MOLTA

About the work

Roots, rot, riot

MOLTA is an immersive interdisciplinary installation and a live performance. The artist Rósa Ómarsdóttir creates ecosystems which are transformed through natural processes. This ecosystem melts, leak, decomposes, grow, morphs and evaporates. Molta means compost in Icelandic and is a metaphor. Compost is a place for both decomposition and fertility, where obsolete and outmoded phenomena break down and new ones spring up. In the work MOLTA Rósa explores tentative and ever changing ecosystems. She explores the boundaries of man, environment and technology, where everything affects each other. Humans morph together with mushrooms, plastic particles and electrons. What springs out of the compost?

During the four hour long performance, visitors can freely come and go as they want, dwell in it and interact with it. The four hour performance will take place in the installation on September 26 + 27 from 18:00-22.00 and September 28 from 14:00-18:00. On Saturday MOLTA is a part of the festival Science and Art in Carlsberg Byen. You can find the full program here and buy tickets through their webpage.

During the live performance the audience is invited to a dwell inside the installation for the duration of four hours. The audience is offered a place and time to experience everchanging environment, roots, rot and riot. The performers activate the installation. They appear as sculptures, creatures, animals, nature or forces and are part of the ecosystem. The work explores an experience of

transformation and time. Sometimes the changes are so slow that they are barely noticeable, while other times they are so fast that they are barely missed. The audience is invited to dwell, watch, listen, simply be, hang out, eat, drink and rest while the performers and the environment transform, they can look more, listen, sense, take a break and come back to a new space, that after about four hours has possibly become a part of themselves.

Light appetizers will be served during the performance, presented by chef Kjartan Óli Guðmundsson and produced by Restaurant Caronte, where ecosystems, the environment and the performers themselves are part of the catering.

Artistic team

Artistic director and choreographer Rósa Ómarsdóttir

Performers Saga Sigurðardóttir, Karitas Lotta Tuliníus, Erna Gunnarsdóttir, Andrean Sigurgeirsson, Gabriele Bagdonaite

Guest Performers Sanna Blennow, Escarleth Pozo

Music Nicolai Johansen

Dramaturgy Ásrún Magnúsdóttir

Costumes Kristjana Reynisdóttir

Installation Rósa Ómarsdóttir, Guðný Hrund Sigurðardóttir, Hákon Pálsson,

Lights Hákon Pálsson

Technical Assistace Valdimar Jóhannsson

Interns Olivia Pyszko

Júlía Kolbrún Sigurðardóttir

Artistic Consultation Ana Dubljevic

The project is funded by the Icelandic Performing Arts Fund, The Artist’ Salary Fund, the City of Reykjavík, Nordisk Kulturfond, Landsbankinn, Kópavogur Arts and Culture fund and The Icelandic Performing Arts Center’s Travel Fund

Co-producers: The Icelandic Dance Company, Reykjavík Dance Festival, Dansehallerne Copenhagen, C-takt Belgium.

Residency support: Dansverkstæðið and Wp Zimmer Belgium.

About the artists

Rósa Ómarsdóttir / Choreographer

Rósa Ómarsdóttir is an interdisciplinary choreographer. In her work, Rósa explores the relationship between humans and environment, in search of non-anthropocentric narratives. She strives to create a rich ecosystem of humans, non-humans and invisible forces. Her work is interdisciplinary in nature, interweaving choreography, live soundscapes and visual art, with a feminist approach to dramaturgy that embraces vulnerability and flux.

Rósa studied at the Icelandic Arts University and at PARTS in Brussels, where she was based for over a decade. Rósa’s work has been shown at numerous festivals, theatres, galleries and art museums internationally. Amongst are LOFFT Theatre Leipzig, Museum Dhont’ Dhaenes Ghent, Beursschouwburg Brussels, the Flemish Parliament, Homo Novus Festival in Latvia, MIR Festival in Athens and MDT in Stockholm. Rósa has been a residency artist at many institutions i.e. Chaillot in Paris, WpZimmer, Kaai Theatre and many more. She received a fellowship at Akademie Schloss Solitude in Stuttgart in 2021 and has been a residency artist in institutions and workspaces all over the world. Her work has been awarded for the Icelandic Theatre Awards for soundscape of the year and as choreographer of the year, and received numerous nominations.

