Quan­tongue Les­sons / Luke Deane & Rag­nar Árni Ólafs­son

Ragnar Árni Ólafsson and Luke Deane have created odd and surprising compositions together consistently over the past decade, beginning with seminal work In Hail (2016) which explored notions of reversed-time both musically, audibly and on-stage, and Ænd (2020), a composition which took place across a 30 year extended present, and therefore was both an initial research, and something that was already finished. Their joint fascination with time, relativity and what constitutes the "present moment" has led them to create a unique part-improvised TV Show. Ragnar improvises using his guitar, voice and any objects or subjects in the room, and Luke sings beautifully and sometimes in a suddenly deliberately ugly way. They also talk candidly to each other about whatever comes up at the front of their minds, and sometimes this is strange and revealing. This work wakes us up, in an unexpected way, and shows us unique impressions of our shared present as performers and viewers. It's been described as "pure insanity", "next-level" and "a thrilling combination of total freedom and meticulous precision".

The project is a kind of series consisting of different improvised elements, video art, dialogues and more. The first episode of the series premiered at Dark Music Days in 2025.

MORE INFO:
https://www.darkmusicdays.is/event.../2026/quantonguelessons