Jessie Kleemann & Søren Gemmer
Lone Wolf Runner
DENMARK TILA TILA003LP (2024)
Bracing record of poetry and performance art, supported with electro-acoustic musical interludes, backdrops and fugues…Lone Wolf Runner has a pretty stark and uncompromising set of messages, and it starts out serious right from the opening cut, remaining in a stern and unforgiving mood as performance artist Jessie Kleemann utters her severe poems, and composer Søren Gemmer sustains a heavy atmosphere with dark, menacing drones and brittle piano dissonances.
The tension on the recording of Lone Wolf Runner is palpable. You can imagine what it must have been like to see the original performance piece, which took place at SMK (the National Gallery of Denmark) in Aug-Nov 2023. Jessie Kleemann was born in Greenland, and though she’s been living in Denmark for the last 20 years, she’s never lost sight of her artistic and societal mission, which could be summarised as addressing “the abuse of nature by modern humanity, the loss of indigenous culture, and the struggle for a descendant of the Greenlandic Inuit to find a new identity in a modern, globalised present.” It’s embedded in her poetry, her videos, and her performance art pieces; ‘Orsoq’, from 2023, saw her covering her body in red ochre paint and wrapping herself in a plastic bag. The word ‘orsoq’ may translate as seal blubber, but as a substance it has symbolic meanings for the creator, and she uses it as part her ongoing “postcolonial critique”; blubber can be both something repulsive and also used as a trading commodity, and she also likes the idea of expressing corporeal decay in her performances. (Right there we have quite a few consonances with Stuart Brisley and Joseph Beuys.) Even the poetry on this LP is, I think, written and spoken in an Inuit language; one of them refers to ‘Seals singing their jaws off’, in a harrowing image – one of many moments on the set where the fragility of animal and human life, and indeed all of nature, is brought into sharp relief. Her audible contributions include poetry, vocal sounds, field recordings – and perhaps some seconds where the physical demands of the performance result in shortness of breath – and though minimal and brief, the presence of this formidable creator hangs over the entire LP.
The Copenhagen composer Gemmer has recently moved into piano-based improvisations, still reserving the right to inject his music with abstracted art-techno beats, and documentary recordings torn from any suitable source, including foley sound effects. One senses he’s right at home in this sort of milieu, having already collaborated with actors, story-tellers and poets assisting with their interpretations of various biblical and epic themes. A luxurious vinyl LP presentation in a gatefold cover for this release, supported by the SMK; I don’t see a credit for the cover art, but it reminds you that blood is never far away on this strange mix of ritual, baptism, animal magic, bones, snow, and ice. From 15 October 2024.