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.
00:00 Death Songs Kom Menneske At Skue Mig, unreleased B3, 2024
11:09 SOLD mealtime blessing vocal clean, 2019
17:20 Death Songs - Jeg raader eder alle, unreleased B1, 2024
29:24 Identity Pitches live at Issue Project Room, 2023
33:33 RITUALS mythical ballad The Harp: the two sisters_ after Ingebjørg Liestøl, 2023
41:07 Identity Pitches live at Issue Project Room 2, 2023
47:29 Chords for Calling testing chords, 2022
47:43 Death Songs - Halleluja, din strid er endt, unreleased A0, 2024
CONVERSATION: Albert Tarrats and ANNA RAMOS. Script and sound production: Albert Tarrats. Voiceover: pantea. Music by Stine Janvin.
related episodes
The possibility of drumming
Morten J. Olsen’s mix for the INTERRUPTIONS series presents an extreme, complex and long journey into drumming, to discuss out loud Olsen’s most personal theories coming from his very own personal experience and background. As Morten puts it, possibly, ‘a long and painful listening experience of percussion oriented music’.
Liisa-Rávná Finbog
In this podcast, we talk with indigenous Sámi researcher, writer, curator and artist Liisa-Rávná Finbog about napkins, museums, collections, and colonialism, to challenge hierarchies, cultural extractivism, and the hidden violence in any process of cultural assimilation. We also highlight the causal relationship between art and coloniality, questioning the separation between function and aesthetics. Duodji thus emerges as an ancestral practice and knowledge system — that dismantles and emancipates itself from the Western construct of craft, while invoking a dialogical relationship with materiality. We open a portal to understand and share the ways of thinking, being, and existing in interdependence, of the Sámi people.
Eva Maria Fjellheim