Sun 6/28 – Sun 8/16
For six hours, Ragnar Kjartansson’s three nieces — Ragnheidur Harpa Leifsdóttir, Rakel Mjöll Leifsdóttir, and Íris María Leifsdóttir — sang a gentle folk son in the Carnegie Museum of Art’s Hall of Sculpture. They repeated a simple refrain, a set of melancholic lyrics set to acoustic guitar strumming, in what became an ethereal performance documented by a single camera.
According to Kjartansson: “I was strumming my guitar in a hammock in a hippie commune in Nikiasalka, Poland. It was an old mansion, surrounded by forest and endless Polish fields. Children running around naked and artists building sculptures in trees and letting balloons go into thin air. . . . As I lay in the hammock I tried to remember that poem ‘Song’ by Allen Ginsberg and strummed E major and A major: ‘The Weight of The World is Love.’ Then I remembered something of sleep and dreams. Strumming, falling asleep, strumming, falling asleep. Then slowly this song emerged based on what was left of the poem in my memory. . . . Then I was invited to do a show at the Carnegie. I saw those Gilded Age, industrialist halls of marble, those idle sculptures looking down at you. I remembered that song and I thought of my nieces. They should play it here. A bed-in at the Hall of Sculpture.”
The video will be on display at the Cleveland Museum of Art through Sun 8/16.
Cleveland, OH 44106