Words by

Eydís Björnsdóttir

There are five groups consisting of musicians, which included the Wind Quartet, who performed classical music and the Chamber Quartet Krummi, who play dulcet hymns while clad in black. Their collaboration will end once the summer has passed. But another group to focus on classical music was Listalín, with not only a soprano but also a mezzosoprano in their midst, who hope to continue their work subject to continued funding. Then there was the band Friends of Keli, who oozed a laid back atmosphere with jazz tunes and blues. They will keep at it, playing at pubs on weekends, as will the Demon Musicians (whose name, Glymskrattarnir, happens to be the Icelandic translation of a jukebox) with their upbeat, swinging melodies.

Hljóðgata is a solo project aimed at enriching the theatre experience with added sounds and video art who collaborated with The Street Theatre, another youth program summer group consisting of fifteen amateur street actors prancing around the streets in drunken pantomimes. The Street Theatre will continue and accept projects offered to them.

The picked/lost strawberries are a somewhat similar group that performs art, painting and music in the form of little happenings. They plan on holding a mutual art exhibit in the fall and foresee continuing their co-operation in some form or another.

Sons-in-Law of Jódís is a more theatrically based group of four actors with the goal to do three plays in six weeks. They’ll have no director and no set, just the actors and three playwrights. They might possibly do other projects as a group in the future, for they are all friends, two of which are attending the school of drama.

Landsleikur take a more traditional approach and put up a production of the play Dýrðlegt fjöldasjálfsmorð by Arto Pasillinna. Two designers are responsible for Dropped Stitch… oopps…and display their design of clothing in a more theatrical manner than usual fashion shows do. They will definitely continue work of their label, which has apparently been doing well in the Icelandic world of fashion.

Always at the centre of attention has been The Belly Dancing Fairies, who have offered a clash of cultures by performing unconventional belly dances throughout the city. Equally interesting have been the three women of Artistic hearts, who have created happenings such as the making of enormous fruits and vegetables to garland from trees.

The painter is a solo project, where the artist displays her artwork at odd places in Reykjavík, e.g. in an empty shop window or a dark alleyway. The group Samferða is a project of warding off prejudice by using the process of making a cartoon. They aim to keep the group together and hope to go on to other similar projects. Malbik is a poetry group determined to use unconventional ways to distribute poetry to people. Among their stratagems was the writing of an impromptu poem with chalk on the pave walk and later offering shoppers of Hagkaup to “taste” a poetry book they had on sale. Bestikk is a group of four writers who are in the process of writing a novel collaboratively. They have nothing planned for the future other than finishing their novel.

And last but not least is The Reykjavík Grapevine, who have received essential funding to establish our relaunch this summer, but I’ll take the liberty to assume that anyone reading this already knows what that is all about.