Rokeby is a crumbling 43-room mansion in upstate New York, where the descendants of the grand American families the Astors and the Livingstons – as well as their bohemian friends – participate in everything from puppetry to organic farming. On one gorgeous summer evening, they gathered on the terrace while nine Icelandic musicians, including members of Múm and Sigur Ros, each took over one of the house’s rooms, from the ballroom to the bathroom. Together, they played a song that went “Once again, I fall into my feminine ways” – over and over.
The result was The Visitors by artist Ragnar Kjartansson. Named after Abba’s final album and presented as a nine-screen video installation in galleries from London’s Barbican to the Broad in LA, The Visitors mesmerised viewers, most of whom stayed for its entire 64 minutes, moved to tears of euphoria and sorrow. As the New York Times put it, the effect is “alternately tragic and joyful, meditative and clamorous, and that swells in feeling from melancholic fugue to redemptive gospel choir”. A memorial to the end of Kjartansson’s marriage, a paean to the twilight of youth, a celebration of friendship, music and America itself, The Visitors is sumptuous and profound.
So how does it feel to have made the best artwork of the century so far? It feels pretty damn good, I tell you! I’m a sucker for your communist website.
What are your memories of making The Visitors? It was a super time. I’d just been divorced and I was falling massively in love – it was like a Midsummer Night’s Dream. I first got to know Rokeby when I did a performance piece there called Folk Song. My friend knew the people who lived there. I really wanted to do something else, though the idea never really looked good on paper: just making a sentimental country song with my friends in this really great place.
How do residents feel about their place being immortalised? They felt good. It’s really an ode to this house and the life that’s lived there. All the places around it are now owned by super-rich Google people or they are museums. This is the only one that is super alive. It’s this hippy place, in a good way. Hippies doing pagan ceremonies, fantastic. American history is in that house. The Visitors is part of its era, though. I don’t think I’d make a piece like this now because we live in much darker times. I was in love with America, Obama was president, the whole thing is a love song to the country. There was a lot of liberal optimism in those days and that somehow is captured in the piece.
Did it take a lot of rehearsal? We stayed there for a week and me and Davíð Þór Jónsson, who plays the piano, made a plan for the song, and we spent a week in the big ballroom rehearsing, creating this sort of opus. Then we got in the cameras, set up the gear, and just went for it. We did two takes: a try-out then the take.
The repetition isn’t boring – how did you pull that off? Well, usually I really like boring repetition, but when we were arranging it we were interested in doing it in a more narrative way. The material just called for that – maybe it was the feeling of being there in this band for a week. It made us create more of an opus than a repeated loop.
How did you work out who took which role? I was really creating my dream band from the Reykjavik music scene. Everyone in there is a legend or a friend from different bands. I wanted to document this vibe in my generation. The Visitors was shot at this tender moment where our youth is just about to go. It’s almost like the last day of our youth. I was 36. Not a youth youth. But we caught the end of an era.
Were you always going to be playing the guitar in the bath? Yeah. When I go to Rokeby – and I go a lot, they’re like my American family, the Rokeby people – I still like to get into the bath and smoke a cigar. You really feel like a gilded-age person in the bathtub.
What happened after you all wandered into the horizon at the end of the video? We went back in the house and got hammered. We had a great party with the people who are on the terrace in the piece – the family that lives in the house and the tenants who live around it. We made a feast and I can remember in the early morning hours us blasting Wagner through the keytar amp. It was all very lovely.
Did you ever hear from Abba about this work, since it’s named after their final LP?Frida and Agnetha have never said anything! They probably don’t know about it. The piece has never been shown in Scandinavia, although it will be this October. The Visitors album is really hardcore melancholic Abba. There was this Icelandic death metal band called HAM who used to cover Abba songs and that’s how I got into them. My parents were hardcore socialists and of course they described Abba as bubblegum pop. [Laughs] I’m such a big Abba fan. They’re hardcore non-sellouts: Leonard Cohen did ads for Armani and Bob Dylan for Victoria’s Secret, but Abba funded the Swedish feminist party [Benny Andersson donated 1m kronor to Feminist Initiative in 2009].
This artwork has been described as ‘selfie-proof’ I think it’s a good thing that it can’t be shared online, it’s really about spatial experience. I was surprised that a lot of people watched the whole thing. I never usually intend my video pieces to be watched right through, but I suppose there’s something about the narrative and the music and the cannon part that really draws you in. The cannon was like Tchaikovsky’s 1812 overture. That’s my favourite thing: “Bring on the cannon!”
Is The Visitors your favourite work? It has a special place in my heart, but it was such a feelgood piece that I had to make some really dark shit afterwards. No artist has a favourite piece. Maybe you can pick one when you’re really old – but it’s something I’m super proud of. It took on a life of its own.
And now it’s the best artwork of the 21st century. What the hell is that about? [Laughs uproariously] Of course nobody thinks lists like this matter – unless you’re on them.
