Hvalslag is a collaboration between interdisciplinary artist a rawlings and  composer José Luis Anderson (Andervel). Using Icelandic language as a point of inquiry (where whale/hval sounds like suffering/kval), rawlings devised libretto and gallery installation for Hvalslag which hinges on two hundred Icelandic place names that contain the word hval. Through the libretto and treating the gallery installation as a graphic score, Anderson’s composition elaborates on the cultural relationship between whales and Icelandic society.

Human-cetacean interactions in Iceland have been encoded within Icelandic toponymy, with bays, peninsulas, and even a fjord featuring the Icelandic word for whale (hval). How does the word hval provide a sense of the grandiose, of the mythic, of the monstrous, of the imponderable, of the sustainable, of the unknowable within its attachment to place? Toponyms engage less so with the actual signifier hval but rather with the socio-cultural semantic halo that circles this collection of letters. Hvalslag was commissioned for the exhibition "Chewing the Tundra” (November-December 2022, Kunsthalle Exnergasse, Vienna, Austria). 

Hvalslag was composed using actual vocalizations from humpback and pilot whales, which were digitally manipulated to create textures upon which human performers acted. To develop Hvalslag’s sound, Anderson structured Improvisation sessions on the behavior of whales in herds, the properties of sound waves under the ocean, sound textures, timbres, and the effects of climate change on marine ecosystems. A compendium of old Icelandic folk songs formed the reference for a melodic passage sung by rawlings in the second half of the composition.

Sound production for Hvalslag incorporated pitch and formant manipulation, synthesis, sound panning, reverberation, and various analogue recording techniques. Hvalslag is performed by José Luis Anderson - Andervel (voice), a rawlings (voice), Sæbjörg Eva Hlynsdóttir (flute, saxophone, and voice), Soffía Jónsdóttir (cello), Ellen Kristjánsdóttir (voice), and Bergþóra Ægisdóttir (voice). Recorded, mixed, and produced by José Luis Anderson in Reykjavík, Iceland, October 2022.

This work acknowledges the support of RANNÍS, Carlsbergfondet, and HM Queen Margrethe II’s and Vigdís Finnbogadóttir’s Interdisciplinary Research Centre on Ocean, Climate, and Society (ROCS).