Panic diaries

Frej Wedlund & K!ART

29.11.2025 21.00
KoncertKirken | Blågårds Pl. 6A


Panic diaries is what happens when you try to make something out of a nervous system in disrepair. It’s not quite autobiographical, not quite documentary, not quite fictional, and not particularly interested in the difference. The piece moves through panic in its quieter forms. The kind you can mostly hide in public, the kind that just slightly interrupts your ability to function, walk, eat, send an email, but also fills you with crippling existential dread.

There’s no grand arc or resolution. Just the persistence of sensation, the awkwardness of describing it, and the increasingly self-conscious compulsion to turn it into something performable.

It isn’t trying to fix anything. It doesn’t ask for empathy or promise catharsis. It’s just one person turning experience – his own and others’ – into form, and hoping that if it’s specific enough, it might resonate.

At its core, Panic diaries is an experiment in sitting with discomfort, in trying not to resolve it too quickly. And maybe in figuring out how much you can say out loud before it becomes a bit much.

The video element of Panic diaries includes anonymous texts written specifically for this piece by individuals who responded to open calls for contributions about experiences with panic and anxiety. The texts are unedited; longer submissions may have been excerpted, which was made clear during the submission process. While the words remain untouched, the presentation – including the musical setting – inevitably reframes them. These are unedited submissions from real people sharing their feelings or experiences; they are not fictional or composite materials.


This work contains frank discussions of detailed panic attack and anxiety symptoms, references to self-harm behaviours, mental health struggles, references to medication use, mild sexual content, and references to suicidal ideation.


Program:
Frej Wedlund: Panic diaries (2025) [premiere]

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Frej Wedlund

As a composer, I am drawn to creating fragile, intimate listening spaces, where musicians, audience, and I meet in a shared, vulnerable focus. My music is often quiet and melancholic, sometimes tinged with nostalgia, but always with an underlying edge. Recently, my practice has expanded from a primarily acoustic focus to a dual exploration – at times intermedial, at times investigating unusual physical interactions, letting acoustic instruments and objects occupy a space that feels both corporeal and strangely electronic. I am drawn to sounds that carry an inherent fragility, and also enjoy integrating external music into my works.

K!ART

[pronounced klart] is an experimental music ensemble and creative platform based in Copenhagen, Denmark since 2019. The ensemble is characterized by an open-minded and exploratory approach to music and presents intermedial music events ranging from experimental instrumental music to music-theatre, multimedia, and performance art works. K!ART has collaborated with a large number of composers and artists leading to more than 50 world premieres of new works. The ensemble has presented projects at a number of festivals such as MINU_festival_for_expanded_music, SPOR, Klang – Copenhagen Experimental Music Festival, Guadeamus, Warsaw Autumn, Uuden Musiikin Lokakuu, and Ung Nordisk Musik.

Credits:
Frej Wedlund (composition and tape texts)
Additional text materials by anonymous/pseudonyms contributors

Performed by K!ART:
Mikkel Schou (guitar)
Rob Durnin (piano)
Ida Nørby (cello)
Hsiao Tung-Yuan (percussion)

Panic diaries was commissioned by K!ART and MINU with support from KODA Kultur, as well as Dansk Komponistforenings Fair Practice Prize 2024 with support from Koda Kultur.