LINE TJØRNHØJ
enTmenschT
*This will become live at 7pm CET on 23 March
Join us for the Vimeo premiere of Line Tjørnhøj's "enTmenschT". Recorded as documentation footage in 2018, but we are now able to release the video for everyone to have a chance to experience this truly unique production.
"I am filled with a major fear of the future! My fear of the future is the content of my work, so to speak. I find it incredibly meaningful to create a retrospective look at our own time, to look at humankind through the filter of history. I have chosen the filter of the time around the two world wars because at that time there was an essential change in the perception of art, psychology - of being human." Line Tjørnhøj, 2018.
Tjørnhøj's works consistently place the troubled human experience as a focal point, and enTmenschT is no different. With her sights set on the era of the two world wars, she explores the lives of two artists and their lovers.
Alma Mahler and Oskar Kokoschka
The almost iconic Alma Mahler - author and composer - and yes, wife of Gustav Mahler, was a truly progressive and powerful woman. She led an intense life with many famous lovers. One of them, the painter Oskar Kokoschka was obsessed with her. Leaving him, Alma had told him of her abortion of (possibly) their child, and in a break-down he commissioned a life-size doll of her to be his partner.
Charlotte Salomon and Alfred Wolfsohn
The visual artist, Charlotte Salomon, who in her own depiction slayed her own grandfather as a means of liberation from his abuse. The thin line between close interaction and abuse was also pushed in her relation to singing teacher Alfred Wolfsohn - a brilliant and troubled man exploring singing techniques as a healing method of his own war trauma.
Tjørnhøj employs the full arsenal of the human voice in order to explore the emotional turmoil of Oskar, Alma, Charlotte and Alfred. Whether using screaming, sighing, hissing or singing, Tjørnhøj utilizes the extremes of the four solo voices and the narrator to lay bare the innermost life of the characters in enTmenschT.
Composer and concept: Line Tjørnhøj
Visual artist: Signe Klejs
Costume design: Mads Dinesen
Sound design: Morten Olsen
Production: Klavs Kehlet
Production manager: Nanna Lundgren
Production assistant: Lil Lacy
Photo: Kåre Viemose
PR: Karen Toftegaard
ApS International strategy: WILDTOPIA – Gitte Nielsen & Karen Toftegaard
Administration: 1:1 Produktion – Maria Meyer
enTmenschT is produced with support by Danish Arts Foundation, Music Dramatic Committee, Aarhus Municipality, KODA Dramatik, Åbne Scene Godsbanen, Beckett Foundation, Danish Conductors Association and the collective Copydan-funds, Danish Composers Society and KODA Culture, and The Royal Academy of Music Aarhus.
Theatre of Voices
-Else Torp
-Iris Oja
-Paul Bentley-Angell
-Steffen Bruun
Paul Hillier, artistic director