Islandic artist Ragnar Kjartanssson’s video Bliss (2020) is a recording of a 12-hour performance by opera singers and a classical orchestra. The performance was part of the Los Angeles Philharmonic’s Fluxus Festival and featured the final few moments from Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart’s opera The Marriage of Figaro (1786) repeated on a continuous loop. The heart-warming three-minute reconciliation scene is where the full range of emotions dramatically unfolds: from passion, guilt, shame, humiliation, and anger, to grace, forgiveness, reconciliation, and happiness. The Count asks his wife’s forgiveness for pursuing other women; the Countess, in her words, being more obedient than him, finds the strength to forgive. Her friends and family rush to rejoice – all is forgiven and happiness will last forever!… But by the Icelandic artist’s decision, everything starts all over again.
When he created Bliss in 2019 on commission from Performa 11, Ragnar Kjartansson enlisted the musicians in a performance of endurance, and gave the audience the opportunity to become immersed in the flow of repeated situations and feelings, leading to a strange catharsis. The Count apologises to the point of losing his voice; the Countess, perpetually overcoming her anger and showcasing her exceptional grace, keeps forgiving to the point of exhaustion; the people around her enjoy and admire the reconciliation but over time find it harder and harder to find the enthusiasm and the strength to do so; the orchestra perseveres and backs the singers while fighting the stress of repetition.
Kjartansson evokes a Sisyphean process, like a purgatory of endless repentance, where the dynamics of apology and forgiveness make it increasingly apparent that perhaps neither of these actions is easier than the other. The seemingly ordinary, traditional-looking scene from the comical opera, and Mozart’s bright, pleasant music, gradually draws you in and never lets go, opening up more and more layers of meaning, encouraging us to think not only about the couple’s relationship but also about the importance of those around them, about roles in a patriarchal society, and about the power of penance and forgiveness. As classical music critic Mark Swed wrote in the Los Angeles Times, ‘I understood the genius of Bliss is not that Kjartansson stops time. He makes it not matter.’
Ragnar Kjartansson (1976, Reykjavik) graduated from the Icelandic Academy of Arts in 2001 and studied at the Royal Academy of Arts in Stockholm.
Ragnar Kjartansson draws on the entire arc of art in his performative practice. The history of film, music, theatre, visual culture and literature find their way into his video installations, durational performances, drawing and painting. Pretending and staging become key tools in the artist’s attempt to convey sincere emotion and offer a genuine experience to the audience.
Kjartansson’s work has been exhibited widely. Recent solo exhibitions and performances have been held at the Louisiana Museum of Modern Art, Kunstmuseum Stuttgart, Metropolitan Museum of Art New York, Barbican Art Gallery in London, Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden in Washington DC, Reykjavik Art Museum, Palais de Tokyo in Paris, and New Museum in New York.
Credit line:
Ragnar Kjartansson Bliss, 2020 Single channel video, 11 hours, 59 minutes and 25 seconds Recorded at REDCAT as part of LA Phil’s Fluxus Festival curated by Christopher Rountree 25 May 2019, originally a commission for Performa 11. Courtesy of the artist, Luhring Augustine, New York and i8 Gallery, Reykjavik