Under the Skin

UNDER THE SKIN: Maja S. K. Ratkje (Norway)

an experimental music and contemporary art project

9 November 2016, 7 pm

Duration: 60 min.

Venue: Kablys Culture Bar (Kauno St. 5, Vilnius, Lithuania)

Participants in the musical part:

Maja Solveig Kjelstrup Ratkje (voice and electronics),

the male-voice sections of the Gaudeamus and Pro musica choirs of Vilnius University, with the soloists Modestas Jankūnas and Ignas Garla

Choirmaster: Rasa Gelgotienė

Initiator and author of the visual part: Kristina Inčiūraitė

Organiser: Kristinos Inčiūraitės studija

Media sponsor: alfa.lt

Event partner: JCDecaux Lietuva

Supported by: the Lithuanian Council for Culture, the Ministry of Culture of the Republic of Lithuania, the Royal Norwegian Embassy, Sirma, Menų spaustuvė, Paviljo

“Under the Skin”, an extraordinary experimental music and contemporary art project, whose key participant is the famous Norwegian composer and performer Maja Solveig Kjelstrup Ratkje, is performing in Lithuania for the first time.

“Ratkje brings a feral disregard for conventional form, combined with an extravagant imagination, linking it all to a fascination with the human voice and its communicative possibilities. Her works are dramatic, engaging and wildly diverse,” Financial Times, 2015.

“Anyone who has seen or heard Ratkje perform live will know what a superb musician she is, and one who can genuinely be said to be extending the expressive range of the voice through technical and technological means … Her work is celebratory and inclusive, an energising rallying call to those who are curious enough to peek out from behind the curtain of mainstream mediocrity,” The Wire, 2006.

Other participants in the project are the male-voice sections of the Gaudeamus and Pro musica choirs of Vilnius University, with the soloists Modestas Jankūnas and Ignas Garla, and the contemporary artist Kristina Inčiūraitė. The choir will perform the sound composition “Megapneumies” (1963) by the famous avant-garde artist Gil Joseph Wolman in an improvised manner, and Maja Solveig Kjelstrup Ratkje will expand the energetically charged space with her musical experiments. By exploiting the possibilities of her stunning voice, she will enrich it with electronic sounds. Kristina Inčiūraitė will provide a visual narrative in the form of a video projection to supplement the musical part of the project.

This project initiated by Kristina Inčiūraitė is an indirect response to Jonathan Glazer’s film “Under the Skin” (2013). The main character in the film, an extra-terrestrial being, probably conveys the intense transformations of human identities provoked by a conflict between the past and the present, challenges of geopolitics and globalisation, the real and the virtual worlds, which are taking place today. The experimental music and art project “Under the Skin” will try to create a kind of liminal state that pushes an individual out of his or her comfort zone into an experimental space that is open to new concepts of human identity. It also will aim to build a transformative medium, which would allow us to “recharge” our experiences acoustically and visually.

About the main participant:

Maja Solveig Kjelstrup Ratkje is a Norwegian composer and performer. Her music is performed worldwide by performers such as Ensemble Intercontemporain, Klangforum Wien, Oslo Sinfonietta, the Norwegian Radio Orchestra, the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra, Fretwork, TM+, Cikada, Mivos and Bozzini string quartets, Quatuor Renoir, crashEnsemble, Pearls for Swine Experience, Torben Snekkestad, Marianne Beate Kielland, SPUNK, Frode Haltli, POING, and many more.

Ratkje has won many awards, including the International Rostrum of Composers in Paris for composers below 30 years of age, the Norwegian Edvard prize (work of the year) twice, second prize from the Russolo Foundation, and in 2001 she was the first composer ever to receive the Norwegian Arne Nordheim prize. Her solo album “Voice”, made in collaboration with Jazzkammer, received a Distinction Award at Prix Ars Electronica in 2003. In 2013, she was nominated for the Nordic Council Music Prize for her vocal work.

Ratkje is active as a singer/voice user, electronics performer and engineer, as a soloist or in groups such as SPUNK and BRAK RUG. She has been a soloist with orchestras such as the Norwegian Radio Orchestra, Ensemble Intercontemporain, Klangforum Wien, Avanti! Chamber Orchestra and the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra. She has also collaborated with Jaap Blonk, Joëlle Léandre, Ikue Mori, Zeena Parkins, Stephen O’Malley, Lasse Marhaug, POING and many more. Ratkje has performed her own music for films, dance and theatre, installations, and numerous other projects. Visual art or textual material is often a part of her work, in installations or staged works. She has made large gallery works with SPUNK; she has made music for a radio play by Elfriede Jelinek; and in 2003 she played a part in her own opera, based on texts from the Nag Hammadi Library.

Her scores can be found at the National Library of Norway’s publishing service, NB noter, and her records are released on Tzadik, Rune Grammofon, 2L, ECM, Important Records, and many other labels.

For more information: www.ratkje.com

Image: Maja Solveig Kjelstrup Ratkje

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