Son[i]a #415
Stine Janvin
Norwegian vocalist and interdisciplinary artist Stine Janvin works with the voice as a tool and as raw material. Her projects and collaborations are presented in theatres, clubs and galleries as well as online platforms and virtual spaces and, more recently, in the form of graphic scores. Janvin explores the potential of the voice, challenging conventions, traditions, and formats, in a sound universe that warps and bends musical genres from electronica to folk.
Living back in her native Stavanger after an extended stay in Berlin, Janvin’s latest projects move away from the radical exploration of the voice detached from all emotion and expressiveness—as in earlier works such as “Fake Synthetic Music”—and open up to the communicative and conveying potential of her main instrument, the voice. This change of direction has led her to dig into Norwegian folklore, from its tunings to knitting patterns, in projects such as Death Songs (with Morten Joh), Identity Pitches (with Cory Arcangel) and the performance “Communion”—an extension of “SOLD (a dog and pony show)”—, a project that questioned personal branding and the online presence now expected of artists.
In this podcast, we talk to Stine Janvin about needlework, about family memories and medieval stories, and about the pleasures of gossip, against the backdrop of Norway’s modern identity-building project. We also look at Janvin’s recent immersion in and updating of the liksong (sung funeral service, literally, “corpse song”) tradition from south-western Norway. In her practice, tradition, popular culture, and identity are reinterpreted, updated and stretched through multiple strategies.
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