Photo: Marc Fluri
Anna Berit Asp Christensen is the artistic director of SCENATET. Since 2007, she has been Manager and Artistic Director of the SPOR festival in Aarhus, and in 2008 she initiated SCENATET. The ensemble is her primary artistic and curatorial platform, where, among other things, she has created and developed The Documentary Concert, Living Room, Concert Walk and Backyard Pictures (in artistic collaboration with Bent Sørensen).
Anna Berit Asp Christensen is an artist and curator with strong roots in both classical and new music. Her activities are partly based on her past as a practising, classically trained musician, and partly related to comprehensive work on the theory and dissemination of music. Her practice is characterised by a constant investigation of the potential of experimental art music as well as its range and position on the contemporary art scene. Christensen’s work has displayed an impressive breadth in its knowledge of repertoire – also within various art forms ranging from art music and sound art to performance art, modern dance and concept art. This finds expression in her works, which mainly seek to link up with other art forms in order to place music in new perspectives. Typical of her is her ability to compose meetings, between musical genres as well as to get music to cohere as an unified genre compared to other art genres.
Christensen also does solo pieces and in 2013 she contributed to the art exhibition Geist Glorup on Funen with the sound installation The Singing Trees. The sound piece, which was installed in a cluster of old chestnut trees, is based on lullabies collected from people who either personally, or via earlier generations, have frequented the Glorup Estate. The five trees have their separate compositions and together make up a choir of singing trees which – as a musical echo – ’retell’ the sound of the estate.
In 2011, Anna Berit Asp Christensen received a six months long residency in Berlin, granted by the Danish Arts Council, she has been appointed as a member of several cultural foundations and committees, and among others is a board member of Danish Dance Theatre as well as SNYK – the national centre for contemporary and experimental music and sound art in Denmark.
Anna Berit Asp Christensen at Geist Glorup, 2013. Photo: Miriam Nielsen
