Photo: Signe Fuglesteg Luksengard
Ultima 2025: Revisited
As the year draws to a close, we pause to gather the threads.
Ultima is not only about what happens on stage. The festival also lives in what surrounds it: the conversations, texts, reflections – and the traces left behind. In 2025, this took shape through films, essays, interviews, podcasts, images and reviews. We have now brought some of this together and are sharing it as written, sonic and visual throwback to the festival – for the quieter pre-Christmas days.
Enjoy!
Behind the scenes
This year’s opening film lets the artists tell the story of Ultima 2025 in their own words. Through selected productions, we are taken behind the scenes and close to the processes and ideas that shaped the festival. Alongside this, two very different productions point to the breadth of Ultima: as both a meeting place and an experimental space.
The films alternate between Norwegian and English, with subtitles.
Foto: Fritt
Ultima Pavilion, located at Tigerplassen by Oslo Central Station, functioned as an open gathering place for sound, encounters and exploration – with concerts, installations and activities created specifically for the site.
Foto: Nabeeh Samaan
DRAGONBLOOD, developed through a residency at The Norwegian Theatre, took shape as a genre-crossing festival-within-the-festival inspired by the world of games. Performance, music, theatre and digital expression merged into a shared imaginative universe.
In depth with the artists
Foto: Nabeeh Samaan
Music journalist Rob Young spoke with selected artists, offering rare insights into the works and the processes behind the productions they were involved in: Nina Guo and Tom Pauwels in Liquid Room XII, David Harrington in Elja, and Ewa Jacobsson and Hilde Marie Holsen in Labyrinthic Explanation of Knowledge.
The conversations are available as podcast episodes in English.
Foto: Nabeeh Samaan
At the same time, young writers — in collaboration with Ballade and the Department of Musicology at the University of Oslo — interviewed Ultima’s performers and composers in depth.
The resulting articles are available in Norwegian.
International perspectives
In his coverage of Ultima 2025, David Kettle in Classical Music UK describes the festival as a place where new music, concerts and installations meet public space and architecture, creating fresh and unexpected experiences.
Foto: Nabeeh Samaan
Music journalist and BBC presenter Kate Molleson staging of Cassettes 100 in an essay that explores how the performance challenges our perception of sound, time and space — opening up different ways of experiencing repetition, memory and collective listening.
You can also isten to the essay's audio version.
Ultima in the public sphere
Foto: Gorm Kallestad / NTB
The festival was also closely followed by the Norwegian Broadcasting Corporation (NRK) through radio and TV features, including Dagsrevyen, Nyhetsmorgen, Spillerom, Musikklivet and Klassiske opplevelser. These features placed the productions in a broader context for a wide audience.
The features are available in Norwegian.
Finally, you can revisit the moments through images from across the festival – from stages and conversations to unexpected encounters in the city.
We wish you happy reading, listening and revisiting – and a merry Christmas.
