NL premiere

Jenny Hval, the Norwegian experimental pop musician and novelist, returns to Rewire in 2024 to present her new theatrical and interdisciplinary music piece I Want To Be A Machine. Responding to Die Hamletmaschine (1977) by the German playwright and poet Heiner Müller – a play which sought to make an avantgarde, performative machine out of playwright William Shakespeare’s Hamlet – Hval’s new work considers the machinic and animatronic implications of pop performance, both on the stage and in life. The piece, a musical performance featuring new music written and performed by Hval and three musicians, asks what stories artists can tell in a moment when popular music has lost many of the aspects that make it a visceral and philosophical experience. Hval writes, “As much as it is a performance, it’s also an interdisciplinary essay; an exploration of what the artist is, whether music can really be art, and a review of the apocalyptic world of current politics through the use of video, scenography, and a wasteland of material.”

Jenny Hval spent the last 15 years cultivating a broad collection of pop sounds: from the noir discordance of Innocence is Kinky (2013) and the brooding sanguine whispers of Blood Bitch (2016), to the galloping electro-pop of The Practice of Love (2018) and the carefree blue-sky sounds of Classic Objects (2022), which was performed live at Rewire 2022. I Want To Be A Machine is likely filled with the intelligent self-awareness and self-reflections that make Hval’s philoso-pop so endearing and unmistakable.

*This is a seated concert