Category Archives: Conceptual Works

Year Clock (2002)

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arrangement with:
Installed working year clock (IC controlled LED display), poem in connection to clock (variates on site).

exhibited at:
”Artists, Junkies and Adventures”, Kulturhuset, Stockholm,2002

“…our entire concept of time is dependent on an understanding of periodicity. Time is depending on night and day, the periodic rotations of the plantets, the stars, the periodic functions of our bodies and the seasons, all of these various periodic events, and without them we really have no concept of time. Time is really a very important aspect of universal structure.What I have learned is it goes very slowly.”

La Monte Young (interviewed by David Toop, Ocean of Sound -Serpent’s Tail, London 1995- p.178-179)

 

yearclock2l
I
C controlled LED display sign at the entrance floor of Kulturhuset, Stockholm and a poem on a wall under the clock.

Formless  time
We try our best to match our life with our society, sometimes forgetting our relation to larger cycles since we are so occupied with our smaller cycles. The need for the extra large clock in this space demanded for an afterthought and polarization. Time can be seen as emptiness in its most formless non-material state. The slow movement of the digital display had a relation to its over-informative character .
Poem under the clock:

awarenesspoem

Registered times on all digital watches and clocks with numbers I looked at between 11.44.22 AM (07/31 1999) and 1.44 AM (10/05 2000) Chronological and sorted (2000)

b11_2_view
view from Room B11, UIC,Chicago

two 26 x 32 ” black and white Xerox copies
black paper binders
often arranged with digital clocks and a wood box with texts

exhibited at:
Chicago, UIC/Wood Street Gallery (2000/2001)
Stockholm Konstakademien (2003)

“I only use numbers because it is a way of writing without describing… I choose numbers because they are so steady, limited, artificial. The only thing that has ever been created is the number. A number of something (two chairs or whatever) is some-thing else. It’s not pure number, and has other meanings. Hanne Darboven in L. Lippard”
Hanne Darboven: Deep in Numbers, “Artforum XII/2 (October 1973): 35-36.

digital_clock_display
a typical digital clock display with numbers

Performance with time
This type of conceptual work, was the offspring of several months of hard work and attention into register clock numbers on small papers fragments available. The work itself was tested in a smaller version (Double Sequence), but even though that version seemed to establish some sense of energetic physicality and concentration I needed a larger amount of data and psychological performance time. The hardcore attitude for this work was also more interesting than physical attributes which was with the Double Sequence. The period of registration ended after 1 year and 2 months. I ended it not after one year, but with 2 months extra, since the piece was not about the year itself but about the causality in the numbers. The last 4 months was really hard since its was difficult to do other things at the same time, it even made it difficult to act normal in social situations.

Screen Shot 2014-09-27 at 7.29.17 PMdetail of the xerox document with numbers (ordered)

Researching the super conscious
During the registration period of the data, it became quite clear that the motivation and orientation of the piece itself was for my interests in causal levels of the mind and consciousness. As our body and mind are expanding out in the world, the limit were we can say that our interference with the world is bound to a limit seemed to be old-fashioned and static. Because of the experience I had with the rhythm and coordination of my body and consciousness in time I could not escape the character of something extraordinary subtle and powerful that was configuring every moment in time as the days and actions went on. I couldn’t describe it better than something that connects to the exterior world and the self in a more pristine way, something that one would call a causal realm of super consciousness.

Presentation of the data
The two sheets present the same numbers, but they have different order. One is chronologically and the other one is sorted. The clock numbers are registered for the most part in European 24 hour time. Others appear in American format, but since I was interested in the data more than the narrative part of it, I sorted those among the 24 clock times in terms of my interest in them as raw numbers. The presentation was directed towards a typical office look: Times New Roman font face, ordinary clips and Xerox copies.

Philosophical orientation and theoretical implications
With this piece I wrote a short philosophical text. The orientation in the text was dealing with cause and effect, the meaning of the number and the super consciousness. The text was some sort of first orientation toward some of the implication of the registration-performance and the self relating to the data.

with images added afterwards from the B11 installation pdf  >>>>>>>>
with images added afterwards from the Wood street Gallery pdf >>>>>>>

html version >>> 

B11_view
view from Room B11, UIC,Chicago

all_the_times_wood
view from Wood Street Gallery, Chicago

Party for the Rabbit / Fest för Haren (2000)

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Type: Installation, (heavily variates to site)

Elements: Childrens cake-meal remainings, sound, performance, photograph, laser, programmed electronics, live streaming audio, hand paintings etc.

