German artist Rike Scheffler is writer in residence in Reykjavík in May 2021, hosted by the Goethe Institut and Reykjavík UNESCO City of Literature. Scheffler is a poet, performer and sound artist, creating work at the intersection of language and music. She came by sea to Seyðisfjörður in east Iceland and drove from there to Reykjavík after a few days of quarantine. The Reykjavík City of Literature office is thrilled to welcome this good guest from Berlin, our first foreign guest in the Gröndal's House residency in 2021, due to the pandemic.
Poetry, Music and Performance
Rike Scheffler's work varies from poetry and poetical essays for publication in journals and anthologies to readings, concerts and performances, some solo, some with fellow musicians. She also creates sonic ecosystems and spacial installations. As a live performer, she uses her voice, loop station, effect pedals and synthesizers to create immersive realities challenging common perceptions.
Scheffler has received various scholarships and has performed at festivals around the globe. Her poetry collection der rest ist resonanz (kookbooks, 2014) won the Orphil Debut Prize for political and avant-garde writing. She often collaborates with fellow artists such as Danish poet Mette Moestrup and Icelandic-Canadian artist a rawlings, the sound virtuosos Robert Lippok and Claudio Puntin, as well as Ólafur Elíasson’s Institute for Spacial Experiments. Her work has been shown at Neue Nationalgalerie & Hamburger Bahnhof in Berlin and at Palais de Tokyo, Paris.
Language, nature, environment
In Reykjavík Scheffler will work on a new multilingual poetry collection, with the working title Rite now, and collaborate with a rawlings. She plans to go on tours in and around Reykjavík and explore Icelandic nature and landspape. She will also perform her work publicly during her stay. Scheffler and rawlings have previously performed together, most recently they presented their transdisciplinary collaborative performance 'becoming water' in Aarhus, Denmark in 2018 as part of the Lyd+Litterature Festival and in Reykjavik in the same year, as part of a pop-up restaurant performance-art concert series at the Marshall House, initiated by Victoría Elíasdóttir and Ólafur Elíasson.
More about Rike Scheffler
Rike Scheffler's Website - www.rikescheffler.tumblr.com
Portrait of the Artist at Louisiana Art Museum's channel.
Projects with Ólafur Elíasson's Institute for Spacial Experiments.
Looppoem honey I'm home on vimeo.