Reykjavík Grapevine - 31.07.2015, Blaðsíða 54

OUTSIDE
FESTIVAL
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The Reykjavík Grapevine
Issue 11 — 2015
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RESTAURANT
ÍSAFOLD
So, how did you come up with the
idea for Cycle?
Guðný: We started working on this one
year ago exactly. I've been organizing
the Icelandic Chamber Music Festival
for eight years and been working with
people from abroad. About a year and a
half ago, some partners from England and
Norway applied for the EU's Creative Eu-
rope grant to fund residencies in England,
Norway, and Iceland, and our festival was
supposed to exhibit what was produced in
these residencies. But I had this passion
for visual art and the mixing of art forms,
so instead, we decided to put together a
new festival which mainly focused on in-
terdisciplinary work.
So the grant was originally for resi-
dencies, but you decided, "Hey let's
just do a festival?"
Guðný: Yeah. Also, when you get one big
money supply, it's very easy to get others.
Doing a festival in Iceland where there's
not so much money for culture, you need
to be clever to get money from abroad so
that we can enrich the cultural scene here.
So are both of your backgrounds in
classical music?
Guðný and Fjóla: Yep.
I was trying to figure out from look-
ing at the website whether this was
coming out of visual arts or music.
But it's hard to pin down.
Fjóla: That's really good to hear!
Guðný: It's a different sort of festival. In
the new music scene, the focus is com-
pletely on the music. Even if compos-
ers and performers are doing something
which is a little more in the realm of visual
arts, it's seen through the music frame.
And then we have the visual artists work-
ing with music and it's still seen through
the visual arts frame. So there's a lack of
platforms for mixing the two.
Fjóla: We're taking away the frame and
giving artists a platform to explore this
new medium.
And you're also getting rid of, or
bringing attention to the physical
spaces that we associate with these
media.
Guðný: We wanted to mix music, vi-
sual arts, and architecture because in our
minds it's one thing. If you have music in
a concert hall, people know how to react,
how to see what they're presented. But
if you present it in an art space, maybe it
frees the way you perceive things. So I
think the architectural factor is extremely
important as well.
Fjóla: So by using spaces with a specific
role in a different capacity, you see things
differently. For example, not having a con-
cert with seats and a stage, but having it in
a museum.
I saw there's also an event in a for-
mer asylum.
Fjóla: Yeah, we're bringing music into an
asylum that has a dark history and that
history becomes part of the performance.
We'll also use the Kópavogur Townhouse,
which is one of the oldest stone buildings
outside of Reykjavík, a farmhouse, and an
old apartment building. And Gerðarsafn,
the Kópavogur Art Museum, will be our
home base.
Was Kópavogur an obvious place to
hold the festival?
Guðný: When I started the Icelandic
Chamber Music Festival, Kópavogur was
the only place with a real concert hall.
Then with Gerðarsafn and the Natural
History Museum and the library, it's a
hotspot for culture and education. Since
I've been working with these places for
so long, it made sense. Also I like bring-
ing cultural events into the suburbs. Ev-
erything is so easy in 101. In Berlin, you
can see how, when you inject culture into
a neighborhood, services and cafés and
such follow and change the environment.
Fjóla: Kópavogur was the first place we
presented this idea to and they welcomed
Conceptual Art Comes
To The Suburbs
Go check out the inaugural Cycle Festival!
August 13-16 KópavogurCycle Music and Art Festival
This August, an exciting new festival comes to Kópavogur. Cycle Festival, a four-day inter-
disciplinary arts extravaganza, will showcase unconventional works and collaborations in
unfamiliar performance venues, with the goal of making audiences reconsider their precon-
ceptions about genre, discipline, and the spectator's role. Acclaimed artists from around the
world will exhibit works that serve to blur or erase the boundaries we draw between visual
art and music, classical and popular modes, and audience and performer. If this sounds super
theoretical, that's because it is; but Cycle's exploration of these broad concepts aims to be both
accessible and participatory. With workshops, site-specific performances, and interactive art
pieces, the festival will, indeed, be a hands-on affair. We sat down with Fjóla Dögg Sverris-
dóttir, the festival's managing director, and Guðný Guðmundsdóttir, one of the two artistic
directors, to learn more about the festival.
Photo Provided by Cycle Music and Art Festival
Words Eli Petzold