Let’s hear it for hippie communes. While living in an”idyllic" one in the Polish countryside, the in-demand Icelandic artist Ragnar Kjartansson first wrote the composition that in 2011 became Song, a six-hour-long performance piece at the Carnegie Museum of Art, Pittsburgh. The resulting video of the same title goes on show in the Cleveland Museum of Art on 28 June (until 16 August). The artist told Reto Thüring, Cleveland’s associate curator of contemporary art in the museum’s magazine, that he grew up respecting the power of repetition. In the piece the artist's three angelic nieces sing the gentle folk song over and over again. “I was an altar boy in a Catholic church, where you have the same thing, repetition,” until it becomes holy. On top of that, his parents were theatre people. In rehearsals "it’s always the same scene, again and again, all day long,” recalls the former hippy-trippy performance artist.
