Dear audience

This year Hjorted Art and Music Festival returns for the second time and now with the theme Imaginary Landscapes. This festival theme sees performances and creations in, around and inspired by nature. How can we experience these artworks and music differently when placed in a natural setting and what possibilities does the stage of the forest offer us? Not only is it a festival positioned in the cradle of natural environments, it is also a festival programme that reflects on landscapes beyond our imagination and at the periphery of our understanding, at a place where only art can take us. What do these imaginary landscapes contain? How can we imagine them and create them and what new ways of living and imagining can they inspire us to pursue? 

More concretely the programme includes music and performances of some of the best young musicians and artists in Europe. The opening concert Openings presents music from different corners of the world performed by UK and Slovenian artists with a mix of the intense to the calm and the evening is concluded with a world premiere of a dance piece by the finnish/swedish choreographer Scilla Rajalin. The festival moves on with a journey into the kaleidoscopic and colorful world of Erik Klinga on day two, drawn up for us with the use of Buchla Synths played by Klinga live. The evening also presents more traditional classical music by J.S Bach and a moody, dark and dance-like piece by the contemporary composer Kaija Saariaho. The third day centers audience-interactive events presented by the artist collective Una Collective and an immersive experience with music in an ambisonic format. This latter concert, titled Oceanic Melodies, will be a concert that, although presented inside with the audience placed in the middle of eight speakers, takes us on an imaginary journey to an array of different landscapes - both physical and imaginary. Finally, the festival concludes with a performance by the new Swedish band Linio who presents a truly contemporary sound world inspired by Swedish folk music. Consisting of folk musicians and a Swedish music producer, the band draws up moody, swinging and wistful atmospheres that makes us want to dance the evening away.  

Strewn around these events are “sallelite” events as part of a new initiative that we are calling Hjorted LAB Sessions. Here, four acts from different parts of Europe present performances, installations and audience-interative events. The proposals have been selected by the artistic board from an open call of over 75 applications and none of the creations they are presenting has met an audience, until now. 

Finally, this programme does not only reflect on possible artistic and musical futures as well as humans' relationship to nature. It is also a proposition of what the tools of our imagination and vision can do to our shared futures from a sociopolitical and poetic point of view. 

By daring to imagine something different, we may be able to create a different and more sustainable future, where disruption of habitat and human rights wouldn’t be the natural order, and where the ends don't always justify the means. Where a shift in attitude to our natural environment can take place and where we respect our holistic place in it, rather than being governors of it. In this realm, we believe culture can play a big part, not only in exercising our imagination to enable us to imagine different futures, but also in creating a solid foundation of social resilience, a communal place that will enable us to move together towards these future Imaginary Landscapes. 

Welcome - ARTISTIC BOARD OF HJORTED ART AND MUSIC