A conversation with Jenny Hval, the Norwegian experimental pop musician and novelist, about her new theatrical and interdisciplinary music piece I Want To Be A Machine that she will perform at Rewire 2024. Responding to Die Hamletmaschine (1977) by the German playwright and poet Heiner Müller – a play which sought to make an avantgarde, performative machine out of playwright William Shakespeare’s Hamlet – Hval’s new work considers the machinic and animatronic implications of pop performance, both on the stage and in life. The piece, a musical performance featuring new music written and performed by Hval and three musicians, asks what stories artists can tell in a moment when popular music has lost many of the aspects that make it a visceral and philosophical experience. 

Jenny Hval spent the last 15 years cultivating a broad collection of pop sounds: from the noir discordance of Innocence is Kinky (2013) and the brooding sanguine whispers of Blood Bitch (2016), to the galloping electro-pop of The Practice of Love (2018) and the carefree blue-sky sounds of Classic Objects (2022).