Emily Sundblad: Dichterliebe / Divine Bitches
September 16 – 17, 2016
The Kitchen
512 West 19th St, New York NY, 10011
With an almost didactic air, Emily Sundblad launches into the song “Im Wunderschönen Monat Mai” (“In the wonderfully fair month of May”), the piano following primly behind. The grainy texture of the singer’s tones reverberates through a slight echo effect of the microphone, doubling and tripling Schumann’s nostalgically crooning words. Sundblad’s solitary voice closes the ballad on a suspended note. The chorus rises and begins to weave a steady refrain. As the rhythm asserts itself, I am just able to recognize the melody before Sundblad chimes, “You used to call me on my…”
Bringing together pop hits and Western masterpieces in a pushy, sentimental marriage, Dichterliebe / Divine Bitches has more in common with a middle school choral concert than the average Kitchen performance. The borrowed words of figures as varied as W. H. Auden and Frank Ocean, test the oppositions of desire and transcendence, love and callous indifference. Through Schumann, Sundblad sings of love that is full of purity and grace, while Drake gives her the words for jealousy and dissatisfaction.
Emily Sundblad: Dichterliebe / Divine Bitches. September 16 – 17, 2016, The Kitchen, New York. Photo Credit: Paula Court
Strewn amongst these songs, fragmented monologues by Sundblad, Juliana Huxtable, Sophie Mörner, and Elsa de Remur testify in the most blatant of terms the hierarchies implicit in all relationships. Adapting text from personal writings, twitter, and porn-site comments, these cutting pronunciations violently, explicitly lay out the intimate details of shared lives. One young woman hesitates before walking briskly to the microphone and leaning in to hiss, “I will cut your dick off.” Another, with staggering hope and vulnerability, tells and pleads, “If you stick two fingers up my ass I will come. When I come, please kiss me.”
Emily Sundblad: Dichterliebe / Divine Bitches. September 16 – 17, 2016, The Kitchen, New York. Photo Credit: Paula Court
Following her predilection for collaborative works, Sundblad’s cast of readers and designers—all artists, writers, and musicians in their own rights—come together to build a master work that is meticulously detailed, down to the Proenza Schouler dress that swathes Sundblad in fuchsia frills. The set, designed for the performance by Klara Liden, is cast in a synthetic green luminescence, washing the singers and musicians in a phantom-like glow that brings Degas’s paintings of evening café concerts to sallow life. The performers are scattered across the stage, occupying furnishings that evoke the simple geometries of certain bougie chinatown eateries.
Emily Sundblad: Dichterliebe / Divine Bitches. September 16 – 17, 2016, The Kitchen, New York. Photo Credit: Paula Court
Through it all, Sundblad is a shifting presence, acting her emotions to preempt the song, guiding us gently through volatile shifts; one moment triumphant and proud for Sia’s “Chandelier,” the next coyly handling the microphone with bowed head to match the melancholy of Schumann’s “Wenn Ich In Deine Augen Seh” (“When I look into your eyes”). Repeatedly telling us with a dead stare that she is not brave, Sundblad slows to murmur, “You are brave,” eyes closed as if against this low admission. For all her acting, there is a genuine thread that runs throughout, the insistence upon being unapologetically herself even as she stands as a performer on the stage before us; the chorus is repeating the same theme for the second time when Sundblad expresses surprise, apologizes, and asks them to begin again. A few songs later, Sundblad’s face dips away from the microphone as she toes her way out of her heels. Such is the gift of Sundblad’s work, which has managed to remain unfettered by grand narratives and thematic consistency. Although by turns cloying and cruel, Dichterliebe / Divine Bitches carries a rare honesty, one that allows me to leave convinced, nurturing the hope that there remains a space for simple beauty in art today.
