Ex-Fiancée

Ex-Fiancée is a solo project that is not quite a solo project. Brooklyn-based composer/multi-instrumentalist Sven Britt makes music under the direction of long-time collaborator (and husband), choreographer Chris Masters. Employing the same tactics used to make his acclaimed contemporary dance work, Masters focuses Britt’s talents to interrogate myriad issues based on the conceptual precipice of each project.

The debut album, A Feast That Never Comes—with an accompanying dance film which has received 725+ awards and selections at film festivals across the globe, including 100+ Best Music Video awards—is an investigation of technology’s effects on our understanding of self and others, communication, mental health, digital outrage, public vs. private presentation, and cycles of abuse.

In order to arrive at a work that addresses such fraught subject matters, the precipice is treated as king, culminating in research-based tactics such as erasures of academic articles and one-take exercises after extensive immersion into wide-ranging subject matter.

The gulf between intention and consequence is massive, but while some see it as a hindrance, we see it as an endlessly generative wellspring of processes that invite myriad and disparate responses—so, rather than crawling and clawing our way toward the impossible goal of clarity and control, we encourage that gulf to become an ocean.

This is not a declaration, but rather, an interrogation. You are encouraged to embrace your unique history and perspective to ask your own questions, and provide your own answers. The work remains fundamentally unfinished without you.