Nicolai Hovgaard Johansen / Sound

design

Nicolai Johansen is a Berlin-based sound artist and composer. His works include a range of interdisciplinary collaborations, often reaching into the visual arts and performance art. His sound navigates between the realms of industrial, neo-classical, techno and ambient. Early works from Johansen focused on the fragility and nakedness of feedback and noise. Newer works have included programming. In his collaboration with Rósa Ómarsdóttir he used this approach and was subsequently awarded “Soundscape of the Year” in 2020 at Icelandic Theatre Awards. Presently, Nicolai has turned to the construction of his own sound sculptures – thus fully combining his work in sound with the visual arts. The sound sculpture “1/3 Hexagon” (constructed in steel) is an instrument exploring the resonant effect frequencies have on its material. Among different recent projects, the instrument features on the album “Colours Of Now”, released in 2021 on the label Rouge Mécanique.

Hákon Pálsson / scenography and light design

Hákon Pálsson is a cinematographer, photographer and light designer. He studied at Edinburgh College of Art og EICAR in Paris. In 2012, he received the BAFTA New Talent Award for cinematography and since then he has shot over 100 projects in around 30 countries all over the world. He did cinematography for Playtime (2014) og Stones Against Diamonds (2015) by the British visual artist Isaac Julien, presented at the Venice Biennale, Art Basel, and on Times Square. Hákon has collaborated closely with his partner Rósa Ómarsdóttir. He designed lights for Spills (2019) and was nominated for the light design at the Icelandic Theater Awards. He also designed the installation for Collaborative Contaminations (2021), a collaboration between him and Rósa which has been presented numerous times in Germany, Belgium and Iceland. His solo photography exhibition “Hótel Saga – Óstaður í tíma” was exhibited in Gallery Port Reykjavík in spring 2022.

Guðný Hrund Sigurðardóttir / Scenography

Guðný Hrund Sigurðardóttir is a freelance theatre designer who works throughout performance art. Guðný graduated from the fine art department at the Iceland University of Arts in 2006. In 2011, she graduated from the theatre design department at the Royal Welsh College of Music and Drama. After graduation, she has focused on set and costume design for performances and has worked on various productions and projects in Iceland and the UK.

Her projects have toured around the world, mostly Europe. She was one of the designers exhibiting at the World Stage Design in 2013. Guðný has been nominated for the Icelandic theatre prize Gríman for set and costumes and has won the award for best costumes (2019 for Eiður). She has collaborated with many independent choreographers, like Marble Crowd, Saga Sigurðardóttir, Valgerður Rúnarsdóttir and Anna Kolfinna, to name a few. She is one of the artistic directors at Bird & Bat, a performance company focusing on young audiences. Bird & Bat has been nominated for the Icelandic Performing Arts Award Gríman for all of their productions and in the year 2016 they won the Gríman prize for children show of the year (Vera & Water). Guðný has a passion for concepts and loves making a world around her projects that sparks like fireworks.

Kristjana Björg Reynisdóttir / Costumes

Kristjana Björg Reynisdóttir is an Icelandic fashion and costume designer living in Berlin since 2016. She finished her BA in fashion design from AMD Akademie Mode & Design in Berlin in 2020. Since then, she has been working with the Berlin label DSTM where she takes equal part in the designs, sample and pattern making as well as production and social media. Long before and alongside her studies she has been sewing for herself and others. She has designed clothes and costumes for many different events, shops, music videos, Icelandic Symphony Orchestra and various of performances.

Saga Sigurðardóttir / Dancer

A Reykjavík-based artist, Saga Sigurðardóttir works across the fields of choreography, performance, music and film. Saga is a core member of theatre/art collectives Marble Crowd (IS/B), 16Lovers (IS) and The PPBB performance band. As a dancer, she has worked with numerous wonderful artists including Erna Ómarsdóttir & Iceland Dance Company, Halla Ólafsdóttir, Elina Pirinen, Alexandra Bachzetsis, Icelandic Love Corporation, Björk and Peaches. Saga graduated with a BA in dance making from ArtEZ (NL) in 2006, completed a second BA in theology from Iceland University and later an MA in performing arts from Iceland University of the Arts (2017) where she has been programme director for Contemporary Dance Practices and associate professor 2020-23. Saga has received nominations and awards as dancer and choreographer, such as the Icelandic Performing Arts Awards and TANZ Magazine Honorary Mention (Germany, Marble Crowd).

Karitas Lotta Tulinius / Costumes

Karitas Lotta Tulinius is a contemporary dancer and maker. With a background in ballet & modern techniques, she graduated from Iceland University of the Arts with a BA in contemporary dance practices in 2021. Karitas has interned with Göteborgs Operan & Iceland Dance Company. After graduation, she has worked with choreographers Saga Sigurðardóttir, Sóley Frostadóttir, Kjartan Ingimarsson and more.

