'Cemetery Of Splendour' & 'Classic Objects' are taken from Jenny Hval's 2022 album 'Classic Objects'. Buy and stream here: jennyhval.ffm.to/classicobjects
Video credits:
Directed and edited by Jenny Berger Myhre
Cinematographer Sigurd Ytre-Arne
Music recorded by Magnus Skavhaug Nergaard
Mixed by Kyrre Laastad
Video concept by Jenny Berger Myhre, Jenny Hval, Annie Bielski
Artwork and additional footage by Annie Bielski
Performers
Vocals Jenny Hval
Keys and vocals Jenny Berger Myhre
Bass Håvard Volden
Keys Johan Lindvall
Drums and percussion Kyrre Laastad
Guitars Daniel Meyer Grønvold
Filmed at Flerbruket, Hemnes, Norway
September 11-12, 2021
Special thanks to Flerbruket & Natali Abrahamsen Garner, Cleo the Finnish Lapphund
Lyrics:
Cemetery of Splendour
When you call my name
breath fills a shut-down space.
Mouths were opened here once.
There was a band on.
Hear the buzzing of the empty halls,
or all rooms that are empty at any point in time, sigh,
aaah.
Once you played in empty bars.
Performing for the beer tap and the pool tables.
Nobody is giving you their card
because you have potential.
Almost nothing interrupting ideas
jittering in the jiggers.
They sound like the way to another.
Now you go to the afterlife.
You've heard good things about it.
But the embers are cooling,
and the spirits are just names plus one.
And you see
tagged-over posters with faces out of frame,
boarded up windows that watch you walk away.
All things abandoned are following your steps,
associating from space to emptiness.
When you are sleeping, time glows.
Classic Objects
There was a painter in my first studio space.
I remember she used to attach her own hair to her paintings.
Left out in the hallway, versions of her face,
desperate, but hopeful.
A row of death masks fusing life and death together,
I mean life and art, or is it death and art, or maybe it's just me?
At times I have been obsessed with connecting
to materials and textures,
and I dreamed of having a face made of marble.
How do you kiss a piece of marble? Or a piece of gold?
I've always tried to prove that I'm the living, connecting dead parts.
Once I tried acting, I was the virgin in the cast, like I wasn't quite human.
Performing alabaster, an empty canvas,
the shape around the others,
in a silent pageant,
away from emotion.
Now I rearrange objects that my friend made for my show.
I'm not sure if these are art or just stuff, she made for me,
but I rearrange them on the countertop
ike I'm examining stage plot,
working on my performance,
examining the borders,
living my text.
Two dead parts. Two still lives.