On 6 July we finally premiered the UK and digital version of the storytelling performance called Vår. It is sad to think that the performance or the process so far has received its final “form”. A phase of creative exploration is over, and the next phase is to get more in depth and let a form set so that this one becomes not “a closure”, but a freedom. By that I mean that the form should sit so well that one is forced into a constant renewal in the relationship between form and content.

For me, digitalization has been about handing over the material to others. I have had a very close relationship with the material that has developed over the years, primarily through conversations and trials with musician/composer (first Gyrid Nordal Kaldstad and then Kristin Bolstad) and director/dramaturg (Paula Crutchlow).

The last part has been a complicated digitization process and because the compositional work is such an important part of the performance, we could not go for a solution like telling through the video platform zoom. Not because I want to underestimate that video platform, but because zoom compress the information so that a holistic soundscape would be reduced. We had to stream the show through platforms that can withstand the information being sent and to this we needed expertise. This operation led to an entrustment of the material into other hands, images, rhythms and cutouts to be put together by people who knew how to do it live and part of the authorship was left to compromise between technical possibilities and aesthetic choices. This is absolutely important in such a process and lifts the work to something else. But it is done with a kind of sadness, the material must live under other influences, the intimate relationship between me as the storyteller, the listener and the material is removed. At the same time, it is right to do so, it is part of the narrative tradition to pass the stories on to others.

The process has been very exciting, it is a beginning of a quest for what can work in a digitization process. I believe that inherent in traditional stories there is something that is suitable for digitalization.

I would like to thank everyone who has participated, especially Kristin Bolstad, Paula Crutchlow and Adverse Camber who have accepted the material and thoughts as a natural part of their own artistic work.

The show is likely to resume in the autumn, we have set aside dates in October and it will be informed here on the blog, among other things.