Part performance transcript, part conceptual writing exercise, this project works from an extract from Sam Riviere’s poem Miserable I hope you do too. The original text was rewritten and recombined into multiple possibilities of form and content. The variations of this text were then recited – from memory – in a semi-improvisational way over a four hour performance that took place at Black Box Theatre in Oslo. Focusing on the meditative pace and rhythmic intonation of the original poem, various alternative possibilities for the poetic narrative were imagined and explored, creating a generative palimpsest of poetic experience that was shared with the audience. Here, the text from the performance is transcribed, allowing the poem to further mutate and shift from the realm of the voice back onto the space of the page.

With an introduction by the original poet, Sam Riviere.

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Co-published by osloBIENNALEN, Agency for Cultural Affairs, City of Oslo and Motto Books.

The H-block, or Høyblokka as it is called in Norwegian, was the Government Quarter’s main building. The was building was completed in 1958. Architect Erling Viksjø was inspired by the French modernist Le Corbusier, and set out to create an elegant, monumental but sober functionalism.

On 22 July 2011 at 15:25:22 (CEST), a car bomb was detonated outside H-block. The car, a Volkswagen Crafter, was parked just outside the main entrance. The bomb killed eight people and injured a further two hundred. It also left a deep crater in the ground and caused major damage to the building, which nevertheless remained standing.

The terrorist then travelled to Utøya island outside Oslo, where the Labour Party Youth Wing, AUF – Arbeiderpartiets Ungdomsforening, held its annual summer camp. Disguised as a policeman, he killed sixty-nine innocent young people and injured another sixty-six before he was stopped by the police Delta Force Group seventy minutes later.

During two nights in October 2017, sound artist Alexander Rishaug was granted permission by Statsbygg (Norwegian Directorate of Public Construction and Property) to enter Høyblokka and record the sound of the vacant building. All the interior, furniture and equipment had been removed, leaving the building completely empty and abandoned, like a ghost in the middle of Oslo city centre.

Equipped with a directional microphone, two DPAs, and a set of contact mics, Rishaug began to explore and monitor the building’s acoustics, vibrations and resonance. Y (59°54’54,76”N 10°44’46,03”Ø) is a sonic portrait of the Government Quarter, an investigation of Høyblokka’s psychoacoustic state, at a point in time between past and future, before it is renovated, refurbished, and put to new uses as a political and administrative centre. In the title of this soundscape, the Y represents the Y-block and the coordinates (59°54’54,76”N 10°44’46,03”Ø) locate the H-block and the Government Quarter
.

The album and art project is part of
 and co-produced by osloBIENNALEN, FIRST EDITION 2019 – 2024, curated by Eva González-Sancho Bodero and 
Per Gunnar Eeg-Tverbakk. osloBIENNALEN is initiated and financed by the City of Oslo, Agency for Cultural Affairs, Norway.

The project could not have been realized without the funding and courage from URO / KORO and Bo Krister Wallström.

Recorded inside Høyblokka, Oslo:
29 October 2017, 05:38PM–11:45AM
30 October 2017, 03:30PM–06:47AM

Recording assistant: Ilay Bachke
Mixed and edited by Alexander Rishaug at SinZen Studio, Oslo, 2018 – 2019
Mastered by Helge Sten 
at Audio Virus Lab, Oslo
Mastercut by Helmut Erler at
 Dubplates & Mastering, Berlin
Design by Blank Blank / Petri Henriksson and Sandra Stokka
Photos by Arne B. Langleite and Alexander Rishaug, October 2017
Cover photo by Teigens Fotoatelier circa 1960, Dextra Photo/NorskTeknisk Museum.
Backside photo by Arne B. Langleite

Copy Editing by Martin Berner Mathiesen
Booklet printed by Livonia Print Ltd.
Vinyl pressing by Optimal Media
Vinyl manufacturing by handle with care

The dialogue with Statsbygg regarding the recording sessions in Høyblokka were coordinated by Charlotte Hagelund and Jan Christensen.

Thanks to 22. juli-senteret for their trust and support and for granting permission to record during closing hours.

Thanks to Ebba Moi for endless love and support, Per Henrik Svalastog for critical feedback, Statsbygg for granting permission, DSS – Departementenes sikkerhets- og serviceorganisasjon for guiding us safely around the building.

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After his critically acclaimed debut novel The Readymades, John Holten returns with an intriguing story of love and loss that begins in the affluent and rapidly growing city of Oslo, Norway. It follows the story of William Day, an economic migrant who moves to the city to work as a mechanical engineer before chance thrusts him into the alluring world of Sybille and her artist friend Camille. As they do their best to reconcile growing differences in personality and culture, Camille’s growing influence over Sybille threatens the relationship, before her dangerous friends in the Oslo underworld finally undo William’s search for stability. This sets William – and the reader – in the direction of the novel’s horizon, which is set outside of historical time and space, taking in the history of oil exploration, Norse mythology, coronal mass ejections and post-apocalyptic landscapes.

Written with an emotional honesty, Holten places himself directly in the book as both narrator and first reader, highlighting the discrepancy between any map and the territory it represents. The second book of a project entitled Ragnarok, Oslo Norway is constructed in a unique style and set with a visually arresting layout: a self-styled literary atlas that is a pleasure to hold, it creates a new form for a reading experience in line with how we read online. The story is recounted over thirty nine chapters, each named after various streets and environs of the city of Oslo, followed by a legend that unlocks and provides information from the preceding narrative in a revealing interplay between what is real and what is fiction. Inviting a non-linear reading, Holten has galvanised a new type of literary experience that is open-ended, multi-layered, wholly contemporary.

About John Holten
John Holten is a writer and artist as well as a publisher. Born in 1984 in Ireland, he studied at University College Dublin and the Sorbonne-Paris IV before obtaining an MPhil from Trinity College Dublin. In 2011 John published his first novel The Readymades to great acclaim, and the art group he created in the novel (with Darko Dragicevic), The LGB Group, enjoyed exhibitions in many cities as well as being included in The Armory Show, New York in 2012. Having co-founded Broken Dimanche Press as an international art press in 2009, he has overseen as Editor-In-Chief more than thirty publications and attendant exhibitions, projects and public events.

€14.00

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