
The story of a 3.5 billion-year-old gneiss from Reine, almost at the end of Lofoten archipelago in Northern Norway.
Imagine what the stones around us have experienced, and what tales could they tell?
Stein I: Gneis
Some of the world’s oldest rocks can be found in Lofoten in Northern Norway. Especially in the Reine area, where 3.5 billion-year-old gneiss is visible as surrounding rocks and majestic mountain peaks. Gneiss is a non-magnetic metamorphic rock, formed at very high temperatures and pressures. It has a foliated surface, often sporting beautiful bands or wave patterns. A gneiss rock, like this one from Reine, has probably experienced the very creation of Lofoten. It might have experienced a Lofoten inhabited by dinosaurs? It for sure has experienced the arrival of the human race, from the very first hunter-gatherers straying all the way up here to the high north, to the present times’ mass tourism from all over the world.
These pieces are part of my Sound Choreography Studies, where visual material and/or movements are interpreted sonically. In “Stein I-III” the performers have specific instructions of what and how to play, all connected to the thumbs touching the stones in the video projection – visible to both the performers and audience.

Credits:
Commissioned by: Mean Steel
Funded by: Arts Council Norway
Premiere: 2022 March 24 – Vinterfestuka – Narvik, Norway
For wind instrument, string instrument, and video
13 min
Created and performed by: Mean Steel
Baritone saxophone, stone: Ola Asdahl Rokkones
Cello, voice: Hans-Urban Andersson
Concept: Tine Surel Lange
Composition and video: Tine Surel Lange
Sound in video: Mean Steel

