• Josefine Opsahl
  • Hypertopia Undone (2025)
    (for Piano Trio)

  • Edition Wilhelm Hansen Copenhagen (World)

Commissioned by Kuhmon Kamarimusiikki / Kuhmo Chamber Music

  • vl.vc.pf
  • 20 min

Programme Note

HYPERTOPIA UNDONE is the undoing of the “HYPERTOPIA” we are living in - a pumped up, accelerating society and state of the collective mind characterized by increasingly exaggerated, repetitive and meaningless hyperactivity.

The modern society’s obsession with economic growth and strive for supremacy has led to an increasing pressure on its inhabitants - constantly demanding more extreme and multifaceted abilities, higher production capacity, more efficiency and at a constantly increasing pace.
Machines were invented to redeem the high demands by extending the possibilities of the human body and mind, and hereby push efficiency forward. But instead of solving problems, these new mechanical and digital entities established new productivity standards and made human beings push themselves even further - beyond the boundaries of what the human body, mind and senses are capable of and can endure.

The consequences and signs of exhaustion are showing both internally: psychologically and emotionally as well as externally: in the communities and environments that surround us. Balances and mutual respect between body and mind, individuals, communities society, other species and entities, culture and nature are distorted and is leading to growing meaninglessness, ignorance, brutality, wars and unnecessary terror.
Man is standing on the brink of self-destruction and the deep devastating acknowledgement of how mankind’s behavior might have irrevocably damaged balances in nature - yet still, we manically push forward.

HYPERTOPIA UNDONE is a manifestation of a deep need to confront this crisis - to process it, let go and to heal the broken connections and call for a different society.

Inspired by Kuhmo Chamber Music Festival’s festival theme 2025: ‘Nordic Utopia’, HYPERTOPIA UNDONE seeks to heal the broken natural connections, balances and communities of our cosmology by looking to the connection with the ancient wisdom of the Nordic Nature and its natural processes.

Through four movements the current HYPERTOPIA society is depicted, examined, confronted, undone and the potential foundation for a new restored utopian cosmic balance is evoked.

Josefine Opsahl