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From the jury
"Without language and without acting, FC Bergman evokes, purely through physical actions and punishing live music, a rich imagination of a bygone society that lived to the rhythm of the seasons. But just when you think peasant life is in danger of becoming very bucolic after all, the performance tilts with the speed of a steam train."

In 700 BC, the Greek poet Hesiodos wrote down for his brother a series of advice on the art of farming. This letter, entitled Works and Days, became a farmer’s almanac in verse form, which pairs agricultural advice with a manual for life in general.

FC Bergman adopts Hesiodos’ title for its own reflection on life on (and with) the land. A life lived to the beat of the seasons, according to the laws of the land and the customs of the community that cultivates it. A new age, however, with new possibilities and desires, is weeding its way into this fragile marriage between man and earth.

Where The Sheep Song (2021) was an ode to the freedom of the individual and the social engineering of life, Work and Days is a veritable ode to the unstoppable power of the group and the boundless power of nature. Although in a way – and inevitably – it is also an elegy.