ISSUE Project Room’s Swedish Energies Festival returns to NY for the 5th-annual edition. Presented by ISSUE in collaboration with EMS and the Consulate General of Sweden in New York, over two free evenings at Greenpoint's Saint Vitus, the series brings together a wide-ranging international lineup of visionary electronic and improvisational musicians spanning genres of sound and visual art.
Friday, December 4th - 8pm (Free)
John Duncan
Jana Winderen
SØS Gunver Ryberg
Saturn and the Sun
Åke Hodell *Tape piece from the EMS archives presented by Mats Lindström
DJ JG Thirlwell
Contemporary artist John Duncan lives and works in Bologna, Italy. His body of work spans performance, video, experimental music, installation, pirate radio and television genres, often involving the use of recorded sound— including recordings from shortwave radio, field recordings and voice. His events and installations are a form of existential research, often confrontational in nature. Duncan has worked with the Los Angeles Free Music Society and artists Chris & Cosey, z'ev, and Jim O'Rourke.
With a background in mathematics, chemistry, fish ecology, and a masters in Fine Arts from Goldsmiths in London, Jana Winderen researches the hidden depths with the latest technology, revealing the complexity and strangeness of the unseen world beneath. She has installed her work in the Park Avenue Tunnel in 2014 and exhibited in Soundings: A Contemporary Score at MoMA in 2013. Winderen was recently an artist-in-residence at the TBA21 Academy and releases her audio-visual works on Touch. In 2011 she won the Golden Nica, Ars Electronica, for Digital Musics & Sound Art. Amongst her activities are immersive multi-channel installations and concerts and performances all over the world. She currently lives and works in Oslo, Norway.
SØS Gunver Ryberg makes electronic music and sound art that challenges the mind. With insistent rhythms and explorations of textures and timbres, the result is often raw and in your face. Last year, she collaborated with Christian Vogel on the SGR ^ CAV cassette for the mighty Tapeworm label.
Henrik Rylander and Joachim Nordwall have been the core of the ritual rock band The Skull Defekts for the last ten years. Since 2014, Saturn And The Sun is their common ground for strictly electronic works, often with a harsh psychedelic feel. Rylander is a professional crime scene photographer and has a background in the sweaty garage rock band Union Carbide Prod. Nordwall has run the iDEAL label since 1998.
Åke Hodell (1919-2000) was one of the founding fathers of the text/sound art scene of the 1960s. A trained fighter pilot who discovered poetry and art after a serious crash during practice, Hodell counts the Fylkingen venue in Stockholm and EMS as important spaces for his sound experiments. Mats Lindström, director of EMS since 2004, introduces Åke Hodell's "Mr Smith in Rhodesia" (1969-1970), a piece that was banned from Swedish national radio for 15 years. The piece was first performed on April 16, 1970 at a Fylkingen concert at the Modern Museum, Stockholm and produced at SR/EMS.
JG Thirlwell (DJ) is an Australian-born, Brooklyn-based singer, composer, and producer. Thirlwell has been producing music since 1981 when his first records as Foetus appeared through his own Self Immolation label. He has since released numerous records under various Foetus incarnations, including Steroid Maximus, Wiseblood, Anorexia, and Clint Ruin.