Erna Gunnarsdóttir / Dancer

Erna Gunnarsdóttir is a dance artist based in Reykjavík, Iceland. She graduated with a BA in contemporary dance from the Iceland University of the Arts and has been a dancer at the Iceland Dance Company since 2018. Erna has participated in works from numerous artists and choreographers, including Erna Ómarsdóttir, Damien Jalet, Halla Ólafsdóttir, Tom Weinberger and Sigur Rós.

Andrean Sigurgeirsson / Dancer

Andrean Sigurgeirsson is an Icelandic/Indonesian dancer and choreographer. He pursued his professional studies at the Iceland Academy of the Arts in contemporary dance. He also has a diploma in Indonesian history and culture from the University of Indonesia. Andrean has been a dancer at the Iceland Dance Company since 2017. He has participated in various works, including works by Erna Ómarsdóttir, Damian Jalet, Anton Lachky, Pieter Ampe, Elina Pirinen to name a few. Outside the company, he has worked closely with Bára Sigfúsdóttir on the piece “being” and danced in works by Eszter Salamon. As a choreographer he is best known for Unsettled and Mass Confusion. He has also danced and choreographed in various music videos and films and is a part of the anti-capitalist, electro-techno band, Hatari.

Gabrielé Bagdonaite / Dancer

Gabrielė Bagdonaitė is a performer and creator who graduated from the Lithuanian Academy of Music and Theatre in 2023 with a BA in contemporary dance. She went to Copenhagen on an Erasmus exchange programme and studied at the Danish National School of Performing Arts (DDSKS). She has worked with Lithuanian and foreign choreographers: Liza Baliasnaja, Alexandra Pirici, Judith Sánchez Ruiz, Nicolas Cantillon, Saulė Noreikaitė, Agnietė Lisičkinaitė and Greta Grinevičiūtė (Be Kompanijos). Gabriele’s dance experience includes various contemporary dance techniques, ballet basics, street dance basics, improvisation-based performances, voice and acting skills. Her bodily practices are complemented by yoga, pilates and Feldenkrais method. She is interested in somatic practices, soundtrack design, philosophy and current topics such as ecology, sustainability and technology.

Stories

1. As I woke up one morning, I felt really thirsty. My bed sheet was full of milk so I drank from it, and I felt better. Then the cow came to my room and said that the breakfast was ready. I went downstairs and had delicious soup. I think it was grass or flower soup, I’m not sure. The taste in my mouth was a bit weird, it felt like I was eating summer. Later I was playing with the bees and I was 8 years old again, they were telling me some stories about life and death and how fragile everything is. Then suddenly I felt cold, I looked at my skin and there was a snail crawling under it. She was on her way to visit her family in my stomach. They had a party there, but I was too old for that. Even older than I’m now, it’s probably because I noticed my skin, which is changing so fast. Then again the cow showed up in my room and asked to hold her tail, which was heavy, long and red. I can barely hold it, but at the same time it was warm and felt a bit like home, I felt like sleeping. The sky that day was the greenest I have ever seen.

2. I once knew a person who would never die. Their intestines had hardened to a point where they would never rot. Their stomach was full of all sorts of rubbish. The stomach acid, for example, held flip-flops and torn plastic bags that they’d eaten. The plastic particles had merged with the mucous membrane and entered the cells, it felt good. They would never die. The beauty would live forever. Never rot. Ideas and conversations would never fade. Never be forgotten. For eternity. But then came the day when they’d had enough eternity. They wanted to die. Wanted to go home. But death never came knocking. It never called their name.

So they took matters into their own hands. They packed a bag and left. The person walked for days and weeks. Up

hills made of waste, past broken TVs, plastic flowers and decomposing animal carcasses. The particles called out for the plastic in their stomach. This was their place. They lay down in their final resting place with open eyes, between sleep and waking, into eternity.

“The world will stop renewing itself. Cells stop communicating but rather sit in a stoic meditation. That’s how they mean to be. They stay because they have nowhere to go. Everything is already here and will be forever, always, and never leave.”

3. So, imagine, there is a place somewhere northwest of here, somewhere in the not-too-distant future, where the air tastes a bit savory and the water somewhat pungent. This place is a swamp, which has been populated by about 150 humans along with various kinds of insects, animals and robots. They form a sort of tribe where all the creatures live together. That does not mean though that there is always harmony, but they get along somewhat well just as it normally goes. This swamp had been contaminated and was ruled out to be inhabitable over 100 years before this tribe moved there, but now they have been living there for many decades and and have started to grow together with the contaminated swamp. And so it goes.

