Aurora Aksnes is not naive about her mission to be a musician and an activist. Ten years ago, this was a variant on the cool multi-hyphenate job description in everyone’s Instagram bio. Now, not so much. The current cultural moment is something she describes as a kind of collective dip: a time when public political expression feels unfashionable, even suspect.
“People are more scared of activists than they are of the world dying,” she says, with what sounds like genuine bewilderment. “More scared of activists than of war. Isn’t that interesting?” She pauses and wrinkles her nose, but it’s not a rhetorical question – Aurora is nothing if not curious.
