Projekt – MADDE EDLUND

Taking the Bible’s poetic love song, the Song of Songs, as its starting point, this performance creates a work about burning desire, longing, and suffering. A sensual and spiritual journey through the darkness that a lost love can bring, toward the light that can be rekindled as hope slowly comes back to life. In a cross-cutting between diary entries, original texts, physical exploration, and the Song of Songs, we examine the conflicting emotions awakened by the loss of love. At the intersection of body and soul, passion and prayer, the performance seeks to create a space for both pain and reconciliation. An attempt to find something that can offer comfort for one of humanity’s most painful fates: unrequited love.

”Love is as strong as death,
passion as relentless as the grave.
Its arrows are flaming fire, a blazing flame.”
— Song of Songs, (2020 edition)

With a queer reading of the Bible’s Song of Songs, the work creates a space where erased stories are given room to exist — given body, voice, and recognition. The piece takes shape through close collaboration between direction, acting, set design, and video and sound design.

By: Hög produktion | Direction & text: Hanna Nygårds| On stage: Lotti Törnros | Video & sound design: Madde Edlund | Set design & props: Kajsa Bolve | Lighting and choir technician: Althéa Famne | Composer, closing music: Kajsa Svensson | Documentation assistant and social media: Sara Rosenius | Studio technician: Rebecka Reinhard | Animation of the oak root system: Karin Drake | Voice workshop leader: Melissa Marjatta | Participating voices and shadows: Oliver Adersson, Lotti Törnros, Sara Rosenius, Matilda Bolve, Sara Sjölander, Katarina Bonnevier, Thamine Mossavion, Angelika Lundberg, Melissa Marjatta, Rebecka Reinhard
Photography and video documentation: Madde Edlund

The performance is made with support from Konstnärsnämnden (the Swedish Arts Grants Committee), the Svante Bergström Theatre Foundation, the Church of Sweden, and the City of Stockholm.

Theater
FÖRSPELET (THE FOREPLAY)
”Do you remember your lovers and how they touched you?”
”IF I remember…”

The Foreplay is part of HÖG production’s scenic exploration of lesbian desire and a continued investigation into how female sexuality can be portrayed on stage in new and broader ways. Built on intimate conversations between lesbian women, conversations that took place in bars, at kitchen tables, on sofas, and in cigarette smoke under the kitchen fan at an after-party. These are stories about body and desire, about horniness, flushed cheeks and hazy eyes, about giggles and embarrassment, about a lust that stings and a longing that never quite lets go. About being a fucked generation stuck in dreary Tinder chats and rigid dealbreakers. And about dreaming bigger than paid Tinder.
A collaboration between HÖG production, Strindberg’s Intimate Theatre and Kulturhuset Stadsteatern Fri Scen.

Text & Direction: Hanna Nygårds | On stage: Lotti Törnros, Parwin Hoseinia and Hanna Nygårds | Sound and Video Design: Madde Edlund | Costume: Alexander Wernersson | Set Designer: Kajsa Bolve Håkansson | Poster girl: Oliver Andersson | Logo: Eva Betjes | Sound effects: Petter Lindhagen | Sculpture installation: Kajsa Bolve Håkansson and Petter Lindhagen | Photography and video documentation: Madde Edlund

Theater
FÖRLÅT (SORRY)
Once he was one of the greatest, but now his follower count has started to plummet. The sponsors have pulled out and the interview on Nyhetsmorgon has been cancelled. Behind him there is no longer any team. Now it’s just him and the camera, his last hope. Can he manage to win back the sponsors’ trust and get his followers to forgive him?
Sorry is a play inspired by the social media phenomenon of ”apology videos,” where influencers or public figures who have caused offense and faced criticism film themselves apologising to their followers and the general public. Sorry is an Ö2scenkonst production. The show is supported by the Swedish Arts Grants Committee, the City of Stockholm and Svante Bergström’s Cultural Foundation.

Exhibition
FLOCK CIRCUMSTANCE
This exhibition presents a summation of a year-long, technology-assisted, international collaboration between Tinja Ruusuvuori (Finland), Madde Edlund (Sweden) and Aga Paulina Młyńczak (Poland, by way of Glasgow). Each floor of the gallery is occupied by an immersive installation which, with the help of multimedia tendrils woven through human sound, sight and utterance, explore the dynamic between language and society. virtual prevew

Released alongside the exhibition is a collaborative publication by the same title. This hand-bound edition elaborates the creative process which informed the installations. The publication takes into account everything from the mundane everyday circumstances of the artists to their theoretical motivations, and the methods of community engagement which came to build the foundations of the show.

‘SONIC ID SHOWER’ is an immersive sound sculpture that explores the intimacies of language. The ‘shower’ orientates the listener at different points in a spectrum of control and submission, according to scripts Madde collated from words and sounds gathered at participatory workshops she designed. Four soundscapes created by the artist envelop the listener in ambient, human, animal and technical sounds that weave into a stream intended to place them as calculated subjects. The sculpture, like the workshops themselves, invites consideration on how sounds and words position you, on your sense of agency as a receiver of sounds, and asks you to pause and let the words hold you gently in these different poses.

Filmed documentation
A filmed souvenir from Unga Klara On Tour in South Africa
Unga Klara (Swedens national stage for children and young people) embarked on a world tour with performances and workshops, travelling to Istanbul, Beijing, Johannesburg, Cape Town, Washington DC, Houston and New York. At the same time, a national tour was underway, stretching from Skellefteå to Sundsvall, Skara and Malmö. The extensive project went under the name Unga Klara On Tour and consisted of four productions: Because I Say So, X, Girls Will Make You Blush and Who I Really Am. You can now experience the atmosphere and engagement from the visit to South Africa in a filmed documentation of a performing arts encounter between artists and audiences across borders.

Cemera and Edit: Madde Edlund | Musik: Dijle Neva Yigitbas (Neva Deelay) och Foad Arbabi | Produktion ljud: Miranda Rudklint, Julian Vigil, Asynja Gray och Sophie Bourdiol| Produktion: Miranda Rudklint