Reykjavík Grapevine - jan 2021, Qupperneq 12

Video of the Year: Jónsi —
Sumarið sem aldrei kom
Honourable Mentions: GusGus -
Higher ft. VÖK, Sillus - Dapply, IDK IDA
- Tomorrow’s Heartache
“Jónsi wanted to show the other
side of Iceland, not the delusional
version we’ve seen in the ‘Inspired
by Iceland’ campaigns. The flip-
side of the coin—arguably the
more real version of our country,”
director Frosti Jón Runólfsson
(Frosti Gringo) explains. The pan-
el agreed with the vision, calling
the result a living, moving tribute
to Iceland in all its forms.
Joyful & melancholic
The video, a nitty-gritty and un-
dramatised documentation of this
county featuring everyone from
swimmers to gymnasts to more
downtrodden members of the city,
is joyful and melancholic in equal
measure. “It is Iceland and it isn’t.
It’s not landscapes and frozen tun-
dras, it’s likely and unlikely char-
acters that everyone has seen be-
fore at one time in their life,” one
panel member praised. In the end,
it was close to a unanimous win
for Frosti and Jónsi.
The guerilla-style shoot sent
Frosti all around the city, look-
ing for gems in the wild. “Midway
through shooting the video I sat
back down, looked at some footage
and listened to the song, very loud
and was filled with such emotion I
can’t even describe it,” he explains.
The panel felt similarly, calling
it both heartbreakingly nostalgic
and also undeniably modern. For
Icelanders, it’s an emotional video
and one that resonated.
A moving tribute
“It was really touching to see the
reactions. Both for me personally
and for the people I had asked to
expose their vulnerabilities and
their personal moments in this
video,” Frosti concludes. “Sadly
one of the characters from the
video passed away while I was ed-
iting. He had been living hard for
too many years. After the video
came out, the mother of his chil-
dren actually contacted me and
thanked me for the video, which is
the most beautiful review yet.”
Artist To Watch: Holdgervlar
Honourable Mentions: gugusar,
Ingibjörg Turchi, Laufey Lín
“The Holdgervlar themselves are
xenobots, ready-made organisms,
with human roots. They look back
with nostalgia at human cultures,
but with different levels of at-
tachment to their roots. They see
themselves as the same as their
makers, but are only as clear a re-
flection as their makers allowed
them to be. Looking at their an-
cestry through rose-coloured
glasses, they believe that they can
fill in what they’re missing by
mimicking their human counter-
parts. They’re beings of specula-
tive sexuality, beauty and everyday
function that experience emotion
without it’s essence.”
And so Holdgervlar, the winner
of our “Artist To Watch” award,
makes it clear that they are the
ones watching us.
The seediest districts of
space
Holdgervlar has lurked in the
background of the alternative
arts scene in Reykjavík for the
last few years, but only came into
the blacklight this year with the
release of their debut effort, ‘Ger-
vihold,’ in September on Myrkfæl-
ni’s newly-established label.
As you can expect from their
above quote, the album is a sen-
sual, mysterious ride that brought
to mind the types of music they’d
play in the darkest clubs in the
seediest districts of space. It was
a shame 2020 saw few goth nights
or other such parties—Holdgerv-
lar would no doubt have been the
soundtrack to such illicit activities.
“Holdgervlar sound like syn-
thetically emotional beings mim-
icking human music from the
past. Finding soundtracks from
80s city flicks set at night, famil-
iar in an unconsciously dishon-
est way,” the duo explains. “What
specifically attracts these cyborgs
to giallo, goth and go-go dancers
is a question that remains unan-
swered.”
Welcome to the planet
The panel praised the interplay of
Holdgervlar’s visuals and music,
calling their project an all-en-
compassing world. They are, quite
literally, a group you just want to
watch, one panel member empha-
sised, and they’ve built a world and
a story into the foundation of their
music, which must be applauded.
They’re on their own level, or
more accurately, their own planet
(granted, they are cyborgs) and
you can’t help but want to see what
they’d do with a massive stage and
large budget.
“The masks we wear on stage
were first used as a tool against
stage fright but quickly took over
the whole concept and transformed
it into what it wanted to be, these
beings,” they explain, exposing
their human roots for but a min-
ute. “They pick their own scenes
and depictions, ask and answer
questions about human nature
with humans as their mirrors.”
Frosti Gringo
Holdgervlar
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12The Reykjavík Grapevine
Issue 01— 2021Culture