|
Carl Michael
von Hausswolff and Thomas Nordanstad
Al Qasr, Bahriyah Oasis, Egypt, 2005 (30')
Hashima, Japan, 2002 (20')
Dominique Goblet,
Carl Michael von Hausswolff & Guy-Marc Hinant
Sketch for Machinery
Ghost
Dominique Goblet
shows her work in galleries and publishes her stories in magazine
and books. In all cases, what she tries to pursue is an art of the multi-faceted
narrative. Their exhibitions of paintings, strictly, is another way to
tell - from frame to frame and in the whole space of the gallery - an
other form of fragmented stories. Their strips question the deep or thin
relations between the human beings. As author, she has taken part to almost
all the Frigobox series published by Fréon (Brussels) and to several
Lapin magazines, published by L'Association (Paris). A silent strip
is published in the gigentic Comix 2000 (L'Association). In beginning
of 2002, a second book is published by the same editor : Souvenir d'une
journée parfaite - A perfect day memories - a complex story
that combines autobiographical facts and fictions.
Carl Michael von
Hausswolff was born in 1956 in Linkšping, Sweden.
He lives and works in Stockholm.Since
the end of the 70s, Hausswolf has worked as a composer using the tape
recorder as his main instrument and as a conceptual visual artist working
with performance art, light- and sound installations and photography.
His audio compositions from
1979 to 1992, constructed almost exclusively from basic material taken
from earlier audiovisual installations and performance works, consists
essentially of complex macromal drones with a surface of aesthetic elegance
and beauty. In later works, Hausswolff has retained the aesthetic elegance
and the drone and added a purely isolationistic sonic condition to composing.
Between 1996 and 2005 Hausswolff has boiled away even more ornamental
meat from the bones: his works are pure, intuitive studies of electricity,
frequency functions and tonal autism within the framework of a conceptual
stringent cryption. Hausswolff's music has been performed throughout Europe
and in North America and Asia in festivals such as Sonar, Electrograph
and I.D.E.A.L. In these concerts a very physical, almost brutal, side
of Hausswolff's work has broken through. The audience very often fall
into a form of trance, dosing away in their seats. Other times people
from the events has thanks him "for the massage" or has expressed
a "feeling that the flesh came off the bones" due to the vibrations
of the low frequencies used.
Hausswolff's audiovisual
works have also found outlets in pictorial art. His "Red" series using
red lights in various architectural misfittings has shown a rather critical
side of his works. In Santa Fé an abandoned cemetery was lit up
in the nighttime by 20 000 watts (Red Night, 1999); in Liverpool the river
Mersey was treated (Red Mersey, 2004) and in Chiangmai, Zagreb and Chicago
abandoned houses around the cities was lighted up and photographed (Red
Empty, 2003-2004). His interest in architecture and topography has also
resulted in the films "Hashima, Japan 2002" and "Al Qasr,
Bahriyah Oasis, Egypt, 2005" made in collaboration with Thomas Nordanstad.
In 1997 he launched a series
of works under the title "Operations of Spirit Communication". This work,
inspired by Electronic Voice Phenomena (EVP) techniques, was combining
and merging sound and vision using analogue and digital technologies such
as oscilloscopes, radars and sonars. These ready-made machines were showing
the possibilities of ghosts and other kinds of life forms living inside
a certain space or inside the electricity grids. The cities of Paris,
Linz, Bangkok, Shanghai, Banja Luka, Berlin, Kuala Lumpur, New York City,
Tokyo, Frankfurt am Main, Stockholm and Copenhagen have been under this
magnifying ghost glass. More recently the exhibition "The Complete
Operations of Spirit Communication" was shown at OK Centrum in Linz,
Austria.
His interest in audio and
radio technology also came in light at the 49th Biennale di Venezia in
2001. In a collaborative work with Tommi Grönlund, Petteri Nisunen,
Leif Elggren and Anders Tomrén he had constructed a radio receiver
that could play all radio transmissions from the Venice area at the same
time. The entire Nordic Pavilion was filled with this mix of sounds producing
a beautiful and at the same time profound religious audio graphic environment.
Other radio tech works include the usage of scanners and EVP frequencies.
Hausswolf has also created
a series of social platforms, places where people can meet and consume.
His "Thinner- and Low Frequency Bar" was used at the Momentum
biennial in Moss, Norway, Prato, Italy and London and his "Glue-
(Tobacco-) and High Frequency Lounge" was used in Geneva and in Prato.
These works show Hausswolff's critical view on the societyŐs hypocritical
treatment of drugs and addiction. The audience could sniff the highly
toxic substances thinner and contact glue while smoking cigarettes and
getting penetrated by the either low or high sine wave tones.
In 1993 he and Leif Elggren developed
the ever-lasting conceptual piece "The Kingdoms of Elgaland-Vargaland".
Here a new country was established in the world. Its territories was all
border areas between every country, the No Man Land, mental territories
such as the hypnagogue dream state and digital areas on the Internet.
Paraphernalia such as a constitution including flags, coat of arms, and
national hymn was produced and letters was sent to every government in
the world asking for recognition. In 1995 an application for membership
in the United Nations was sent in and in 2005 the New United Nations was
proclaimed. Elgaland-Vargaland now has over 700 citizens and is frequently
manifesting itself through the channels of conceptual art. Embassies have
been established in Stockholm, Mexico City, Oujda, London, New York, San
Francisco, Osaka, Barcelona, Helsinki and many other places. In 1995 the
country annexed Schlaraffenland and at the 50th Biennale di Venezia in
2003 the state annexed Thomas More's Utopia at the Utopia Station project.
Hausswolff is also a freelance
curator at Färgfabriken Centre for Contemporary Art and Architecture
in Stockholm. From 1999 until now he has curated retrospective exhibitions
by the works of the EVP pioneer Friedrich Jürgenson, his long time
colleague Leif Elggren, and Swedish electronic music pioneer Rune Lindblad.
He also curated a special exhibition of works by his mentor Brion Gysin
as well as works by Max Fredriksson, Henrik Rylander and Henrik Andersson.
In 2003-05 he curated the
sound art project "freq_out", in Copenhagen, Oslo and Paris.
This project includes the individual works from 12 sound artists shown
in a collective way. The frequency range from 15 - 12 000 Hz was divided
up into 12 sections and handed out to the artists. These exhibitions has
showed a new way to deal and treat sound works as an exhibitional form,
a form that mostly has been chaotic and non functional in many recent
group shows.
In 2003 Hausswolff curated
the 2nd International Biennial for Contemporary Art in Göteborg,
Sweden. Here he mixed sound artists like Ryoji Ikeda, Else Marie Pade
and John Duncan with dictator painters from Libya and Cambodia; contemporary
artists like Phill Niblock, Simone Kaern-Aaberg and Surasi Kusolwong with
ready-made artists like Friedrich Jürgenson and the inventor of the
mail bomb Martin Ekenberg; painters like Jan HŚfström with painters
like Kim Gordon and Russell Haswell.
In spring 2005 Hausswolff completed
his Starhouse project for The Land Foundation, organised by Kamin Lertchaiprasert
and Rirkrit Tiravanija in Chiangmai, Thailand.
Guy Marc Hinant
is a filmmaker, (The Garden is full of Metal (1996), Éléments
d'un Merzbau oublié, (1999), The Pleasure of Regrets - a
Portrait of Léo Kupper (2003) He is the curator of An Anthology
of Noise and Electronic Music CD Series and manages the Sub Rosa label.
He writes fragmented fictions and notes on aesthetics (some of his texts
have been published by Editions de l'Heure).
.
[top]
. |