One of the inhabitants in the swamp, their name is blæ, is someone I want to tell you a bit about. blæ is a young child of three different parents, who raised her in total sync with the swamp ecosystem. However, when blæ was a teenager, she was tired of the meaty air of the swamp and the spice water, and she wanted to search for something else, something new, so she left the swamp and took with her few companions to join her for this venture: one firefly, one dog, a large matsutake mushroom and an artificial intelligence which goes by the name of thyri. And off they go.

blæ was not a normal human as you and I think of, she had the pronoun she, but her physical presence could morph between sexes depending on what the weather was like or how she was feeling that day. So, if she was feeling very competent and like she could concur the world, her breasts grew and even started to produce milk. While when she was feeling full of care and empathy with the whole world and all her friends, her balls dropped down. And so it goes. But if she was feeling courageous she grew few hairs on her chest, and when she was feeling cheerful and humorous her hips became more oval. And so it goes.

So blæ was in a constant state of morphing, and her companions reacted also to her morphing by growing larger or smaller or communicating with her through an invisible network of waves which could signal mutual understandings directly between bodies. This was due to technology which will be invented in a near future based on the knowledge of how roots of trees communicate underground - by the help of mushrooms ofcourse. And so it goes.

And off they went, on this venture. blæ, thyri, matsutake, the firefly and the dog which neither went by a name but had a symbol instead.

And so it goes.

4. When I was a kid, I knew this girl from school. She told me about when …

She stood in a large field, the grass reached her knees. It was dry and yellowish, like autumn was approaching, but the breeze was warm like on a nice summer day. She noticed the withered grass had caught fire and soon the whole field was ablaze, and she in its centre. When the flames finally touched her, it didn’t burn, instead her skin turned to

scales, like on a fish. Multi-coloured scales that sheathed her body in colours. I remember she said she could use the scales to smell, she could smell the burning grass.

After dreaming this dream a few times, she started seeing her fingertips as yellow, like she was a smoker. She showed them to me but I couldn’t see it.

I don’t know what happened to this girl, where she is today.

5. I looked in the mirror this morning and noticed small bumps on my back. Upon closer inspection I saw that tentacles were growing out of my body. My back had been itchy and when I took a shower I looked in the mirror and voilá, I had tentacles!

Now, I have tentacles all over my upper back and shoulders. They are directly connected to my tongue and taste buds. Now, when something happens behind me, I can taste it. Every time I enter a space, I have 360° vision of it. Every movement near me is interpreted as taste. If someone runs fast behind me, I taste iron. If someone throws a ball, I taste something resembling grapefruit. Although it’s not quite the same, each activity has its unique taste, just like grapefruit has its own taste the ball-throwing has another taste, which, even if it resembles grapefruit is not the same.

I also sense temperature with my tentacles. The warmth from the sun turns my salive boiling hot, and has a distinctive taste, like something sweet and a bit furry. Now, I sense my surroundings through the tentacles but not the eyes, like before. Sometimes I close my eyes and let the tentacles find my way. That’s how I ended up here.

6. I knew a person who always had spores on their mind actually he also had them in his brain, but that’s another matter. When he wasn’t dreaming of spores, he was thinking about sounds.

Sounds were his home, he never grew tired of them. He drank green Collab and thought about the sound of spores, delicate screeching, furry rumble, exquisite melodies.

When he thought about spores, he got a metal sensation in his teeth and the hair rose on his back. One day, when he was drifting about, the hair on his back rose and didn’t settle again. Evening fell and then night. He was stuck in a deafening mist – it was like a green, metallic tinge adhered to everything near him. He started thinking if this was because of the lobster that he’d eaten, or because of what he’d heard.

Something new ran through his veins and gradually his skin gained a certain glow, it shone like a can. As if he was younger, or just different. Then his eyes changed, the green tinge leaked from them. The hairs on his back turned into a thick, fragrant fur.

A whole field of cilium. It was as if he’d turned into a giant ear, an ear with shiny teeth that shared circulation with a can of Collab. They kept hearing everything and thinking of spores together and when they heard something nice, they foamed.

