Historia

Karl Ove Knausgaard reads from The School of Night while Glenn Kotche's percussion responds. An evening where literature, music and moving images pull against one another, creating an unease none could produce alone.

"Music was mood, period. Music was atmosphere. Music was something other and more than reality." The words are Karl Ove Knausgaard's, from The School of Night. Set in London in the mid-1980s, the novel tells a Faustian story about a young Norwegian photography student whose artistic ambitions take an increasingly dark turn. In Historia, Knausgaard brings his words off the page.

Knausgaard and Glenn Kotche have put together an evening built from literature, percussion and moving image. Kotche opens alone with Monkey Chant, a prepared-drum piece drawing on the Balinese kecak tradition. Knausgaard reads passages from The School of Night. Then the elements converge: words and improvised sound against The Left Shore, a video installation by Johan Renck.

The evening closes with a conversation between Kotche and Knausgaard on artistic practice and collaboration. Knausgaard has previously curated an exhibition and written a book on Edvard Munch's work, so for a performance at MUNCH these questions arrive already charged. What can art demand of the people who make it? How does an artist turn private obsession into public form?

Historia is, in part, an answer: a space where sound can hold an encounter that a book alone cannot.

Programme

Glenn Kotche Monkey Chant
Performance

Karl Ove Knausgaard Selections from The School of Night
Reading

Glenn Kotche & Karl Ove Knausgaard Historia
Performance with The Left Shore, a video installation by Johan Renck, created with the still photography of Anders Petersen

Glenn Kotche The Path Only Appears With The First Step
Performance

Glenn Kotche and Karl Ove Knausgaard in conversation

Artist talk moderated by Rob Young (MUNCH) and Heloisa Amaral (Ultima)

Want to know more?

• The School of Night [Nattskolen] was published in Norwegian by Forlaget Oktober in 2023 and is the fourth novel in Knausgaard's Morning Star series.
• Glenn Kotche has been Wilco's drummer since 2001. As a composer, he has received commissions from Kronos Quartet, Yo-Yo Ma's Silk Road Ensemble, Bang on a Can All-Stars and Roomful of Teeth, among many others. John Luther Adams called him a one-man percussion orchestra.
• Johan Renck is a Swedish director known for music videos for Madonna, Beyoncé and David Bowie — including Bowie's final videos, Blackstar and Lazarus — as well as the HBO series Chernobyl.
• For The Left Shore, Renck worked with the photographs of Swedish photographer Anders Petersen. Petersen's work is considered a landmark of subjective photography. He is also known for shooting the cover of Tom Waits' Rain Dogs.