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PERFORMANCES
Livre d'images sans images
En lys sommers usigelige smerte
Suppose a Room
Penelope sleeps
It could be that the saddest thing
     is not knowing that one is sad
Music For Lectures/ Every word
     was once an animal
oslo
I can’t quite place it
We to be
No Title
Black
Time has fallen asleep in
     the afternoon sunshine
every now and then
or else nobody will know
Opening
Time will show (detail)
Private collection
 
OTHER MEDIA
Titled
Faits divers
coffee & cigarette
Sketches
Artist in Residence
The way/ you move
Light Shade Shade
Stills
 
ARTIST'S BOOKS
Livre d’images sans images (LP)
one continuous line or a thought
     that dissolves into the distance
Not Not Nothing
Time has fallen asleep in
     the afternoon sunshine
Afternoon Editions
Objects 2002 - 2015
We to be
Black
every now and then
Opening
Time will show (detail)
 
PUBLISHING HOUSE
Varamo Press
Time has fallen asleep in
     the afternoon sunshine
 


Penelope sleeps (2019)

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drawing: Iben Edvardsen

Penelope sleeps is an opera in essay form by Mette Edvardsen and Matteo Fargion. The idea for this piece developed out from their first collaboration oslo (2017), a piece by Mette Edvardsen in which Matteo Fargion was invited to write music for a choir. A setting of one long text, the music played an important role in the piece, an anti-choir dispersed amongst the audience and without a conductor. In Penelope sleeps the experimental approach and work with the format of the medium is still in question. The relation between voice and music, space and scale are important, but perhaps rather than alluding to operatic images we think of drawing lines to trace a horizon. Opera as a starting point, a long hidden and shared secret desire to tackle this medium, although perhaps motivated slightly differently for each of them. The text is written in prose form, like an essay. Essay from the French essayer, means to try, to attempt. Opera in Italian means to work, to labour. In this attempt to work a space opens up, bringing the two artists into unknown landscapes while at the same time allowing them to pursue their own artistic paths.


Penelope sleeps - an opera by Mette Edvardsen & Matteo Fargion
text: Mette Edvardsen
music: Matteo Fargion
performed by Mette Edvardsen, Matteo Fargion and Angela Hicks
light and technical support: Bruno Pocheron
subtitling and production support: Cillian O’Neill
production: Mette Edvardsen/Athome, Manyone
residency support: Black Box teater (Oslo), MDT (Stockholm), Kaaitheater (Brussels)
co-production: Kaaitheater & Kunstenfestivaldesarts (Brussels), BUDA (Kortrijk), Black Box teater (Oslo), Teaterhuset Avant Garden (Trondheim), BIT Teatergarasjen (Bergen), centre chorégraphique national de Caen in Normandie (Caen), apap-Performing Europe 2020 - a project co-funded by the Creative Europe Programme of the European Union
supported by: Norsk Kulturråd, Norwegian Artistic Research Program – Oslo National Academy of the Arts
special thanks to: Melissa Davis


PERFORMANCES:
rimi/ imir scenekunst (Stavanger) 2 December 2021
Dance House (Melbourne) 14, 15 March 2020
Carriageworks (Sydney) 10, 11 March 2020
Meteor, BIT (Bergen) 17, 18 October 2019
Sur les bords #1, T2G-CDN (Gennevilliers) 4 October 2019
Ultima & Black Box teater (Oslo) 13, 14 September
Almost Summer, BUDA (Kortrijk) 23 June 2019
Stamsund Internasjonale Teaterfestival (Stamsund) 30 May 2019
Wiener Festwochen (Vienna) 17, 18 May 2019
Kunstenfestivaldesarts & Kaaitheater (Brussels) 10, 11, 12, 14 May 2019