LIEBIG12 presents:
A conversation with artists and composers John Duncan and Carl Michael von Hausswolff
Friday, April 27th at 7 pm
Liebigstrasse 12 Berlin - Friedrichshain
liebig12.wordpress.com
John Duncan and Carl Michael von Hausswolff will be presenting a selection of their video works followed by a discussion with the audience.
Screenings:
ELECTRA, TEXAS 2008
Carl Michael von Hausswolff and Thomas Nordanstad - 24:44 min.
Electra is a small, sleepy town with an almost deserted town center, yet around it the pumpjacks are bringing up the last remaining drops of black gold in the area. The procedure is the same as in the heydays, before the depression, when more than 5000 wells and pumpjacks going up and down could be seen in the fields. Shot in the north of Texas close to the Red River, in a long, panoramic shots and edited with a slow, bluesy soundtrack, Electra, Texas 2008, completes a cycle of three individual films “Hashima, Japan, 2002” and “Al Qasr, Bahriyah Oasis, Egypt 2005”, result of the collaboration between the artist Carl Michael von Hausswolff and the filmmaker Thomas Nordanstad. Over the last decade von Hausswolff and Nordanstad have been collaborating on a series of films documenting post industrial locations, places that were once looked upon as glorious examples of mans ability to develop earths natural recourses. Today these same sites appear as ghost towns, exploited and drained of the wealth that once surrounded them.
We believe that there is a beauty in just watching life take place. We try to let the time in the scenes we shoot act as a metaphor for time passing also in the viewers contemplation, and we hope to make these kind of “documentary films” as tributes to the people who were and still are creating these societies. CM von Hausswolff
THE GARDEN
John Duncan and Valerio Tricoli 2006 - 20 min.
Produced by John Duncan
The Garden is based on the audio installation with Valerio Tricoli which was included in the 2006 edition of Eco e Narciso held at the IPCA Ecomuseum in the province of Turin, a deserted factory complex once infamous for production methods that directly caused the deaths of several thousand workers as well as hundreds of residents of the surrounding area. The town of Cirié acquired the former IPCA Interchim site and undertook the difficult task of reclaiming and reconstructing the area, without however obliterating the historical memory of the site. On the contrary, steps where taken to ensure that it was turned into a place for remembrance, admonition and monitoring, in order to never let people go to work unaware of going daily towards their deaths.
DREAM HOUSE -- RAGE ROOM
John Duncan 2010 - 12:54 min.
Produced by Gallery Niklas Belenius
Making-of video for the installation shown at Gallery Niklas Belenius, Stockholm. RAGE ROOM, part of the DREAM HOUSE, is designed to embody or evoke a particular state of consciousness, set in an area of the building that corresponds to its known or suspected location in the brain.
Carl Michael von Hausswolff was born in 1956 in Linköping, Sweden. He lives and works in Stockholm. Since the end of the 1970s, Hausswolff 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. He has shown work in the biennials of Venice, Moscow, Istanbul, Santa Fe and Liverpool as well as in other places. His music has been performed at festivals such as Sonar, Ars Electronica and Stockholm Electronic Music Festival and has been released on by labels such as Ash International, Errant Bodies, Laton and RasterNoton. He is the curator of FREQ_OUT which has been shown in Paris, Berlin, Copenhagen, Chiangmai, Oslo, Budapest and Kortrijk. He is a long time collaborator with Leif Elggren on the project "Elgaland-Vargaland".
Filmmaker Thomas Nordanstad have directed features, documentaries and short films since 1999. His films include "Painting Pol Pot" (2000), "Anastasia in Love" (2004), "Snow White and the Ambassador" and the feature "Going Astray" (2006-7). His films have been selected for festivals such as IDFA, Amsterdam, Raindance, Docurama, Documenta, and have been aired on TV in several countries. He lives in Stockholm and Bangkok, Thailand.
John Duncan was born in the United States in 1953, has lived and worked in Tokyo and Amsterdam and currently resides in Bologna where he teaches audio art at the Accademia delle Belle Arti. His events and installations have recently been held at Färgfabriken and Gallery Niklas Belenius in Stockholm, Ex-Teresa in Mexico City, XSNOSA in Palermo, Netmage 7 in Bologna, PX2 and PX3 in Piombino, O'Artoteca in Milan, Atlantic Waves in London, The Institute of Contemporary Art (ICA) in Boston, Eco e Narciso in Turin, MUTEK in Montreal, The Compound in San Francisco, Teatro Fondamenta Nuova in Venice, Teatro Piccolo Jovinelli in Rome, the Noorlands Operan in Umeå, Fylkingen in Stockholm, the 2nd Gothenburg Biennial and Galleria Enrico Fornello in Prato. He has performed with Musica Nova in Tel Aviv and Zeitkratzer in Berlin, directing these ensembles in live events. His CD releases THE CRACKLING (1996 with Max Springer), TAP INTERNAL (2000), PALACE of MIND (2001 with Giuliana Stefani), FRESH (2002 with Zeitkratzer), PHANTOM BROADCAST (2002), INFRASOUND-TIDAL (2003), THE KEENING TOWERS (2003) and NINE SUGGESTIONS (2005 with Mika Vainio and Ilpo Väisänen, a.k.a. Pan Sonic) are all considered by critics and composers alike to be benchmarks in the field of experimental music. His work in radio, video and performance has been shown recently at the Getty Center (Evidence of Movement and California Video) as well as the Museum of Contemporary Art (MOCA), Los Angeles (Out of Actions:Between Performance and its Objects, 1998); the Osterreichisches Museum für Angewandte Kunst (MAK), Vienna; Museu d'Arte Contemporani, Barcelona (MACBA); and Museum of Tokyo (MOT).