7. Another day passed, or maybe it was another night? Maybe a whole season had gone by or perhaps even a decade. He wouldn’t know and frankly he didn’t care. The concept of time is like a sad joke, especially when you’re a stone. Well, sad joke wouldn’t even be the best description of it because this so-called time was neither sad nor funny, it just didn’t matter. Anyway, the stone’s name is Bob, or so

he thinks, he suspects that he used to be called something else but now it’s just Bob, Bob the stone. So Bob hadn’t felt anything for a very long time or in this so called abyss of nothingness. The only things that used to nudge the slightest sensation in this timeless realm was when the wind whispered new melodies or when you were lucky enough to be inside the eye of a massive tornado, so except for that it was just same shit different day. Until recently, when the most peculiar thing happened. Sun rays began to peak through the heavy clouds. You see, Bob lived on a scorched planet that was dry, and windy, storms and earthquakes were frequent and on rare occasions acid rainfall suddenly appeared and then the constant growl from the ongoing volcanos exploding in the distance. And all that was tightly covered with thick and heavy clouds so it was always dark. But when the sun abruptly appeared and became a more frequent guest, Bob began to “feel”. He couldn’t describe it since that hadn’t happened for as long as he could remember. Which is understandable, given the fact that approximately 10.000 years had passed since he became a stone.

So you might be thinking what I mean by that, well, Bob hasn’t always been a stone and this planet that Bob lived on used to be teeming with diverse plant and animal life, with rivers and big oceans and a civilisation unlike any other. It had advanced technology and exciting innovation and music and art filled the air.

At that time, Bob went by the name of Leonídas Fabio Habsburg and he was one of the wealthiest individuals until his species gave into the abyss. By the end of the last century of the reign of his species, they had destroyed their own planet. Well, it was actually a small group of the total species that did so, including Leonídas, meanwhile the rest had to suffer the consequences of their actions. So in the helplessness a new belief arose. They believed that it was in fact just

evolution that was pulling the strings of the universe, that they had no actual free will and they had never been interacting with an ultimate reality. They realised that life required violence against other conscious creatures in order for them to live so the most moral thing to do was to unalive themselves. Withdrawing their consent into participating in a system of violent suffering.

And so, a series of unalive rituals spread around the planet. They went peacefully into a long sleep in the hope that their compost would spark new life and that balance would be restored to the planet. But, it didn’t … so to break it down simply, their bodies didn’t break down, at least not so simply, and when it finally happened, it released toxic materials that killed everything in its way. So, unfortunately, they all died in vain. The last group of individuals standing was the filthy rich group that Bob/Leonídas belonged to. With their material wealth and exclusive technology, they were able to isolate themselves on a little island while everything else withered and died. But it was just a matter of time before the toxic flood found its way and poisoned the remaining resources and killed that group, one by one. Thankfully, Leonídas and his rich pals had developed a state-ofthe-art machine that was able to transfer consciousness of a living individual onto something else, like another species, into a robot and even dead things like a stone. After going back and forth debating what would ensure their survival, they agreed that their biggest chance to live through this extinction was to become a stone. It was the most natural formation, it could withstand time and all sorts of weather and lastly it was heavy enough to stay put until new life would emerge and they could infiltrate their consciousness into the new life form. And so the remaining survivors ate their last supper together and underwent the transition.

Song from the project

There will be spores always growing and growing always. When this is over there’ll still be always weather and spores.

There’ll be mushrooms at the end of the world growing and growing there’ll always be spores. Peeking out from the ground, growing and growing.

There’ll always be vines spreading and growing when this is over there’ll still be always weather and spores

There will be mould when this is over spreads and grows and vines spreads around grows and branches out tangled like wire over me and you

across everything always

When this is over there’ll still be spores floating above growing and growing a stratosphere full of flying spores at the end of the world growing in tentative places.

When this is over there’ll still be terns cockroaches and germs when this is over growing and growing like wires growing over everything

At the end of the world growing and growing there’ll be mushrooms oozing popping mushrooms. When this is over there’ll still be always weather and spores.

Conversation between Ana Dubljevic and Rósa Ómarsdóttir

Introduction

Ana Dubljevic (Belgrade) works with dance, choreography and performance. She finished an MA in choreography and performance in Giessen, Germany. Next to choreographic work, Ana performs, teaches and explores what dramaturgy of performance could be. Her book “The feminist pornscapes, on feminist dramaturgical thinking in dance and performance practice” was published in 2021. The same year, “Cement Belgrade” won the Grand Prix of the 54/55th Bitef Festival. She is passionate about erotic poetry and hopes for a planetary general strike.

