Along with ‹Parking by Night›, Mårten Spångberg introduces his solo piece at this year’s Ob/Scene Festival.
‹Powered by Emotion› is a full night solo created and performed by Mårten Spångberg originating from a desire to dance and sing without having access to skill and technical capacity in relationship to the production of, on the one hand territory and on the other, perhaps more tangible, notions of identity and belonging. Starting with an interest between territory and political potentiality the choreographer explores two over-determined artistic materials Walter Verdin’s film of Steve Paxton’s dance to J.S. Bach’s ≪Goldberg Variations≫ and the songs of ‘Buena Vista Social Club’. Through the performers inability and nonplussed relation to the material it appears that the spectator is urged to reconsider a politics of aesthetics. What we see and hear both is and isn’t Stave Paxton dancing and Buena Vista Social Club voicing sentimental love. ‹Powered by Emotion› is utter artificiality in its most natural form.

With and by Mårten Spångberg
Music: Johann Sebastian Bach, Buena Vista Social Club
Seoul Coordination: Lee Kyonghoo
Support Tanz im August, Swedish Art Council, The Arts Grants Committee

Go to linked work ‹Parking by Night›

What new visions can dance prompt upon its future after the grounding apparatuses were thoroughly questioned under the spirit of “non-danse”? Mårtin Spångberg focuses on the very act of dancing as the core of the renewed self-reflexivity. The aesthetic realm that he constructs under the notion of “post-dance” unfolds as a set of gestures aimed at reclaiming the autonomy of dance; the purpose of his methodology comes down to the recognition and activation of the “potentials” of dance that exceed discursive language, as well as the thorough capitalist schemes to dominate language. To the Swedish choreographer who’s been active on stage since 1994, dance is the enduring, if not the last, tool to resist the rampant totalitarian schemes of neoliberalism, the resistance to which he refuses to represent, allegorize, or abstract on stage. Rather, restoring the absolute autonomy of dance is his solution on the fundamental level. For the spectator to encounter the deep affect impelled by art and quit his/her corporate job the day after is to actualize the true effect of “political” art, as opposed to getting bombarded with ideological slogans or political messages. Ob/Scene Festival has been collaborating with him for the past three years on a series of choreographic projects as well as workshops, lectures, and publications in order to support and expand his visions on the future of art.

Past Works

• 2020, Ob/Scene Festival ‹they were thinking, in the background, wild nature›, ‹they were in the wild›
• 2021, Ob/Scene Festival ‹Skymningen›, ‹Riverbank Sessions›, ‹The Dancing Community›
• 2022, Ob/Scene Festival ‹I’m Hiding One of These›, ‹Riverbank Sessions›, ‹Hidden In the Dashboard›