klangbotten | Levande Musik

KLANGBOTTEN 2016

With support from the Swedish Performing Arts Agency, the Swedish Arts Council, and the Cultural Committee of the Västra Götaland Region, Levande Musik was able to carry out an extensive collaborative project with the region's art galleries.

As part of the outlined project, four partners in the region were approached: the Borås and Skövde Art Museums, the artist collective Not Quite, and the Gerlesborg School of Fine Art. In the initial discussions, we jointly decided to invite artists Hanna Hartman and Lene Grenager. Hanna Hartman primarily works with objects and closely recorded sounds, while Lene Grenager mainly creates acoustic music and compositions using graphic notation.

“The two composers/musicians are asked to engage with the space, in the sense that they create a work which either inhabits the space over an extended period or leaves a lingering presence after a live performance. In this way, we aim to position the project in the borderland between the concert music setting and the exhibition format of contemporary art galleries.”

KLANGBOTTEN 2018

THE DANCE OF THE MACHINES

KARIN HELLQVIST and HELOISA AMARAL
Skövde Art Museum, October 25 – January 6

Composers Lisa Streich, Marianthi Papalexandri-Alexandri, and Johan Svensson have each created a work for violinist Karin Hellqvist and pianist Heloisa Amaral. With artistic playfulness, they have mechanically extended the instruments in their compositions. Using motorized objects, musical expression emerges in a dialogue between the performer/instrument and the machine, which seems to possess its own autonomous mechanical life. The delicate sounds’ contrasting qualities, along with the shifting dynamics between performer and object, generate intensity and a sense of magic. This interplay raises questions of:

subject – object I – you
participant – outsider
sender – receiver active – passive
here – there actor – listener
giver – taker

Johan Svensson and Johannes Bergmark are both musicians and composers who experiment with inventing and building new instruments. In preparation for the concert-installation at the museum, they worked with local youth in Skövde to construct instruments and create a sound art installation together.
— Elsbeth Bergh

Opening / Concert
October 25 at 17:00

Program:
Marionette – Johan Svensson, Karin Hellqvist, violin
Solo for motor and strings – Marianthi Papalexandri-Alexandri, Karin Hellqvist, violin
SAFRAN – Lisa Streich, Karin Hellqvist, violin; Heloisa Amaral, motorized piano

Improvisation – Students from Skövde Music School, the Aesthetic Program at Västerhöjd, Skövde Art School, together with Johan Svensson, Johannes Bergmark, Karin Hellqvist, and Heloisa Amaral

LYSEKIL – INSTRUMENT BUILDING

In the week leading up to Lysekil’s Culture Week, we met with the language introduction class at Gullmars Upper Secondary School and built imaginative instruments together. Performance artist and composer Johannes Bergmark, along with Jon Halvor Bjørnset from Drivhuset in Oslo, unpacked their amazing array of materials—cables, contact microphones, screws, tools, and secondhand treasures. Together with the students, they created instruments that were assembled into a sound sculpture and exhibited in the Art Gallery over the weekend.

Press coverage:

Report in Lysekilsposten on the Klangbotten workshop at Gullmarsgymnasiet
Report in Bohuslänningen from Lysekil Culture Week
Vimeo link to documentation of the instrument-building workshop at Gullmarsgymnasiet, Klangbotten Lysekil, 2018-10-05

KLANGBOTTEN 2021

COMMON GROUND, MAY 2 – JUNE 6
LOKSTALLET, STRÖMSTAD

Rosali Grankull – composer
Hanna Norrna – textile artist
Alessandro Perini – composer
Helena Persson – composer

Four sound artists draw inspiration from the same geographic areas around the Koster Islands and Strömstad, each allowing their installation in the space to express its own distinct musical language.

For the Common Ground exhibition, Klangbotten took further steps in networking and, due to—or dare we say thanks to—the pandemic, additional collaborators could be brought into the project. The artists mentioned above were given ample time to get to know the space and had the opportunity to participate in the artist residency program developed by Kultur i Väst on the Koster Islands. The chance to be inspired by the area's extraordinary nature greatly influenced their artistic choices. One might say the works that emerged became site-specific—both to the Koster Islands and to the remarkable space offered by the Lokstallet art gallery.

Each of the artists in the exhibition worked individually, while also considering how their works would interact with one another within the gallery space. The collaboration between Rosali Grankull and Hanna Norrna is also an example of how artists from different disciplines can choose to work together.

HELENA PERSSON, sound composer and experimental musician, creates works grounded in field recordings from the surrounding world, often realized as spatial, multi-channel, and sculptural installations. The sounds serve as a deepened way of perceiving and registering the environment, where details, nuances, and fragile, subtle sounds are given space—or are set against industrial textures.

SANEN SONG
In the details, transformation takes place, and from silence, something meaningful emerges. Sanen Song explores human perceptions of our surroundings—and our ability to re-evaluate them by making space for other and new impressions.

ALESSANDRO PERINI (b. 1983) has studied composition, electronic music, and the Science of Musical Communication in Italy and Sweden. His work ranges from instrumental and electronic music to audiovisual and light-based pieces, net art, land art, and vibration-based works. He is currently focusing on specially designed sound objects and machines.

MANUAL FOR RECONNECTION
With this project, I want to reflect on humanity’s (specifically, Western society’s) tendency to use technology as a means to reconnect with “the other”—meaning all that we refer to as “nature,” both living beings and matter. But what kind of nature are we actually experiencing, if not an arbitrary scenario, tailored to suit our needs and sense of well-being?

ROSALI GRANKULL is a composer and musician working with acoustic instruments, literature, people, microphones, places, and loudspeakers. In her practice, Rosali searches for a thin line of instability, hoping that it is precisely there that questions may arise. In her music, she strives for a non-hierarchical structure and works from the belief that all living things have a breath.

HANNA NORRNA is a textile artist based in Gothenburg. Her work explores the connections between weaving and mysticism, seeking a language that speaks of how craft, passion, vulnerability, the body, and sacredness are interconnected and take space. At the loom, she breaks these concepts down into their fundamental elements and reweaves them with the intention of highlighting women’s labor and silent forms of knowledge.

FUGUE IN D MINOR – THE SHAFT CHOIR
(Rosali Grankull & Hanna Norrna)
Fugue in D minor is a sound installation made of silk threads, loom heddles, honey, metals, and sand. Deep sound waves pulse through the materials, setting them in motion. Variations in tempo, density, and vibration generate events that penetrate, release, or linger.