From Critique to Creation: Theory of the Subject's Place in Trond Reinholdtsen's Institutionally Critical Oeuvre

Trond Reinholdtsen (b. 1972) has fashioned an intricately fantastical music-theatrical world that provokes listeners to ponder the conditions of their own world and dares them to imagine what a different society could look like. Approached from theatrical, musical, and political analytical viewpoints, my dissertation places Reinholdtsen’s intermedia piano concerto Theory of the Subject (2016; Theory) at the inflection point of his institutionally critical oeuvre. Before Theory, Reinholdtsen premiered three works which were essential to the development of music-theatrical techniques for expressing his institutional criticisms. Blending elements of concerto, performance art, art theory, art installation, live video, and political messaging, Theory is the culmination of these acquired methods. As a peculiar artwork of institutional critique, Theory levels its critique, not so much at the institution in which the artwork is positioned, but at the world which creates the conditions for the failures of that institution. Theory’s theatrical narrative is the story of New Music piano soloist Ellen Ugelvik’s struggle (and failure) to play truly new and socially transformative music within a neoliberal world. Through its ridicule by the Facebook group “Sløseriombudsmannen” and its inclusion in Morten Traavik’s theater work Sløserikommisjonen (2021), Theory helped bring Norway into on-going polarizing (though important) debates about the status and role of public art in Norwegian society. After Theory, Reinholdtsen felt he had exhausted institutional critique’s usefulness for his work and decided to focus solely on the creation of his own institution, The Norwegian Opra, and its Ø series (wherein a ragtag group of societal outcasts tries to form a utopian society). Reinholdtsen’s political stance aligns with Berlin’s Dadaism yet differentiates itself by embracing sincerity and vulnerability. The power of Reinholdtsen’s work resides in how he combines artforms and political, cul