With apologies for cross-posting<br><br><br><font size="4"><b>A conversation with artists and composers John Duncan and Carl Michael von Hausswolff <br></b></font><br>Friday, April 27th at 7 pm<br>Liebigstrasse 12 Berlin - Friedrichshain<br>
<br><br>John Duncan and Carl Michael von Hausswolff will be presenting a
selection of their video works followed by a discussion with the
audience.<br><br><br>Screenings:<br><br><b>ELECTRA, TEXAS 2008 </b><br>Carl Michael von Hausswolff and Thomas Nordanstad - 24:44 min.<br>
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.<br>
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<br>
<br><br><b>THE GARDEN
</b><br>John Duncan and Valerio Tricoli 2006 - 20 min.
<br>Produced by John Duncan<br><br>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 ex 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. <br>
<br><br><b>DREAM HOUSE -- RAGE ROOM</b><br>
John Duncan 2010 - 12:54 min.<br>
Produced by Gallery Niklas Belenius<br><br>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.<br>
<br><br><br><br><b>Carl Michael von Hausswolff </b>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". <br>
<br><a href="http://cmvonhausswolff.net/" target="_blank">cmvonhausswolff.net</a><br><br><b>John Duncan</b>
was born in the United States, currently lives and works in Bologna.
His studio releases THE CRACKLING (1996 with Max Springer), TAP INTERNAL
(2000), PALACE OF MIND (2001 with Giuliana Stefani), FRESH (2002 with
Zeitkratzer), THE KEENING TOWERS (2003), PHANTOM BROADCAST (2004) and
NINE SUGGESTIONS (2005 with Mika Vainio and Ilpo Väisänen) are all
considered by critics and composers alike to be benchmarks in the field
of experimental sounds and contemporary music. John Duncan portrays his
work as a catalyst, inciting a transmission of energy through which he
seeks to compel the audience to actively participate in the process of
investigation and self-discovery. His lengthy career of electroacoustic
intensity and confrontational performance art events is the result of
rigorous investigations into a number of arcane, metaphysical, and at
times transgressive themes. <br>
<br><a href="http://johnduncan.org/" target="_blank">johnduncan.org</a><br><br><br><a href="http://liebig12.wordpress.com/" target="_blank">liebig12.wordpress.com</a>