Spor Festival at Twenty: the Eternal Play of Sound

When does music stop being just sound produced by an instrument? And what happens when music no longer concerns a single musician, one instrument, and predictable interplay? At this year’s Spor Festival in Aarhus, it became clear that sound can emerge in new ways – between bodies, in movements, and through collective action. Several performances challenged the classical idea of music as individual performance and instead presented works where collaboration was both necessity and driving force.

What happens when music no longer concerns a single musician, one instrument, and predictable interplay?

Sustained Effort by Sandra Boss and Ea Borre was played on a specially built accordion with a three-meter-long bellows requiring two musicians. The accordion became a sculpture, a living caterpillar, and a graphic movement in the sunlight of Godsbanen’s atrium. There was something vulnerable about the joint maneuvering of the unwieldy instrument, where long, sustained tones emerged in a sonic progression that simultaneously unfolded as a visual and performative work.

Ragnhild May’s exhibition Instructions with integrated performances at Galleri Rese critically addressed the role and design of instruments. Before industrialization, instruments were often built to individual needs, but mass production’s demand for standard sizes means that most today are designed for a specific body type. May’s instruments are oversized – a large piano, two recorders measuring 1.5 and 2.5 meters, and several experimental transverse flutes that explored both the instrument’s and the flutist’s physical capabilities.

Like Boss and Borre’s work, May’s flutes required two performers. The performance was concentrated, exploratory, and at times humorous as the musicians struggled to produce sound. Sound arose only through collaboration, and they performed the song Stille nu (“Quiet Now”) in two versions before moving into an improvisation with their self-built transverse flutes.

Beings of sound

An alternative use of instruments was also part of the performance Primal by artists Sól Ey and Ensemble Modelo62. The audience was introduced to the creature »bassalonen«, described in the program as a sort of prehistoric animal, »best known for its robust and clumsy build, its unsettling mating calls and deep roars that make the earth tremble.« Outside the hall, a »documentary film« told the bassalone’s history, distribution, and extinction, with a profusion of illustrations. We were also told not to feed the creatures.

The room was dark and filled with thick smoke and the scent of sandalwood, as if the creatures themselves emitted the mysterious aroma

Audience members were admitted in small groups, wearing socks or barefoot, and given clear instructions to treat the animals gently – they could react aggressively if handled roughly. The room was dark and filled with thick smoke and the scent of sandalwood, as if the creatures themselves emitted the mysterious aroma. As the eyes adjusted to the darkness, four cello- and bass-like creatures appeared, writhing slowly on the floor. They had humanoid bodies and heads resembling instruments covered in soft fabric that invited touch. The creatures were curious, playful, and aggressive. They didn’t play music but produced sounds while crawling among the audience and each other. At one point the ceiling lights came on, and the audience suddenly became the exhibited creatures. The creatures communicated among themselves and with some audience members through body language and instrumental sounds. We mostly heard scratchy noises from cello and bass bows on fingerboards rather than the bassalone’s resonant voice.

The performance activated several senses – especially scent – and worked with interaction, sound as communication, and staged the instruments as living, dynamic beings. The idea was both original and playful, though the timing could have been tighter. This was also true of two other festival performances.

Bodies in oscillation

Cooler Stars glow red was a cross-disciplinary work created by composer Bára Gísladóttir, choreographer Margrét Bjarnadóttir, and Scenatet. At Godsbanen’s Raw Hall, the audience sat around the performers – two dancers, two singers, two flutists, and two percussionists, supplemented with electronic sounds. The program described an exploration of »the deep connection between our inner life and the infinite, changing elements of the universe«, inviting “the audience into an abstract atmosphere where experience replaces linear narrative«. Musicians and dancers worked closely in exciting constellations. Often they played and sang the same tone, with flute and voice resonating and exploring different timbres. Like in May’s and Boss/Borre’s works, they almost merged into a single instrument. The singers were both technically impressive and intense, while the dancers not only showed excellent movements but also sang and added physical dynamics to the overall expression. Beautiful sequences emerged with unconventional materials like paper rolls and mountains of bubble wrap, which in interplay with ambient sounds and percussion created moments of almost magical beauty.

In Body Epiphanes by Aarhus sound artist Olga Szymula, the immersion was harder as the audience received too little movement and stimulation. Where Janet Cardiff often uses dynamic sound and movement – binaural technology or by letting the audience walk with sound in their ears – here the audience sat or stood on stairs listening to complex texts through speakers on the performers’ bodies, who executed an almost motionless choreography. The piece lasted about an hour, with no text material, visual support, or interaction, making the audience feel overlooked, as if their bodies were forgotten.

