Intonal Festival 2021: Nathalie Djurberg & Hans Berg

Video artist Nathalie Djurberg and musician Hans Berg have been working together since 2004, pairing Berg’s electronic compositions with mixed media visual environments, comprising animation, moving images and sculptural objects. Their work draws inspiration from allegorical myths and nightmarish visions, creating cinematic performances that deal with human and animalistic desires. At this year’s Intonal Festival, held in Malmö last month, the duo presented a world premiere of their latest work, Fever Dreams, a special commission for the festival. Fever Dreams, which was presented at Inkonst on June 19 as a three-channel video installation, acts as something of a retrospective to their career, focusing on abstract stop-motion animations made between 2003 to 2019. Berg accompanied the installation with a live surround sound score. Intonal has been one of Sweden’s most exciting music festivals since its first edition was held in 2015. Run by the team behind the city’s Inkonst venue, the festival typically combines club nights with one-off experimental performances in stunning locations across the city. Despite the ongoing Covid-19 pandemic, the festival was able to return in physical form after a fallow year in 2020, with limited audiences allowed to attend a series of socially-distanced performances under local restrictions. “The point of a festival is to share experiences and emotions with friends and strangers alike; to form new bonds and memories with people that you never met before; to collectively partake in the making of something sublime,” the festival’s team writes. “This cannot be re-created digitally. Not in any form.” Credits: Video: Nathalie Djurberg Music written and performed by Hans Berg