My aim in this project is to create and perform new music in, with and for the forest. It is to develop a new musical practise in which I work together with specific landscapes, searching for an intra-active compositional method to invent new musical worlds, thinking and telling stories about other possible futures where humans and non-humans exist in a reciprocal relationship of giving and receiving.
I will develope new methods and tools to create situations leading to musical and performative encounters between me and different forest landscapes. I call this method Landscape Dramaturgy, and to describe it I use Karen Barad's term intra-action - which "signifies the mutual constitution of entangled agencies" - meaning that in contrast to "interaction", "the notion of intra-action recognizes that distinct agencies do not precede, but rather emerge through, their intra-action." I see this method as an extention of my already existing practise as and improvising musician, where the music created in the moment emerges from the material brought into the situation by each musician's artistic carrier bag. Likewise - I bring my musical, performative, choreographic, litterary, scenographic, performative material into the forest, and the site-spesific landscape brings theirs.
Important inspirations for the project are writers such as Ursula K. Le Guin, Karen Barad, Donna Haraway, Kerstin Ekman and Robert Macfarlane, but also forest myths and folktales.
Speculative Forestmusic rests on the shoulders of existing pracises like soundwalks, site-specific sound art, land art, deep listening, and music theatre. It doesn't quite fit into any of these categories, but borrows a little bit from all of them: A speculative fabulating site specific immersive outdoor music theatre project, with ambitions to exhibit nature's own value outside of an antropocentric hypercapitalistic value system.
Ane Marthe Sørlien Holen is a Norwegian percussionist, performer-composer, improviser and writer based in Oslo, Norway. Through her artistic practise she is constantly searching for new ways to combine music,
soundscapes, text, movement, costumes and environments into a complex performative tapestry.
She is a founding member of the experimental trio Pinquins, a group that over more than 15 years has collaborated with numerous composers and artists within a broad field of music and performing arts. Ane Marthe is also a member of the award winning Ensemble neoN, and the theatre company Plexus Polaire, where she has been part of several big productions as composer and musician for more than 10 years.
Ane Marthe has collaborated with musicians and artists such as Maia Urstad, Guro Skumsnes Moe, Solveig Styve Holte, Lasse Marhaug, Janne-Camilla Lyster, Mariam Rezaei, Jessie Marino, Inga Margrete Aas, Kjersti Alm Eriksen, Simon Løffler, Yngvild Aspeli, Ingri Fiksdal, Ingvild Langgård, Asamisimasa - to mention a few. She has performed in festivals and concert series all over the world.
Recent works include "Skyggespill vol. 1-3" (2024-) for forest quintet, "I'm just me" (2024) for speaking percussionist and "INTERVALL" (2023) by Pinquins/Alm Eriksen.
More info: www.anemarthe.no