Skip to Content

The Visitors by Ragnar Kjartansson

(2012) Nine videos on nine screens. On eight, a different room of a grand house, a musician, wearing headphones, with a microphone and instrument. For example, Kjartansson in a bathtub with an acousitc guitar, or a man with a bass guitar in a bookshelf-lined study, or woman with a cello at the top of a landing. On the ninth, a family sits on a columned porch, one of them has an acoustic guitar.

They play a song together, despite being in different rooms. At about 45 minutes into the song, the players start to filter out of their rooms and gather around the piano, and their respective screens go dark. They make their way out of the house, join those on the porch, and walk into the green field, still singing.

One of my favorite pieces.

[Some private content has been omitted.]