Borealis : Talking Experiments

Meet composer Raven Chacon in our new podcast getting to know the people behind the music at Borealis 2021.

Raven Chacon is an artist from Fort Defiance, Navajo Nation, Arizona. He is a composer and performer of both chamber music and noise music, he also makes visual art and occasionally curates art exhibitions. He also runs his own record label and teaches music to young people in the Navajo Nation.

In this episode presenter Christiane Meldgaard speaks to Raven at his home in Albuquerque New Mexico, and hears how in this new work for Borealis both the chamber music and the noise sides of his practice finally come together in one piece.

Read more about Raven at Borealis 2021 https://www.borealisfestival.no/en/events2021/double-weaving-2/

All music featured with permission from An Anthology of Chants Operations

by Raven Chacon

https://ravenchacon.bandcamp.com/album/an-anthology-of-chants-operations

Presented and produced by Christiane Meldgaard

Executive Producer, Peter Meanwell

Composer Jana Winderen in conversation with Knut Korsbrekke from Havforskningsinstituttet and Geir Pedersen from Christian Michelsen Research Institute about what they have experienced from listening under water.

Artist and composer Jana Winderen has spent her life listening under water, creating artworks that bring her into contact with the shifting and sometimes precarious lives of mammals, fish and other organisms that live in the world’s waters. Scientists at the Institute of Marine Research in Bergen have long used sound as a way to map water currents and fish movements, through techniques such as hydrophone recording and echograms, to better understand this world beneath the waves. Where then do these two practices meet? One, a sound-focused, creative practice, the other a data-driven scientific research project. We ask Jana Winderen and members of the marine biology community to discuss where their work converges, how important listening is to our understanding of the oceans, and what science and art can learn from each other.

Borealis: Samtale is a new podcast exploring the conversation archives of Borealis – a festival for experimental music in Bergen, Norway.

With Borealis artistic director Peter Meanwell, Australian curator Joel Stern discusses the intersection of the sonic and the political, as explored through the Australian curatorial platform Liquid Architecture. Framed by the context of two fundamental and ongoing struggles in Australia – for the recognition of Indigenous sovereignty, and for the rights of refugees in detention – Joel Stern shares ideas and works by artists participating in the curatorial project Eavesdropping, and opens a broader discussion not just about sound, but about the politics, ethics and responsibilities of listening.

In collaboration with RadiOrakel and Bergen Public Library

Supported by The Fritt Ord Foundation

Borealis: Samtale is a new podcast exploring the conversation archives of Borealis – a festival for experimental music in Bergen, Norway.

What role does art play in our understanding of the climate crisis, and what responsibility do our cultural institutions have? Borealis brings together researchers Thomas Spengler and Nele Meckler from the University of Bergen and the Bjerknes Center for Climate Research, Lucia Pietroiusti - curator of the winner of the Golden Lion during the 58th Venice Biennale, Sun & Sea - and artist and professor at the Art Acedemy in Bergen, Frans Jacobi . The panel discusses how to value global culture, and at the same time try to reduce the climate impact such a culture has, reflect on the risk of apathy and satiety in the encounter with art that deals with the concept of climate, and talk about how scientific research and the artistic field can work together to combat climate change denial.

The conversation connects different threads of climate thinking that show through some of the concerts at this year's festival, such as Next Step - Climate in collaboration with the Bergen Philharmonic Orchestra, the University of Bergen and the Bjerknes Center, and Sun & Sea - The Scandinavian premiere of the opera about the climate crisis set to a false, indoor sandy beach, gaining wide recognition as it won last years Golden Lion at the Venice Biennale.

The talk is presented in collaboration with University of Bergen, Bjerknessenteret for klimaforskning og Bergen Offentlige Bibliotek.

Supported by Fritt Ord.

Borealis: Samtale is a new podcast exploring the conversation archives of Borealis – a festival for experimental music in Bergen, Norway.

In this episode we’re meeting composer George Lewis. From the 1970s as a member of the influential AACM in Chicago, through his pioneering work with electronic music to his large body of notated and improvised music, teaching and writing as a professor of American Music at Columbia University, George Lewis is one of the leading voices of modern composition.

Professor Lewis brought four pieces to this years festival, including the world premiere of Kulokker, commissioned by Borealis and nyMusikk Norway. The pieces were performed by Elaine Mitchener and the Norwegian Naval Forces Band, in the natural history museum in Bergen, on the opening night of the festival back in March 2020. The following day he joined artistic director Peter Meanwell in a conversation where they touched upon themes such as curation and canonization, and on how classical music and composition has previously been defined to only celebrate certain groups of people and thus exclude others.

Presented in collaboration with Bergen Offentlige Bibliotek.

Supported by Fritt Ord.

Foto: Emily Peragine

Borealis: Samtale is a new podcast exploring the conversation archives of Borealis – a festival for experimental music in Bergen, Norway.

This episode is named Infrasonic: the politics, production and performance of electronic music. Louis Moreno, one of the curators from collective freethought is leading a conversation with musician Jlin, curator and musician Paul Purgas, Will and Freya from the group Yeah You, as well as artistic director of Borealis Peter Meanwell as they are discussing the inspirations, strategies and infrastructures that form both the inside and the outside of their creative processes.

Were back in the year of 2016, on a sunday morning and the last day of this years Borealis festival. Everyone on stage also shared space the night before when they all played at Utmark/Borealis.

The conversation is made in collaboration with Bergen Assembly

Supported by Fritt Ord

Borealis: Samtale is a new podcast exploring the conversation archives of Borealis – a festival for experimental music in Bergen, Norway.

This episode features a conversation between British performer Elaine Mitchener and Dr. Temi Odumosu, Senior Lecturer in Cultural Studies at Malmö University in Sweden following the Scandinavian premiere of Elaine's work SWEET TOOTH. They discuss how music can relate to the history of the international enslavement trade, and the way art can function to evoke and heal this trauma.

SWEET TOOTH is a work devised by Mitchener, a British performer of Caribbean descent, which viscerally evokes through sound and movement the impact of the global sugar trade on enslaved African peoples. Having performed the work to great acclaim in the UK, in March 2020, Borealis hosted the Scandinavian premiere of the work.