After taking on cultural forms such as literature, theater and film in recent exhibition Bonniers Konsthall now focuses on the encounter between art and music. What is music? And what makes it something that is more than sound? This autumn’s large group exhibition More Than Sound, featuring work by leading Swedish and international artists, will explore the nature of music and be a place where music is created.
More than ever before, today’s society is permeated by music. The Internet and portable devices give us access to everything from Richard Wagner’s bombastic operas, to Patti Smith’s punk-poems or Angolan kuduro. Accessibility has expanded our musical experiences, and naturally left an impact on society and how music is shaped.
More Than Sound will focus on how music is being used and created within contemporary art. Bonniers Konsthall is presenting nine artists whose artworks hover between the spheres of art, music and composition, none being strictly either or, and we will be able to consider varieties of music, or perhaps, varied uses of music, performed by artists and musicians. The music and works of art are not orchestrated to exhibit a amalgamated point of view. Rather, their differences are principal, and the experience of silence, which occurs between shifts, is seen as equally compelling.
I intuitively search for deeper multi-sensory contexts that hypnotize me. I want to understand the peculiarities of perceptual psychology, for example how sight relates to space and sound to time.
Matti Kallioinen
Throughout the fall our encounters will range from classical compositions and opera-electronica to sound and light objects and chronicles told tonally, both live and recorded, in the gallery space and in concert halls and clubs around Stockholm. It is therefore an exhibition in which several kinds of music will coexist, overlap and occasionally contradict one another, developing, as it were, an incongruous harmony that explores and questions the confluence of what is colloquially understood as sound and that which is known as music.
An important part of the exhibition is our comprehensive program of live performances, workshops, and seminars, which will take place both at Bonniers Konsthall and at different venues around Stockholm. In a unique collaboration with Drottningholms Slottsteater, Bonniers Konsthall is organizing a concert to celebrate the 100-year anniversary of John Cage on September 5th. Other events include artist talks with Brian Eno and live performances with some of today’s most important composers such as Tarek Atoui, Carl Michael von Hausswolff, and Malin Bång.
Program
September 5th: A Celebration of Sound, John Cage 100 years
In memory of the prominent composer and sound artist John Cage Bonniers Konsthall in collaboration with Drottningholms Slottsteater will host an evening of music and performances. Participating artists and musicians include Malin Bång, Hans Ek and Modern Fantazias, Anna and Maria von Hausswolff, Carl Michael von Hausswolff with Michael Esposito, Scanner (Robin Rimbaud).
September 19th: AKTc
SRc (Sveriges Radio) in collaboration with Bonniers Konsthall invites artists to celebrate and acknowledge the closure of the innovative digital ‘sound-periodical’. SRc has over the last six years supported and presented the work of numerous artists and visionaries – such as Fia-Stina Sandlund, Erik Bünger, Susanne Skog, and Matti Kallioinen – looking to explore new ways of listening by means of Radio. Participating artists are Malin Elgrán with Radiokoreografi, Marja-Leena Silanpää and Anastasia with Bring New Life to Death.
October 3rd: I DIED HERE by Carl Michael von Hausswolff
Composer and artist Carl Michael von Hausswolff’s I died here (Matter IV), specially commissioned for More Than Sound, refers to von Hausswolff’s interest in EVP-technology.
October 10th: The Blow by Jenny Wilson
Pop musician Jenny Wilson has choreograped and created a soundtrack to a rythmic performance for a professional boxer. Once again Wilson returns to the character of the lone warrior – so often present in her work.
October 17th: Artist talk with Matti Kallioinen + Christian Marclays Graffiti Composition played by The Great Learning Orchestra
Join artist Matti Kallioinen for a discussion surrounding the realms of music and sound, followed by a musical performance by The Great Learning Orchestra, a diverse ensemble of more than 100 amateur and professional musicians from varying fields. They will play Graffiti Composition by Christian Marclay, among other pieces.
October 26th: Concert with Tarek Atoui
Composer Tarek Atoui gives a solo performance and hosts a workshop which explores notions inherent to instrument making from different perspectives. As a creator of innovative DIY electronics, Atoui composes, programs and performs tactile sound compositions that explore the limits of not only the instruments he engages, but also concepts of cultural noise. Limited number of seats.
October 27-28th: Invisiball
InvisiBall is a new concept for a two-person game, hybridizing tennis and sound, invented, composed and designed by Håkan Lidbo. The game is played in a pitch-black room, with blindfolds or blind people and includes 3-dimensional sounds, infrared sensors and music. Thought difficult to explain how the game is played, it is something to be experienced. The project was awarded the 2011 Swedish Post and Telecom Agency’s innovation prize for making culture and sports more accessible for people with disabilities.
November 7th: From MTV to VJ culture
Theorists, musicians and VJ:s in conversation about the use of visual art within the contemporary music scene.
November 14th: Concert with Malin Bång
Swedish composer Malin Bång will present a new musical composition, December Splinters II where the movement patterns of animals, objects and machines are given a musical interpretation. In the performance, Bång and her fellow musicians will, apart from playing traditional instruments, interact with the installation objects and sounds within the exhibition More Than Sound.
November 30th: Bonniers Konsthall Remixed
Hans Berg has written the song Hit, stroke, turn to be used as a soundtrack for Bonniers Konsthall. This fall, the public will have the opportunity to remix his song, and a winner will be announced. More information about the competition will come.
Everything is subject to change.
