De profundis – theme and variations - Pohjoinen oopperakomppania

De profundis – theme and variations tries to combine sculture installation to live music as an entity of it’s own. In addition, it is looking for a new form for the audience experience of art exhibitions and concerts. The performances are all about boundaries, letting in ja leaving out, emptiness, abandonment and despair.

We like to ask, what happens when artists stay in place and the audience moves around? How do the performers find each other? Is a board fence cube always a board fence cube?

De profundis originated from the collaboration between visual artist Raimo Törhönen and soprano Jenni Kinnunen at the Oulu Arts Night in 2019, when Törhönen’s Malevich’s Garden served as the stage for Kinnunen’s musical monologue. The creators further developed the idea in connection with Törhönen’s Snadisti retro exhibition at the Oulu Art Museum in autumn 2022. The performance was based on two wooden fence works, De Profundis and Brave, strong Nation, each measuring approximately 2 x 2 x 2 m. The musical starting point of the work is Psalm 130, De profundis clamavi ad te, Domine (From the depths I cry out to you, Lord).

The theme was seen as part of the Art Museum’s Evening of Performances in autumn 2022. Variation I was experienced in July 2023 on the environmental art trail in Oulu, in the Pirkola potato hall in Tyrnävä and in Utajärvi at the Utanen hydropower plant, where the performance was organized on the bank of the bypass pond.

Variation II will be performed at the MULF VI festival in August 2026. Performers include musician-accompanist Laura Heikkilä, singer Annamaria Hannonen, and shadow artist Paula Vilmi.

The variation, which goes by the working title “Songs of Salvation”, reflects on the system created by man, which he cannot dismantle. The perspective is posthumanist. There are two lonely people in cages, who struggle with memories and images of horror – one with the help of a clavichord and the other with the help of a human voice. The performance takes a Dante-esque journey from hell to paradise through purgatory. Man escapes from the squeeze, because grace facilitates this: nature revives despite man and especially because of him. Variation II asks who has the right to be saved.