Ana and Rósa got to know each other when Rósa was doing research for her ecosystem method, an artistic method she’s developed. The method became the foundation for her early works, Spills and Collaborative Contaminations, and now for MOLTA. Ana and Rósa also worked together on Spills, where Ana was dramaturg and artistic advisor. They believed it was important to keep the conversation going for MOLTA. Here follows their communication through email.

Conversation

Ana: I’m curious to hear more about the concept of the ecosystem in your artistic practice. You have been developing this idea through previous works (Spills and Collaborative Contaminations). When and how did this idea emerge in your work?

Rósa: The idea and terminology of ecosystem practice appeared first through the process of my work Traces. There we were exploring anthropomorphism, and

started thinking of the relations between different bodies, both human and non-human, i.e. scenography and sounds, as existing in the same ecosystem. There we started to explore causality and symbiosis through movement, and together with fabrics, which we used in this piece, but it was still quite fresh and curious in its exploration in that work. Afterwards, I applied for research funding to develop this practice, and kind of for the whole year of 2018 I worked on this practice. First, I was mainly exploring both theoretically and through movement: I was reading New Materialism and Object-Oriented Ontology, especially Jane Bennet and Timothy Morton, and exploring how I could approach movement from a non-anthropocentric point. I explored ecology and translated terminologies of ecology into the body and relations between body parts and environment: i.e. symbiosis, parasitism, collaboration, causality, territory, energy flows etc. I focused on these ideas in the relation of body and environment and in that way tried to keep away from human narratives and human intentions as the main force for initiating movement. I also explored sound, and especially the voice, in relation to these ideas. During the research period, I met with a vocalist and started playing with a looper as a means to create soundscapes. Then later I started to develop the work Spills, and there I started exploring this idea also in scenography and how to think of the whole stage as an ecosystem. I was interested in creating an ecosystem on stage, not only in the means of creating a sort of natural process, but also to create a setting where the human is just one part of a complex network, and not the main moving force. I am interested to find ways to make work where the human intention is not always the driving force, but all the non-human elements also get agency.

Ana:

What does ecosystem practice look like in everyday studio life and in your collaborations? What were the challenges of creating ecosystems on stage?

Rósa: In the studio I mostly did lots of daily practices, which I recorded, and then watched. Through these 30-60 minutes practices, I explored in movement the terms and ideas which I was reading and mapping. I have some more meditative exercises, i.e. one called ‘more-than-human-assemblage’ which is a bit like BMC (Body-Mind-Centering) but instead of focusing on one’s own body, you focus on all the parts in your body which you normally don’t call yourself: microplastics, bacterias, mites, chemicals, fluids, etc. Then we also do another exercise which I call ’the body as a blob’ where I guide the dancers through a meditation exploring the body as a blob: with no top, bottom, right, left, no purpose, no social intentions, no human identity, and then move from there, exploring the body as an undefined object: a blob. Then in the ecosystem practice itself, we explore ecological elements such as call and response, symbiosis and causality. We give agency to different body parts by dissecting the body so that the brain is not the central powerhouse or central place of decision. We try to tap into the nervous system and listen with different body parts. We explore different timescales: the time of glaciers, the time of insects and everything there between. This is what happens in the studio in the beginning. But then when it comes to making a piece, and staging this as an experience for the audience, I focus first on the sound and scenography. I want those elements to be the moving force which the performers exist inside. Instead of the music and scenography being a frame around a narrative or human transformations, I try to reverse that. Then I run into a lot of problems, hehe, as it is me who is making this to begin with. So how to make a non-anthropocentric work, when I am a human with human intentions, as the author? When I collaborate with humans, I try to work in a quite horizontal way, that is, I bring problems or ideas to the table, a certain frame lets say, for the performers to play within. When it came to working with objects and things, I try to collaborate in the same way as I do with other

humans. I set up a frame, a certain scenario and then I explore how the elements behave in that frame. How ice melts, how salt falls, the sound it makes, and what happens in the encounter of the two. I try to not overly design or interfere. There was a sentence from Fred Moten which really stayed with me for the process of Spills, “some people want to run things, other things want to run” and I tried to allow things to run.

Ana: Is there an anecdote from the process that could illustrate the ecosystems being resistant to your ideas? Or a specific thing that it taught you?

