The second annual Swedish Energies, presented by ISSUE Project Room, EMS, and the Consulate General of Sweden NYC, is a free two-night festival featuring a huge lineup of some of Sweden’s most exciting experimental musicians and artists. Performances include collaborations between U.S. and Swedish artists, as well as a cross-section of Sweden's most pre-eminent experimental groups.
Screening begins at 7pm, concert begins at 8pm.
ANASTASIA AX (S)
ERIK BÜNGER (S)
HILD SOFIE TAFJORD (NO)
TREPANERINGSRITUALEN (S)
THE GAGMEN feat Aaron Dilloway, Nate Young & Joachim Nordwall (US/S)
LARS SILTBERG (S) Film
Curated by Lawrence Kumpf, Mats Lindström and Joachim Nordwall.
ANASTASIA AX
The end of Swedish Energies 2012 and the beginning of something else: Anastasia Ax lives and works in New York and has recently exhibited at Moderna Muséet in Stockholm and AM Art Space in Shanghai. Her performance art is breaking the walls between artist and audience. Her violent, yet meditative and calm performances are like a black and white warzone in some heaven or hell we will never visit. Ax uses loud noise, created by herself and Lars Siltberg, as soundtrack to her performances producing pure energy.
ERIK BÜNGER
Berlin-based (but perhaps, still Swedish at heart) artist, writer and composer Erik Bünger works with manipulation of existing media, to find known or unknown meanings and messages under the surface. For Swedish Energies, Bünger presents his lecture/performance The Third Man, which explores the idea of music as a virus.
The Third Man: A lecture performance
Erik Bünger's lecture traces the footprints of an elusive entity called ‘The Third Man’. We hear him move between the pins of the music box; a staggering, predestined forward motion in a crude imitation of life. He takes up residence in the ecstatic body of Julie Andrews, turning seven innocent children into musical puppets, each one reduced to a note in the diatonic scale.
"As a child my father told me about the movie: In a city somewhere, a man searches for another man. Everyone he meets tells him that his search is in vain, for the other man is already dead, but he refuses to give up and suddenly he believes he catches a glimpse of the other man’s face in a doorway. Then dad sat down in front of the piano and in his own tiptoeing kind of way he played ‘The Theme from the Third Man’. It made me dream of footsteps echoing in back alleys and a great, green shadow flickering by in the corner of my eye. Every time I heard that melody I had the peculiar feeling of someone observing me from a hidden viewpoint."
HILD SOFIE TAFJORD
Norwegian musician and noise magician Hild Sofie Tafjord has that amazing power to make things sound deep. She has been pushing the limits of the French Horn for years, playing it acoustically or through effects of intense kind. Tafjord gained renown with Maja Ratkje as groundbreaking noise duo FE-MAIL, as member of improv group SPUNK, the performance group Agrare, and quartet Kvartett Lemur to name a few. Tafjord's noise is brutally beautiful, multi layered and filled with thrilling frequencies and textures. Meditation for demons, and angels.
TREPANERINGSRITUALEN
Trepaneringsritualen explores themes of religion, magick and the occult realms of consciousness, taking musical cues from the old schools of ritual ambient & death industrial. Rhythmic and seething at times, and oozing forward with a creeping sense of desolation, Trepaneringsritualen conjures forth bleak but mesmerizing visions of the end-times. Leading out of the ashes of the now defunct Dead Letters Spell Out Dead Words, Trepaneringsritualen belongs to the gloomiest part of Scandinavia. He calls his live performances rituals. This is truly dark stuff.
THE GAGMEN
The Gagmen is Nate Young (Wolf Eyes, Regression, Stare Case etc), Aaron Dilloway (ex-Wolf Eyes, The Nevari Butchers, Spine Scavanger) and Joachim Nordwall (The Skull Defekts, Alvars Orkester). This is will be their second show ever, and debut North American performance. Comprised of three overly active gentlemen, always recording and touring, sometimes or always looking for the uncomfortable and unknown. As one Stockholm newspaper wrote after their debut gig, "What the hell is this?"
LARS SILTBERG
Lars Siltberg, currently based in NYC, works with video, installations and sound. Under his scrutinizing gaze, humans become analogous with other objects- leveling the field and erasing binaries and points of separation. Siltberg's interested in ritual and standardised testing dates back to his performance videos such as Man with balls on hands and feet (1998-2001), and continues into his more cinematic works including Alter Human (2010). His films feature grinding soundtracks carved out from the atmospheric sounds of his images, from vast arctic landscapes and deep ice cavities. Siltberg’s work has been shown at 49th Venice Biennale, Miro Foundation in Barcelona, Moderna Museet, Stockholm, STUK Kunsthalle Leuven, NGBK, Berlin and more.
