquarian cannon. Getting the timing correct required days of trial and error.
Jacqueline Falcone Meet bio
One morning I was up early, and Ricky asked me if I wanted to get into town with him and get gunpowder.
Kristín Anna Valtýsdóttir Run into bio
Exploding this actually one-time cannon was another part of everything in this quondam house coming live. Nobody had shot this cannon for ages.
Ragnar Kjartansson See bio
There are all these stories about how this cannon was shot at these '60s parties they had at Rokeby, with Bob Dylan showing up and whatnot.
Ricky Aldrich See bio
The cannon recoiled virtually six anxiety. At that place was a fellow who was drunk … and he almost lost a foot, simply [the cannonball] went between his legs. No one paid much attention since everyone was having a good time. We simply fired again!
Both the scale and the age of the house meant that Chris McDonald, who was in accuse of audio, Tómas Tómasson, the cinematographer, and his banana 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 pressure, he never showed it.
Ragnar Kjartansson See bio
But this is the luxury of beingness a visual creative person: If at that place is a mistake, if information technology's a failure, that'due south artistic! That's the artistic statement, right? If it f---s up, then information technology f---s upward. We'll find out!
Ania Aldrich Encounter bio
Ragnar leads very softly. He has incredible enthusiasm and optimism. He's willing to roll with the punches.
Chris McDonald See bio
I remember definitely a few times over the course of the shooting existence most on the verge of tears, thinking, "Oh my God, it's non going to work. And if it doesn't piece of work, information technology'due south my mistake, because everything else is looking really good." In the end 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 nosotros recorded. The cameras nosotros'd rented came the 24-hour interval before. I had my two administration with me synchronizing them all. Information technology was very well planned. But yet, on the solar day, information technology'southward like having a premiere at the theater. Yous never know what'due south going to happen.
Ragnar Kjartansson See bio
I didn't accept so many technical worries because I really trust Chris and Tómas, the cinematographer. I thought, "They'll figure information technology out." My worry was mainly, "What if this is s---? Is this just us playing a sentimental song in a firm?"
Alex Kahn See bio
I call up moments when I idea Ragnar was beginning to fray a little. The porch was like a carnival atmosphere. There were dogs barking and running in and out of the business firm. Ragnar was showtime to get exasperated.
Ragnar Kjartansson Run into bio
I think Ania sensed some fear of this all falling apart. Then she did this pagan ceremony, approval the cameras and the audio equipment.
Ania Aldrich Run across bio
I had a big cigar made out of sage. You low-cal it and you blow it out and then it'due south only smoke, and and so you go effectually and laissez passer it over a person's head, front, dorsum and easily. I might have smudged some instruments, too.
Finally, with everyone in identify, 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 time nosotros were each solitary in a room. So maybe there was a vulnerability that besides plays a role in the slice. You're isolated and you're trying to hear the others, but you can't see anyone. You just try your best to stay in the magic of the realm you've created together over the calendar week, and not to let the camera lens pause the spell.
Davíð Þór Jónsson See bio
It was easy rehearsing in the living room because I could requite cues similar a conductor. Simply in the piece, nosotros're scattered throughout the business firm and I couldn't requite any cues. That was the nigh challenging thing. Information technology'due south a unproblematic song, but the magic of music, which happens in between people, sometimes happens when you're not playing. This is what the musical earth has been missing during the pandemic considering everything is done separately.
Ólafur Jónsson Run across bio
We did two run-throughs. They felt totally alike. Merely you felt the second 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 so good. I played really low-cal. When I watch information technology, I can run into myself getting overwhelmed, tears flowing. I'grand almost losing information technology. Information technology was like I was listening to something else. I think it was … bliss.
Ragnar Kjartansson Encounter bio
I remember existence in the bathtub and hearing the cannon go off and I realized, "This is really happening. We're really shooting this!"
Shahzad Ismaily Run across bio
I had the feeling that if I airtight my eyes we would all exist almost physically coalescing around this sound, which I knew was existence made by a person I could picture in a sure place in the house. In your mind's eye, yous move toward people and toward a new architecture of sound.
Toward the end of the hour-long song, as the chorus repeats, each performer leaves the room they are in to get together downstairs in the drawing room.
Þorvaldur Gröndal See bio
We talked nigh how we should meet downstairs then walk out. Óli was to wake upwards with Jacqueline, who was lying in the bed. Information technology was a flake 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 at that place in the [bath] towel and someone had champagne and cigars and still we kept on singing. Then Ragnar opened the door and nosotros walked out.