Rósa: For the process of Spills, we constantly came across the problem of over-designing or trying to make a thing do what we wanted it to do, but then often it escaped. ie. when recording and looping small mouth sounds, feedback becomes a huge problem, also the noise from the audience. But when we allow it to be a part of the thing, it could be worked with, it could become a greater part of the ecosystem. The feeds would make watery sounds from the mouth gradually more and more metallic, and I quite like that, this organic sound becoming metallic sounding. It is just what naturally happens in the process of looping, the dramaturgy of the sound evolves naturally when you listen to how it wants to behave, in a way. Another sentence: “Purity is not an option”, from the book Mushroom at the End of the World by Anna Tsing, also stayed with us. Isolating elements and things, trying to make something pure, is simply not an option in a real ecosystem… one can only do that in sterilised labs, for a purpose of human interrogation, and I am not interested in that. In Collaborative Contaminations (whose title also comes from Anna Tsing’s book) I looked more closely to these noises and messes, the inability to find purity, and underlined them. To really allow things to run. I found a lot of beauty and playfulness in the process of contaminating water.

Ana: How is MOLTA’s ecosystem practice different from the previous developments? What were the specific ideas that were calling you this time?

Rósa: In MOLTA, I focused a lot on the scenography at first, this kind of became the structure of the work, and its development over the duration of the work. Then when I started working with the dancers, I constantly had to remind myself that they are only one part of the whole, they are not the whole story. Because people are so interesting, as an audience we are driven to follow their narrative, their process, stronger than the sound or the set, and in this work, I decided not to overly minimise their role, the humans have a huge role and a huge influence on the ecosystem, they are also a part of it. But the real work was to stay at the level of an ecosystem. I wanted to avoid human narratives, but we are so programmed to go for that as performers, to give it a little bit of drama and a character development… but this is not what I am looking for. So the work with the performers was a lot about staying at a level of time, rhythm, presence and intensities. For me their presence in space was more linked to the weather in the space, creating certain intensities. We did lots of really long sessions, two hours or more, already from the beginning, and I looked for the affects that it created. Then during the process with the dancers, the whole world just seemed like it was collapsing, with all the shit that is going on. It didn’t feel right to just focus on some sort of symbiotic environment, when the world has become so fucked up. So we allowed that to seep through in the practice. Sometimes I would read a Palestinian poem, or we would bring human-driven terror into the sessions, and allow them to seep through the structure, seep through the practice, without trying to make anything of it. Maybe some can be felt, but we also stove away from making it too appa rent if that makes sense. The idea of protest came again and again to me. An idea of riot and rift. Ecosystems aren’t

all kumbaya and happy symbiosis, they also contain parasitism and violence. They are quite chaotic, in a human understanding of chaos and order. The earth erupts, riots and and there are rifts. We strove to find that in the physicality and the states of the performers as well for MOLTA.

Ana: The audience is invited to an experience. The idea of the protest in MOLTA excites me. I could imagine that the experience of symbiotic environment could also maybe serve to enhance in an audience a kind of a privileged, romanticised, safe escapism from the world. Also, staying true to what you are researching on a formal, affective and let’s say philosophical level, then shines through the politicality of the piece, no matter how “not in your face” we, as audience, experience it. We can speak about it on the level of content, but we can also observe it in the way you propose the setting and duration. It is a proposal for a different way of “looking”. That is very different from a one-hour frontal dance piece, right? The engagement of the audience is different. Why is it important for you to propose this, let’s say decentralised, less guided, dispersed, embracing, slow, soft, affective, how would you name it, gaze? Or is there a number of them that are different in nature? What is this gaze allowing for? And how is this gaze serving the audience to become a part of the ecosystem in MOLTA? Further on, does MOLTA need an audience and in which sense?

Rósa: I think MOLTA does not need an audience actually, but it becomes totally different when the audience is there, as it is also influenced by the audience. For me, the long duration is extremely important for the work, it slows time down, it needs some endurance. I always find it interesting how precious we, people today, have become of our time. We constantly refer to our time being wasted. Time is money, and all that… And then we spend hours and hours looking at our phones.

I ask myself why we are constantly so precious of our time, it is quite stressful when time is so extremely valuable. Maybe I am being somewhat nostalgic to a type of teenage way of being, where one sometimes just had absolutely nothing to do. One could just hang. I mean really hang. It is so precious to actually not care too much for time, and maybe we feel the time better when it is less precious? So, by proposing this frame it takes away certain expectations for constant progression. I hope the audience can also just hang, and feel like they have nothing to do. Just like when you dwell in nature. In that way I approach my work with a sense of landscape dramaturgy. I try to strive away from dictating what is to be seen or felt, and rather propose a setting, for which one can experience through. People can decide their own journey through the piece and what they look at.