Place: Open Studios, Malmö Art Academy 2000

Coyote Coyote, tell me what is magic?
Magic is the first taste of sweet strawberries, and
magic is a child that dances in the rain of summer.
Elderberry Flute Song
PETER BLUE CLOWD

Alice! oh sorry the Queen! we must hurry, we are already too late!
This complex piece of work was the culmination and migration of various interests I had of time in relation to: controlling powers (religious, political), emotions, technology in our life and the human vulnerability. The piece effectively showed the emergence effect of combining various energetic elements to something really out-of-space. The idea for the work came up from a picture I took of a smashed rabbit on the street, not very far from were I lived in Malmö at that time. The combination of a ritual process was important to establish a energy field in the room, exited of entropical symbols and meanings in humanism.
The microchip together with the display was making a shift between two states of time, when changing from a slight hum and the time-speaking voice.
The major important elements in the installation, the photo of the smashed rabbit, the children’s performance, the left lovers (table) and the micro chip was merged together with the physical emotions of the sound and smell in the space. The amount of many different elements and levels in this piece of work made the inter-relative reflections between different thoughts and feelings to a project itself. One had to start in one thread to end in another.

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The picture of the smashed rabbit was not placed until they had left. I told the whole process for them about my sadness for the poor rabbit and their role of the piece: to eat some cake in honor for the rabbit and leave the remaining’s from their meal to be a part of an art piece. I told that I couldn’t hang up the picture of the rabbit since it was too repulsive. It was difficult to explain the complex relations I tried to deal with time and the sounds, technology, feelings, control etc. in the installation but I did my best.

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Children gathered around the table for a fictive meal for the rabbit.   

”…till like a clock worn out with eating time.”
JOHN DRYDEN (1631-1701)

The Manual
This text was important for the piece to reflect on the various meanings every element had in connection to the others. The text made clear of the character in noticing the precision of the equipment, the children’s participation, and the importance for everything used/taken into account in the space. The text has the feeling of a manual for understanding, but from all the information/facts the visitor need to fill in quite a lot himself.

English version, pdf >>>>>
Swedish version. pdf >>>>>
(images added after exhibit)
The screen, digital display. Changing between two

Thanks to
All at Björkhagen day nursery.
Enikö Körmendi at Latronix Laser systems

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Live experiment with plant and recorded speech (2000)

experiment

Type: Installation, live performance, lecture/live performance

Elements: Plant, electrodes, recorded sound from myself reading an article, projection, cdplayer, basic software and apparatus (Metex M-3640D connected to a 486 PC computer).

Place: peep Gallery, Rooseum (now closed), Sunday 6 Feb 2000

The affects of an inter-subjective plant
The plant was placed on a table and the connectors was stucked into one leave of the plant, the experiment could begin. The registered reaction in millivolts (14-19 mV) was then transformed into a video projection with a software as the sound from the spoken text from the article was spinning in the cd player.

As the audience listened to the sound from me reading the article about Cleve Backster’s research* they became more aware of the changes in the electric reactions from the plant, some people from the audience wanted to influence the plant’s reactions.

This piece of performance/event was made for the polarizing position in an student exhibition oriented around affects. In the era of social criticisms or cultural studies, the notion of alternative methods of communication, seen in Cleve Backsters research can be contradicting and acting outside of mainstream topics, almost like the same effect of giving a compass to an ape: “yeah looks nice but what can I do with it?”

During the exhibit I also performed one inter-disciplinary lecture about colours and affects.

The article, swedish pdf >>>>>
Documentation, english pdf >>>>>

* Cleve Backster, Primary Perception ISBN: 0966435435 >>>>>

Double sequence (1999)

Double sequence
Registered times on all watches with numbers I looked at between 11.11 AM (990405) and 1.12 PM (992405).

DOUBLE_sequence1999

Installation with:
Desktop, computer, plant, and document with numbers plus a note book with a pen on another table where people could write their own number as they entered the space and looked at the screen. The clock screen saver had a ticking sound every second.

DOUBLE_sequence1999-overview
Open Studios, Malmö Art Academy 1999

Audio

Documentation, pdf >>>