Ania Aldrich Come across bio
A friend told me he was absolutely 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'chiliad very happy he did that! He takes care of the impairment. Never mind that he was naked for a few seconds.
Tómas Örn Tómasson See bio
At the end, my assistant Hakon goes around and turns off all the cameras, and he's whistling the song, similar a serial killer, turning them off 1 by 1. That was non planned at all.
Act 4. A time to recall
With the performance over, the celebrations began.
Þorvaldur Gröndal See bio
The feeling at the end was … victorious. It was beautiful.
Kristín Anna Valtýsdóttir Come across bio
Information technology was like the performance was but the foreplay for the existent grand finale.
Davíð Þór Jónsson Run across bio
We had no clear thought of what we had made, just the feeling was that we had actually done what we came to do. And so it escalates into the night and into a fire … a tension release.
Chris McDonald Meet bio
It was madness. Full-blown carousal. It started at the finish of the slice, everyone running effectually outside. And it ramped up until dawn.
Þorvaldur Gröndal Encounter bio
Ania was in the kitchen. Everyone was drinking outside on the porch. Spirits were loftier, then something happened. We heard that she had dropped this big knife onto her human foot. Everything stopped. There wasn't a lot of blood, merely she went into shock. … We had to call 911, and information technology was police and ambulance and crazy commotion. Just and so nosotros carried on. It was kind of plumbing equipment to the whole experience.
Ania Aldrich See bio
There was a very sharp knife, which cruel and cut deeply into my foot. … Later I thought, "Well, that was also a sacrificial thing, like the cleaved whisky bottle at the beginning, this time at the terminate."
Ragnar Kjartansson See bio
It was all very traumatic and cinematic. Only then everything was okay and Ania went upstairs to picket "Downton Abbey." The political party continued, and at daybreak, we blasted Wagner through a guitar amplifier we took out into the field, looking at dawn breaking on the Catskills.
Kristín Anna Valtýsdóttir Come across bio
The adjacent day, we drove to this waterfall that we had bathed in a couple of years earlier, and of a sudden we're all singing and taking our clothes off and bathing in the waterfall. The energy from the operation merely stayed. When nosotros came back from the waterfall, information technology 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, information technology quickly became the talk of the town.
Chris McDonald See bio
We all showed upwardly once more in Zurich for the opening. 1 by one nosotros came into the room and people started crying.
Ásdís Sif Gunnarsdóttir See bio
It makes me really happy to see information technology. Information technology's so nice to hear your words sung. When I walked through the slice, I only regretted not beingness in it.
Jacqueline Falcone See bio
Ásdís's presence was very much there. It's in the piece of work, but it's also in the energy of the people there.
Roland Augustine Co-owner of New York's Luhring Augustine gallery and Kjartansson'due south U.Due south. fine art dealer
So much of Ragnar's work is nigh the feminine voice. I think of his piece "Elation," which was outset performed in 2011. The concluding aria from Mozart's "The Spousal relationship of Figaro" is all near the count pleading forgiveness for his infidelity and she's responding by saying, "I forgive y'all, because I am kinder than you lot." In my mind, it'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'due south company, yous can tell that he's playing with the earth. In that location is sense of humor and lightness. But what's 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, and then you lot open a portal to a vulnerable place inside yourself.
Ania Aldrich Run into bio
I saw it 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 exist. This is the style it always should exist."
Hákon Sverrisson See bio
I've worked in this business concern for 27 years. Very, very occasionally, you hit some kind of magic. It was such a pure feel. It was so serene. Painful, too, and yet cute. What's astonishing is that those emotions seem to exist delivered to the public somehow.
Davíð Þór Jónsson Meet bio
I was actually happy that people were moved. I'm also happy when people walk out, when they can't bear to see it. Then I know something is there.
Hákon Sverrisson Run into bio
When I look back on life, I'm pretty certain that this piece, that week, volition be something that I will remember on my deathbed. It's one of those things — a cute osculation from the universe. It sounds sappy. Only it was a gift.
Kristín Anna Valtýsdóttir See bio
Afterward, we joked most the abuse of offer such an feel. Because when you go back to your everyday life you now have this huge contrast. Y'all've been naked in waterfalls and bursting out in vocal and and then information technology's similar, "Oh."
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Source: https://www.washingtonpost.com/arts-entertainment/interactive/2021/the-visitors-ragnar-kjartansson-oral-history/
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