International project goes local - An Untold Story takes tangible form.

Performance group DHMJ and their crew at the opening night of The East Tower exhibition.

It all started twelve years ago at the Swedish Royal Palace Strömsholm where I worked as a Museum Assistant and guide. As I walked the great halls, the parlours and the bed chambers, the light tracing the wooden floors plank by broad plank caught my eye every time. In my mind a story took form, an 18th-century love story, a mystery only to be unravelled quite by chance some 250 years later. That was the very first brick to The East Tower, the story I last year wrote for the international literary collarboration project An Untold Story managed by Magdalena ​Brzezinska from Poland. 

Detail from The East Tower photo exhibition from Studio 021. Victoria P. Ben interprets the story.

In September 2017 I was asked by  Studio 021, a collective of photographers and other artists in Västerås , to collaborate on an event that would be something special, something new. Three art forms working together for one experience. I was asked to contribute as a writer, to give them a story that would be the inspiration for a photo exhibition and a theatre performance. I gave them The East Tower.

The cultural centre Culturen in Västerås hosts the exhibition which covers three walls, and events such as two more performances of The East Tower by the theatre company DHMJ and a photowalk by Studio 021 are given throughout the exhibition until February the 8th.

My event is a photo  exhibition called Mälarstunder ​(Moments) opening at gallery
and Café Gäddeholm Manor House  outside Västerås on February the 3rd.

Photographer Lisa Westermark Studio 021 at the opening.

The East Tower travels through time and countries, from an international audience to to a local one, from the mid 18th-century to a performance with a contemporary take, and in photos ranging from the literal to the abstract. 6 photographers, 120 photos. A mosaic of pictures with the personal interpretations of each photographer interacting in themes such as Hope and Courage, the storyline, and the unwritten.

DHMJ performing The East Tower. Photo from video clip by Mats David Ranaxe.

I hide them under the loose board in the left corner in the top room in the east castle tower. Nobody ever goes there. There are thirty-two of them wrapped in the crimson silken handkerchief you bestowed upon me. One is missing. 
- from The East Tower by Agneta M Lindh

Details from the work process for The East Tower on DHMJ's wall in the exhibition.

The theatre group DHMJ created a performance with movement and feelings in focus. Eva Lindh Johansson was in the audience and her immediate reaction was:
- You can really see the feelings in their faces, and feel it yourself!
The music feels both German and French. The song choosen has lyrics in German, it is Walzer für Niemand (Walz for Nobody) by Swizz jazz and pop singer Sophie Hunger, now living in Berlin. Everything connects.

My East Tower picture.

Yours truly. Photo by Sebastian Lindh.

The book from project Un Untold Story is titled 'Who knows but she would tell?'

You never know what will follow upon your YES
​ to an invitation to participate in a creative venture of any kind. This is the second time I'm invited as a writer to collaborate with Studio 021, in 2016 the exihition was ISMs of Västerås and I was the one interpreting their themes, their pictures, into poetry. 

An Untold Story is the fourth project from Magdalena Brzezinska and the third time I'm participating. The book being printed is already available for you to read online: Who knows but she would tell?  Participants from 31 countries and all continents share the pages filling them with prose, poetry, paintings and photography. The untold now revealed. My story too.

One is missing. What would it tell?

Agneta M Lindh

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Related article

Blog Jan 16 2018  Känslan i kropp och rörelse - på teaterrep med DHMJ.

(Putting the feeling into body and movement - rehearsal with DHKM)

My collaborators

Studio 021   www.studio021.se

DHMJ - Det Här Är Mitt Jobb   www.theatredhmj.com

Read the book online

​Who knows but she would tell? on Issuu

Music

Sophie Hunger - Walzer Für Niemand on YouTube