The Nordic Institute on Åland (NIPÅ) has during the Corona-era during spring 2020 produced Friday concerts online at nipalive.ax. On Friday June 5th, NIPÅ will be presenting a concert that puts sounds to the emotions of and up-side-down world. This will be a slow free musical interpretation by some Åland musicians in Stockholm, where the focus will be on the meeting between musicians from different backgrounds, and exploratory improvisation of sound is given a lot of space.
The music is intended to be taken in silence - awake or asleep - preferably combined with meditation or reflection on the current situation. A suitable way to round off our corona concert-series.
Illness, death and worry is now sweeping around the world. In a short period of time, the crown jewel of the Nordic and European countries, the free movement, has been changed to curfew and lockdowns. The military patrols the borders and stops the citizens of the Nordic neighbors from entering, hoping to prevent a virus to spread further.
In the midst of the infectious heart epicenter, Stockholm, six Ålanders are stuck. The Finnish state has announced a state of emergency which also covers the Åland Islands; schools, restaurants and borders are closed and the dozens of ferries that an ordinary day connects the Ålands Islands with Sweden are prohibited of taking passengers on board, during a period. Before this Sweden, Finland and Åland were almost the same country. But right now neither the six Ålanders nor foreigners are welcome over the sea - not even the many doctors who regularly commute weekly and provide the Åland hospital with vital staff and suuport, were allowed to come to the Åland Islands for a period.
Excluded from their homeland, the six Ålanders have taken refuge in a penthouse to reflect on the situation. Outside the windows the streets are filled with people and the spread of infection and daily life continues. The children go to their schools as usual, elderly people search for the springs sunlight on newly opened outdoor seating, and the cinemas show the latest films of the year. At the same time, soldiers have rebuilt the Stockholm Fair into an intensive care unit. The disease is spreading, hand in hand with the death toll, to levels that are unparalleled in the other Nordic countries.
In the strange contrasts of the virus, the six Ålanders meet to make sound and music out of their emotions and interpret the new surreal borderland in the footsteps of the infection. As one of the artists of the gruop is in risk she cannot be part of the concert physically, instead she cleaves the feeling of isolation in the image through streamed video art from the kitchen table.
Much of what the world has experienced during this spring is just up-side-down and backwards from what we know. And this is precisely in that feeling that the name of the concert has been formed. SURIV. Read it backwards and it forms the word virus.
Performing artists:
Fredrik Mattsson, saxophone and flutes
Zaida Ponthin, violin
Filip Karlström, electric guitar
Anders Brunnsberg, drums
Axel Jonsson, elektronics
Julia Johansson, videoart
Where? nipalive.ax
When? June 5th, at 19.00
