in brieflive

Indigo over Mahler

Anthony Sahyoun, Nour Darwish, Larissa Sansour, Søren Lind: »As If No Misfortune Had Occurred In The Night«

One of my most powerful art experiences of 2025 was British-Palestinian video artist Larissa Sansour’s intense work As If No Misfortune Had Occurred In The Night at Kunsthal Charlottenborg. The piece forms the basis of Thursday’s so-called »opera performance«, in which Palestinian soprano Nour Darwish performs in dialogue with Sansour’s visuals.

When Darwish steps onto the stage, it is before a vast screen where black-and-white scenes from an abandoned chapel establish a solemn atmosphere. It feels as though the entire hall is holding its breath as she begins to sing – tentatively, mournfully at first, then with spine-tingling force.

The composition draws on Kindertotenlieder (1905), in which Gustav Mahler sets to music Friedrich Rückert’s poems on the loss of two daughters. Composer Anthony Sahyoun allows Mahler’s music to merge with the Palestinian folk song »Al Ouf Mash’al«, a lament for a man who fell while serving in the Ottoman army during the First World War. Over time, the song has expanded into an oral account of Palestinian suffering. In its encounter with Mahler, it becomes a lament for centuries of grief – addressed to European ears that, through the colonisation of the region, bear part of the responsibility. Quite simply, it is a very good idea. At first, Darwish alternates between the two musical works, but gradually they fuse into a single narrative of sorrow, loss, and inherited trauma. She briefly leaves the stage, giving way to a filmed sequence in which she descends into a basin and is enveloped by indigo-blue water. In Palestinian tradition, indigo is the colour of mourning, because once it has stained skin and fabric, it cannot be washed away. It must be worn away – just as grief can leave us flayed.

Darwish returns in an indigo dress. At the climax, she falls to her knees as the screen behind her turns black, and I realise I have barely breathed for several minutes. The composition was created in 2022 – before the current war in Gaza – but on this evening, with her immense voice and intense presence, she adds yet another verse to the endless song. At times, art can feel brutally prophetic.

English translation: Andreo Michaelo Mielczarek

playlist

14.11

My name is Viner – would you like to see my playlist?

Viner Khaiitov. © Tatita Zhiliaeva

»Music is the opposite of escape for me right now: it’s where the tension gets held, repeated and turned into rhythm.«

Viner is a DJ and producer based between Marseille and Barcelona, where he runs the label and art lab PATAR. Born in Ulyanovsk to an Uzbek, Tatar and Bashkir family, he started making music in Kazan. In 2022 he recorded across Uzbekistan: Navruz in Tashkent, the Stihia festival in Muynak (where he was technical director), and street sound in Khiva, Bukhara and Samarkand. On 2330 (PATAR, November 2026) those recordings are cut into fragments of two seconds or less and set into three-beat loops running against the main pulse, »doira« patterns that take several bars to come round, and bass in blunt, distorted blocks. The sources stay half-legible. What carries is the friction, held for five tracks and never quite released.

playlist

14.11

My name is Malina Midera – would you like to see my playlist?

»For me, music is an everyday life. A palette of various emotions. Music is my profession and lifestyle. It's a space where I can be completely myself, where I am fully accepted, and where I am not afraid of challenges or experimentation. Music is life to me, and I cannot imagine living without it.«

Malina Midera is a Polish pianist, composer, and sound artist based in Copenhagen. Her work often explores an intersection between jazz, songwriting and electronic music. As a performer and recording artist, she has toured and performed across Europe and released albums with various international ensembles, including Children of Fish, midi 4, and Klawo. She has also curated several art festivals, including LAAF – Łódź Abstract Art Festival 2024 (PL) or Idealistic Festival vol. 7 (DK). Her debut solo organ album is set to premiere in January 2027. Alongside music, she has a strong interest in photography.

playlist

14.11

We are Inventory – would you like to see our playlist?

»For us, music is a lifelong fascination – something you can never fully get to the bottom of. You can study the mathematics, the rules, and the logic. But music also contains an element of magic – that aspect which creates an emotional resonance between the creator and the listener, transcending place, time, and language.«

Inspired by the playful, off-kilter alternative rock of the 90s, Inventory has forged a distinct sound comprising equal parts pop hooks, dissonant tension, and jazzy textures. It is guitar-driven music that embraces the unexpected, the quirky, and the soothing – navigating the space between the immediate and the challenging. Inventory is set to release their debut album, People Pyramids, in early 2027.

in briefrelease

13.11

A Recipe for Ecstasy and Despair

Krzysztof Wołek: »Cookbook for the Modern Boygirl«

Self-released, 11.09

Simon Cummings

If a meal is good, it’s worth making twice, right? That’s the approach taken by Krzysztof Wołek on his latest album Cookbook for the Modern Boygirl, where the song cycle is interpreted twice. The ingredients are straightforward: one girl (Agata Zubel), one boy (Chad Sloan), and a variety of electronic elements carefully assembled not simply to complement but also contradict each other. As for the recipe, that comes from poet Bunny Morris, in the form of seven texts exploring the body as a site of vulnerability and conflict.

Desire versus repulsion is the central tension running through the song cycle. Wołek accentuates this by atomising the vocal part, which doesn’t so much sing as gasp and stammer, its never-ending contortions enclosed in an atmosphere that pressurises the voice as much as it allows it to radiate.

Eruptions of sharp glitch fragments sound as both celebratory fireworks and shards cutting into flesh, playing into the songs’ continual blurring of food allusions with animalistic reflections on the body’s limbs, processes, sensations and fluids. As if to counter the challenges, the voice often resorts to overelaborate ornamentation, elsewhere receding into hissing whispers as if to hide from them.

The two interpretations are strikingly individual, Zubel leaning into frenetic histrionics, like an unhinged bird, Sloan into impassioned lyrical agonism. Though seemingly emanating from parallel universes, both versions unite in the impossibility of knowing what’s desperation or ecstasy, epitomising the fundamental instability of identity at the core of these dazzlingly visceral songs.

playlist

11.11

My name is Dennis Nørmark – would you like to see my playlist?

»For me, music is where all my books begin. I hear a track, visualize a scene unfolding in my mind, and then I simply write the rest of the book around it. More or less. My imagination takes root in music. This playlist serves as the mental soundtrack to the work I am currently finishing.«

Dennis Nørmark is an anthropologist, an internationally bestselling author, and a professional speaker. While known for his books on working life, he achieved his breakthrough as a fiction writer with the thriller Harare, which won the award for Best Danish Crime Novel in 2025, as well as the Glass Key Award for Best Nordic Crime Novel in 2026. He lives north of Copenhagen and is a father of five.