Carl Michael von Hausswolff

Carl Michael von Hausswolff has worked both as a composer and a visual artist for almost three decades. Since he works with a broad spectrum of artistic media, from experimental music, through live performance and happenings, to installation art, his work is hard to define and categorize. Hausswolff works with most artistic mediums including photography, video, sound and sculptural installations, often combined in large-scale installations, as well as regularly curating exhibitions for museums and institutions. Carl Michael von Hausswolff’s work can be described – irrespective of specific medium or genre – as an exploration of space, architecture and territories that questions the social conventions governing our conceptions of the reality in which we are set and the physical world. An important work in his production is the virtual state Kingdoms of Elgaland-Vargaland, which was established in 1992 in collaboration with fellow artist Leif Elggren. The work, and the state, which boasts a flag, national anthem and ministries, is still under development – currently setting up embassies around the world, and issuing passports to those seeking citizenship. Kingdoms consist of border territories – between existing nations as well as digital zones on the net – and distinctly mental ‘spaces’ such as ‘Utopia’, ‘Dreamland’ and so on. This conceptual notion of borders and territories, both physical and immaterial, is characteristic of Hausswolff’s oeuvre. Indeed, in a number of works and major projects he has explored the possibility of communication with the dead via electronic frequencies and radio static. It is not so much a case of his being intent on proving the existence of this phenomenon as to insist on keeping the possibility open. Sound and electronic frequencies are Carl Michael von Hausswolff’s preferred materials. Using contact microphones, old tone generators, oscilloscopes and radar along with other electronic devices, von Hausswolff pursues intuitively driven studies of electricity and frequencies. He taps, for instance, into electrical circuits on buildings, receives and records the frequencies and static in the architectural structures and spaces that he modifies, circulating them as visual and auditory projections. As a result, his works acquire both spatial and sculptural/visual properties, taking on associations of a techno-scientific research facility. Sound, electricity and radio waves assume a physical presence and an aesthetic elegance and beauty. His works confront the spectator simultaneously with the constructive and destructive properties of sound. This is especially true of the piece Parasitic Electronic Seance – a work that was presented for the first time in 1997 and which continues to be realized in new versions. Hausswolff gives material and visual form to phenomena that touch the limits of what our senses are capable of registering, and so also addressed the limits of human consciousness. His work revolves around an exploration of the boundaries between physical and immaterial structures and the (potential) meanings we read off or into space in a given situation. (JNJ)

Carl Michael von Hausswolff, born 1956, Sweden
www.elgaland-vargaland.org