The Chosen Ones - Trond Reinholdtsen  International Festival of Contemporary Music Warsaw Autumn

go to content

The “Followers of Ø” is a group, or a sect, or a Secret Society (or is  it a terrorist cell?) that for some mysterious reason have gathered  on a meadow in the forest somewhere in Sweden. What unites  them is an over-enthusiastic intellectual and emotional reaction  after watching the enigmatic series of “Ø” oprafilms on Youtube.  They strive to “put out the theory of Ø into practice” and have  constructed an “Opra-Prepper-Dorf” on the meadow: A steadily  growing village which at the moment of writing includes something like 30 buildings and other architectural structures. For  the first time in history, a group of 12 carefully vetted audience  members was allowed to visit the meadow for a five-hour ritualistic performance in 6 parts: 

1. Cognitive-Manipulatory Preparation of the Audience’s  Sensory Apparatus
2. The “Followers of Ø” Academy: “The World History Play”  (according to the Followers of Ø)
3. The Legend of “The Einzelgänger” in the form of  a Liederabend and consumption of a lot of alcohol.  
4. The Presentation/Sight-Seeing of the Meadow and  the Opra-Prepper-Dorf
5. The Immigration of the (real) Einzelgängers.  
6. The “Followers of Ø” Cinema Screening of Das Skeptische  Bewusstsein, which will put the whole project of  the “Followers of Ø” in doubt.  

The documentation of this event is in the form of 13 screens,  where the main screen shows the “main operatic narrative,” and  the 12 others show the Chosen Ones’ individual perspectives  (The Chosen Ones all had cameras attached to their heads) and  their interpretations (in form of analytical live commentaries) of  the whole soup.