Agape
Agape ( /əˈgāp/ ) : wide open
Instrumentation | open / installation work
Date | 2021
Duration | in multi-channel format for 4 screens, indefinite length (on loop) or 30’. a rendition in a single screen format (ca 50’) available.
Premiere | commissioned by Sequences Art Festival Biennal and premiered at Kling & Bang Gallery
A text/graphic score calls for the performers to predetermine a sonic path unique to their own individual interpretation; they are instructed to navigate a sequence of changes in harmony with circular movements. Performers can come to mutual agreements on aspects of their individual performances regarding intensity/tonality/etc., but this is not necessary or necessarily wanted. Seeking to excavate an individual performer’s fingerprint, what becomes interesting here is how they choose to deliberate and deliver their navigation. Their performances are then collapsed together so a listener/observer can experience the contrast of these interpretations of the “same” moment - through conflating time, the activation of the vertical exposes the manifoldness of the horizontal.
The resulting materials of audio/video are installed in multichannel form onto gallery walls.
Agape was nominated for “work of the year” in the classical/contemporary category at the Icelandic Music Awards 2022
Equally stunning is Agape, a 2021 video installation work by Icelandic composer Bergrún Snæbjörnsdóttir in which four musicians - her partner, the contrabass clarinettist John McCowen, along with percussionist Matthias Engler, harpist Gunnhildur Einarsdóttir and cellist Júlía Mogensen - generate sustained tones according to a flexible score, each appearing sequentially on four separate screens before gradually merging into a dense collage of beautifully recorded drone before their bodies fade into nothingness, the soundtrack into silence.
Another, even more engaging quartet was the focus of Agape by Bergrún Snæbjörnsdottir. Across four large video screens, contrabass clarinet, harp, percussion and cello were progressively unveiled as the constituent parts – fundamental, harmonics, overtones and timbral offshoots – of one complex, resonant sound. As the camera revolved around them, their relationship to each other and to time itself became confused, telescoped, feathering into a delay trail of foreshadows and echoes. There was a growing sense throughout of wanting – needing! – the four to become truly aligned, and when this finally happened its vivid, long-awaited point of focus was glorious.
CONCEPT IMAGE
Below: Agape as performed by Gunnhildur Einarsdóttir, Matthias Engler, John McCowen and Júlía Mogensen, cinematography by Derrick Belcham, camera work/editing by Bergrún Snæbjörnsdóttir. Installed at Only Connect Festival, Stavanger 2025.
Below: Agape as performed by Gunnhildur Einarsdóttir, Matthias Engler, John McCowen and Júlía Mogensen, cinematography by Derrick Belcham, camera work/editing by Bergrún Snæbjörnsdóttir. Installed at Kling & Bang Gallery as part of Sequences Art Festival biennal 2021.
