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The Visitors soundtrack has been repressed! Order it on vinyl now: thevinylfactor...
In late 2015 The Vinyl Factory presented the UK solo exhibition premiere of Icelandic artist Ragnar Kjartansson's acclaimed multi-screen audio-visual artwork The Vistors at Brewer Street Car Park.
The Visitors is a nine-channel, HD video installation which transports the beholder to a peculiar universe: in the various rooms of the almost two-hundred-year-old villa Rokeby on the picturesque Hudson River in New York State, the artist, his friends, and residents repeatedly perform a “feminine nihilistic gospel song.”
As with most of Ragnar Kjartansson’s performance and video art, music and creative collaboration with friends play a crucial role in The Visitors. The project’s kernel is a text by the artist Ásdís Sif Gunnarsdóttir, which Kjartansson has assembled from performances of hers and written music to along with his friend Davíð Þór Jónsson. Several musicians and friends from the Reykjavík music scene perform the song in a variety of settings in the many rooms at Rokeby.
The Visitors also pays homage to the Swedish pop band ABBA. The title alludes to 1981 ABBA album also called ‘The Visitors’; the band’s eighth and last record strikes a surprising and almost somber note - ABBA broke apart soon after the album came out, with members blaming crises in their relationships and their exhaustion.
Says Kjartansson of ‘The Visitors’: "The work reflects a place where reality merges with fiction, history with rumours, and everyday life with dreams. Rokeby stands as a monument to an age of splendor, a villa full of art and bygone worldly wealth.”
In tandem with the exhibition opening, Ragnar Kjartansson and The Vinyl Factory launch a new collaborative record label called Bel-Air Glamour Records. The first two releases on the label will be Kristín Anna's Howl and The Visitors soundtrack by Ragnar Kjartansson & The All-Star Band, featuring Kristín Anna, Kjartan Sveinsson and other musicians from The Visitors.