Reykjavík Grapevine - 09.11.2018, Blaðsíða 24

Marble Crowd is a local collective of art-
ists who have worked together in various
dynamics and circumstances for ten years.
Many constellations of artists and works
have formed within the collective since.
Marble Crowd’s award-nominated
show Moving Mountains: In Three Es-
says attempts the impossible, as the
five authors take on the ambiguous
task of moving mountains, while si-
multaneously questioning the desire
to do so. They premiered the show a
year a half ago at the K3 Tanzplan fes-
tival in Hamburg and then in the Faroe
Islands. Luckily, they are bringing the
show home to Reykjavík and premiering
in the National Theatre at Everybody’s
Spectacular, Iceland’s annual perfor-
mance festival.
This is the second show that the five
performers within the collective have
created together. Katrín Gunnarsdót-
tir, Kristinn Guðmundsson, Sigurður
Arent Jónsson, Saga Sigurðardóttir
and Védís Kjartansdóttir are a diverse
group of creatives, dancers and cho-
reographers; they are quite the crowd.
Common within Reykjavík’s art scene,
everyone in the group juggles many dif-
ferent creative endeavours. There are
two new mothers, Kristinn doubles as a
TV chef, and Saga (a member of the Post
Performance Blues Band) as an art-pop
star.
Before embarking on this journey,
they knew that they wanted to further
explore working together. Saga shares
that, “we felt a chemistry that was worth
investigating. We wanted to explore our
approaches. What resulted was an in-
vestigation into how a collective can
function—which is, in a sense, also an
ambiguous task.” The process of that
task called for questions and thoughts
about the impossible. Laughing, Katrín
adds, “There were also some cocktails at
Hotel Holt.” So they came together once
again to take on the mountain.
Five Storytellers
The five friends, five artists and five
fools (as they refer to themselves), in
three essays or three attempts, try to do
the inconceivable. As the performance
unfolds, they deliver the story through
body language, material and extraordi-
nary imagery. “There is a choreographic
proposal in the idea of landscape and
the mountain,” Katrín explains. “There
is something interesting about the
traditional ideas of landscape. We try
to marry together the concepts of the
landscape and the ideas and connota-
tions that may follow.” They take the
challenge head-on, exploring these
ideas while slipping into their narra-
tive roles..
Inherent Propositions
They began to investigate the idea of the
insurmountable within the framework
of the Tanzplan festival, the theme of
which last year was European cohe-
sion. “This most certainly impacted the
piece,” Katrín explains, “as the theme
posed questions of democracy, being to-
gether, and living together.” Facing the
challenges of today’s world, attempting
to move mountains seems almost like
what we are all trying to do.
Words:
Tara Njála
Ingvarsdóttir
Photos:
Timonthée
Lambrecq
Pictured: The most dynamic art collective in the city
Culture
Five Friends, Five
Fools, Five Artists
Marble Crowd is ready to take us on an impossible journey to move mountains

Info
Moving Mountains
premieres in
Iceland at the
Everybody’s
Spectacular
international
performance
festival on
November 14th
at 19:30 in the
National Theatre
of Iceland.
“We meet a nothingness and from there we build the story and landscape of the show.”
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