We were admitted three at a time into a room at Dokk1, where the composer waited

In Simon Løffler’s work C, the audience was invited to stand very close. We were admitted three at a time into a room at Dokk1, where the composer waited. He asked us to put on headphones and gathered us around a square of metal and a tensioned wooden stick.

We were instructed to follow his movements: when he bit the wooden stick, we did the same. At first, we heard nothing, then Løffler began playing a glockenspiel, and suddenly fine, crisp tones sounded – only through the teeth. The music arose in the skull, at the contact point between body and sound. A thought-provoking sensorialization of what the Canadian composer R. Murray Schafer called »touch at a distance«.

The music arose in the skull, at the contact point between body and sound

Sonic meditations and pulsating suns

Spor 2025 presented a series of sound art works at Dokk1 and in the Godsbanen foyer. Laurits Jongejans’ Solvogn was a mechanical instrument consisting of four large gongs, activated by electronic mallets and vibrating devices. The gongs were illuminated »like large pulsating suns«, as the program said. The piece stood by the Gods restaurant in the foyer.

The gongs’ resonance mixed with background music, voices, children’s play, and the hum of fans from the restrooms. The sounds blended into the soundscape but also formed a distinct audio signal that often surprised passersby. Occasionally the soundscape was intensified by guttural sounds and collective strikes on the gongs. The room’s lighting shifted between cold and warm tones, emphasizing the work’s mutable character.

At Udsigten in Dokk1, two sculptural works revealed their magic: Babbling Brook by Nolan Lem and Resonanstårne by Maj Kjærsig. Both unfolded alternately in the large open space. Babbling Brook was a sonic meditation on ‘stream of consciousness’ in a time when technology redefines intelligence. The AI-driven installation recreated the sound experience of a babbling brook by activating mechanical keyboards typing dialogues about the sound of water. The sound ranged from quiet trickling to a powerful data stream imitating water’s movement. Visually, the work was complex and fragmented with many interfaces, making it harder to grasp, while the audio gave an immediate and direct experience.

Kjærsig’s resonance towers stood beautifully and simply in the room. Visitors could move among them to catch their individual sounds or stand in the center to experience them in stereo. Unlike Lem’s piece, the sculptures were calm and aesthetically pleasing, while the sound added a complex, poetic layer. Each sculpture had its own electronic voice created from manipulated recordings of singing and the sculptures themselves, together performing a choral piece.

The film, set in a child’s bedroom at bedtime, serves as a metaphor for the danger of being seduced by those in power

Mass seduction and Americana

This year’s Spor highlighted The Elephant. Lasse Schwanenflügel Piasecki’s premiere at Øst for Paradis with Ensemble Garage, performing live to the film, was a powerful and disturbing exploration of the human voice’s power and gesture.

The film, set in a child’s bedroom at bedtime, serves as a metaphor for the danger of being seduced by those in power – »a reflection on mass seduction«, as the composer says. Inspired by the Pied Piper of Hamelin, Steffen Bruun’s bass voice embodies the kidnapper of the town’s children. The combination of film, live music, and interplay between amateur and professional singers made the performance crisp and impactful.

Niels Rønsholdt performed his new album Aftermath for three guitars and a bass. The female bassist provided the octave vocal part that Rønsholdt himself sings on the album. The room was filled with white noise between songs, and the musicians remained silent, as if presenting the album as a unified symphony.

It didn’t fully succeed, partly due to applause and a false fire alarm that briefly evacuated the audience. Nevertheless, the concert was a beautiful, simple, and sonically faithful setup of Rønsholdt’s USA-inspired album, which recently has gained new resonance – though not due to the music itself.

New spaces for insight

Spor has existed for 20 years and has since 2007 been artistically and administratively led by Anne Marqvardsen and Anna Berit Asp Christensen. The festival continues and rethinks Numus, founded by Karl Aage Rasmussen as a center for new composition music in Aarhus. This year’s Spor created situations where sound, body, and material melted together. The audience listened intensely, walked barefoot among sensing beings, and felt resonances in their bodies. The festival embraced a wide range – from composed music and sound installations to pop-inspired experiments – and showed that the experimental art field still opens new spaces for insight for those willing to venture into the unfamiliar and collective.

Spor Festival, Aarhus, May 14–18

English translation: Andreo Michaelo Mielczarek

Proofreading: Seb Doubinsky