SWEDISH ENERGIES will be introduced by the great Leif Elggren, currently working and living in New York City. Elggren is no doubt one of the most important Swedish artists today, working hard with sound-, performance- and visual art since the 70’s. In 1978 Elggren and Thomas Liljenberg formed the Firework platform for exhibitions, performances and book and record publishing. In 1988 he formed the legendary (and intense!!!) performance duo The Sons of God together with Kent Tankred. A key collaborator since his early days is CM von Hausswollff (who released Elggren on his Radium label already in 1984). The list of their collaborations can be made loong but we choose to mention their roayume Elgaland-Vargaland and their 2001 representation of Sweden at the Nordic Pavillion at the Venice Biennale (together with Tommi Gröndlund, Petteri Nisunen and Anders Tomren). We THINK Leif Elggren will read his “The North Is Protected” but we are not sure yet. Come and see for yourself.

Ikue Mori is a true legend in the contemporary improv music scene. With her background as the drummer for the infamous NYC no wave outfit DNA and has a long, impressive career as laptop improviser, composer and musician. Mori brought drum machines into improv music in the 80’s. She has worked with Zeena Parkins as Phantom Orchard, Kim Gordon and John Zorn to name a few. Ikue Mori is one of the most important creators of sound today. Ida Lundén from Stockholm has her main focus in electronic and chamber music as a composer and performer. Lundén is part of Syntjuntan - a female ensemble to meet women’s curiosity for technology and electronics and true DIY synth building. At Swedish Energies, Ikue Mori & Ida Lundén performs together for the first time ever.


Sound, video, moving objects, drawings in layers, birds and traces. Every movement is creating a chain of reactions which is affecting other parameters. Kathy Hinde is an artist working with different medias, combining different art forms. She has worked a lot with video screenings for dance, live art and theatre and is collaborations with scientists or direct in put from the audience. Daniel Skoglund is a sound artist building his own machinery. His weapons and friends are operated through choise or accident.
The Magic State is the audiovisual project of sound- and visual artist Nadine Byrne from Stockholm. Her art draws inspiration from the occult and 60’s psychedelia. Nadine is also part of the great Ectoplasm Girls duo together with her sister Tanya. While Ectoplasm Girls is a duo dealing with dreams, life and death - The Magic State is a deeply personal project.
“The Magic State is sound and moving images, suspension of time, transcendence, mysticism, rituals and poetry. A magical state of mind and a physical sovereign place.”

As one of the most important free jazz and improv musicians in the world right now, sax man Mats Gustafsson is constantly surprising his audience by ever evolving. Mats is insanely active performing solo shows and with his many groups (The Thing, FIRE!, Brötzmann Chicago Tentet, Swedish Azz etc) around the globe, clocking in for some 200 shows per year. His solo gigs are usually blessed with live electronics and something you can always expect from this man - controlled and uncontrolled energy and creativity.

The sound of everything falling apart. Sewer Election is Gothenburg’s Dan Johansson who performs bent, crude and raw experimental noise touching elbows with both the Swiss action group Schimpfluch and contemporary underground noise. Dan has put out a fine line of releases for the past decade and is known for giving his audicence sort of a in-of-body experience, whatever that means. Dan was one of the guys running the filthy but nice Utmarken venue in Gothenburg for a few years, the centre for various odd balls and lost kids into weird sounds on the west coast. Johansson is also running two labels; Harsh Head Rituals and Ljud & Bild Produktion.

For the Swedish Energies event, prolific The Skull Defekts is a quartet with founding members Joachim Nordwall (iDEAL boss, collaborator with Mika Vainio, Leif Elggen, Mark Wastell and others) and Henrik Rylander (ex-Union Carbide Productions, conceptual artist and photographer) joined by ex-Lungfish guitar player Asa Osborne (who does deep solo recordings as ZOMES nowadays) from Baltimore, Brooklyn improv master C.Spencer Yeh and A LATE ADDITION to the band - artist, singer and musician Daniel Higgs! While The Skull Defekts was on tour as a quintet with singer and esoteric magician Daniel Higgs in the US in April 2011, ZOMES were the obvious choise as opening act. The artists share the same view upon music and sound. In Pawtucket, RI, they put down three pieces for a 12” on Thrill Jockey. Magic happended. For Swedish Energies, vocal-, violin- and electronic improviser and artist C.Spencer Yeh will join the band. Yeh is a man of magic and we can possibly expect drones and psychedelic electronics. Deep stuff.




Having developed her very own language, the Swedish sound artist and composer Hanna Hartman creates compositions that are exclusively made up from authentic sounds which she has recorded around the world. Sounds are taken out of their original context and thus perceived in their purity. Hanna Hartman seeks to reveal hidden correspondences between the most diverse auditive impressions and in new constellations she creates extraordinary worlds of sound. Hartman lives and works in Berlin.

CM von Hausswolff is a master of minimalism in both his visual- and sound-art. Since the 1970’s, he has worked as a composer, curator and conceptual visual artist. In the 80’s, he formed the Radium record label changing the Swedish music scene at the time and forever, releasing everything from pop, nasty garage rock to experimental music and noise. Hausswolff is working with electronic drone, electricity, frequencies, colors, state of minds and so forth. There is always a presence in his work, difficult to explain. Carl Michael von Hausswolff is also one of the kings of the imaginary (?) Kingdoms of Elgaland-Vargaland.
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