So back to the question of if the work needs an audience. The performers will go through their process, the audience can look at them as something objective, but then the object looks back, it sees you back. I am interested in what happens there. When you become aware of this looking back, perhaps more like how an animal looks back at you in the forest, without trying to dictate your experience with a specific intention, it is just a sudden and perhaps a surprising encounter. And what happens there? That being said, it is not that I don’t want the audience to feel and sense something, there are certain urgencies which I am working with, even though I don’t want to dictate that to the audience. For me that proposes a kind of a democratic approach, and with democracy comes both freedom but also responsibility.

Ana: When you talk about the need for slowing down and an opportunity to just hang and do nothing, care less about the time in relation to progress, I hear not only the need for slowness for the pure sake of it. I recognize a need for slowing down that could open us up for an opportunity to

take time so meaningful connections and relations can appear. Meaningful connections inside of us, our bodies and minds, and with other humans and non-humans.

Rósa: Yes, totally. I think theatre, museums and galleries are one of these few places left for people to gather to enjoy something together, with friends, and also strangers. Bars and concert places are of course still going strong, but much of our cultural enjoyment takes place at home through streaming services. There is still much to explore in the encounter of performance and audience. I believe very much in the liveness of life art and I think it proposes a very special connection. The duration of this work I hope very much will also give people time to find these meaningful connections, maybe just notice the ones that are already happening, inside them and around them.

Ana: I’m curious to hear about the visible and invisible forces that supported you in making MOLTA? What were particular elements that your artistic collaborators brought to this artistic ecosystem? Could you say something about people, spaces, life forces that are not visible in the credits but MOLTA could not happen without?

Rósa: I’m happy you asked, because I would very much like to do a very extensive list of the ecosystem of MOLTA, as it extends way beyond the performance space, and also way beyond the process time. The collaborators of course all had a huge impact. I only put the human collaborators in the official credits list, but all of the materials we worked with also created the piece! Any time we start working with a new material, it completely changes the internal network. Also, the weather really affects the ecosystem. For example, in Spills, it mattered a lot if it is hot, humid, cold etc, because it affected the ice and the salt we work with. So each fabric

and outside forces affect the work, and I try to not avoid it. So that the iron plate in MOLTA will look totally different by the end of touring for example.

Then there are also some people, and things, who didn’t actually participate in the creation of this work who are still there. You, Ana, are there through the conversations we have had which still linger in my thoughts. Also my long time co-workers, especially Inga Huld Hákonardóttir and Sveinbjörn Thorarensen, who are kind of ghosts in this piece without them personally knowing it, also Dora Durkesac and Ingrid Vranken whom I worked with on Spills. Then there are also other ghosts who linger in the piece in a more inspirational way, there is some Francis Bacon there, some of Timothy Morton, little bits of Steve Reich, Tarkovsky, Jeff VanderMeer, Virginia Woolf (always), Ana Mendieta and many more. Last but definitely not least, my partner Hákon and my parents who support the building of this ecosystem, they are probably the soil from which it was possible to grow.

Practical info

Date, time & duration

26.9.2024, 18:00

27.9.2024, 18:00

28.9.2024, 14:00 4 hours

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Dansehallerne, Franciska Clausens Plads 27, 1799

Copenhagen V

About Dansehallerne

Dansehallerne is a national center for dance and choreography. Our focus lies in presenting and co-producing Danish and international productions for all ages. We are a gathering point for passionate dance audiences and professionals. From our center, we communicate professional knowledge of the art of dance, and we drive discussions about all aspects of the art of dance, at an intermediate level and in-depth.

Being a national center, as well as a gathering point for the local and international communities, we continuously work to ensure the best possible settings for artistic production and for the audience’s encounter with the art of dance. Every year, people from all around the country can experience the best that dance has to offer. And for several hundred artists, Dansehallerne is the year-round base and interface for professional activities within the field of dance.

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20.–21.9. Armin Hokmi Shiraz 26.–28.9. Rósa Ómarsdóttir MOLTA 9.–13.10. Karis Zidore Slit Show

24.–27.10. Lara Ostan Vejrup DRIVER – Before lunch

28.10–1.11. Birgitte Skands, Taneli Törmä Still / Dancing / Body

8.–9.11. Lovísa Ósk Gunnarsdóttir When the Bleeding Stops

16.–17.11 & Institute of Interconnected Realities 26.–28.11 Forest Stages – Revisited

19.–23.11. Emilie Gregersen On My Tongue 29.11–4.12. Ruth Rebekka Hansen RIPE BODY

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