Songs from a valley of love and delight presents on stage 7 tourists – no actors – Northerners who have moved partially or completely to different places on the Mediterranean. The interviews that were conducted with them have been converted into song lyrics, and music has been composed. They come on stage and sing their own interview material, which describes their own observations, desires and intimate feelings about the life they live. The spectator follows the show in a program book where the lyrics are printed, adding an extra fictional distance to the scene that plays on stage.

Songs from a valley of love and delight is the second part of the Syden diptych.

The notion of sentimentalism is pushed to its grotesque limits in the performance Syden. Songs from a Valley of Love and Delight. Seven respondents were asked to write a laud based on their own testimony. This resulted in intense emotional lyrics, accompanied by the music of Niko Hafkenscheid. The same spiritual and religious atmosphere of the set-up of the installation is retained in the performance. The audience is seated in two rows, facing the performers/singers, just like in a church. One by one, the retired performers step into the spherical triangle-shaped light beam and with an enormous devotion they start to sing their personal hymn. The content of the paeans range from how delicious the buffet in the hotel is to how lovely it is that the sun shines every day.

Jasper Delbecke, “Exploring the Essay in the New Documentary Turn”