DAGENS
NYHETER
The largest daily
news paper in Sweden
Bonnier AB
This article about:
"TIME" by Ture Sjolander and Bror Wikstrom, was published in Dagens
Nyheter
August 29,
1966.
Signed: DIA
(Dick
Idestam-Almqvist)
-----------------------------------------------
TV
"exposes" the present in electronic pictures during the Jazz
Festival.
"We want
to exhibit, not to inhibit"
So the
artists Ture Sjolander and Bror Wikstrom say, of current interest as they are
for the coming jazz festival within the Festival of Stockholm. Some time
during the three days of the jazz festival (Sept 16 - 18) the two picture
experimenter's new film is shown on TV. It is ready made for TV with the
apparatus of the TV and with the basic function of the TV before one's
sight.
Some year
ago Sjolander and Wikstrom brought about a sensation by exposing pictures on
giant billboards outdoor's in Stockholm's City. If you had something to display
you shouldn't fence it, neither in the museums nor among the private art
galleries, but expose it where people are to be found, they thought. So
consequently they have chosen the biggest medium of communication, television,
for their latest exhibition.
Sjolander -
Wikstrom are fully conscious of the topicalness of today, another reason for
choosing television. What else can be more actual than to demonstrate the formal
possibilities of TV, and what else can be more actual than mirror the present
while you are demonstrating these formal possibilities?
"Scanner"
re-interprets.
"Time" is
the name of the exhibition, which is based upon various actualities that
Sjolander-Wikstrom have come across during the spring, for instance "Gemini" and
foetal-pictures. The main part is taken up by the very much to fore avant-garde
jazz-musician Don Cherry and his quintet at the Golden
Circle.
The
pictures are run through a specially built "scanner", an apparatus that in the
ordinary cases is producing "real" pictures, but which in this sensitized state
is "re-interpreting" what the camera has seen, and thus is creating new
pictures. The technicians and the artists have decided what the apparatus looks
like, and the apparatus has decided what the pictures look
like.
The present
is reflected.
Consequently the couple Sjolander-Wikstrom is
demonstrating a phenomenon that is very much up to date just now: the electronic
"machine" picture.
The Korean
Nam June Paik is for the moment sitting at the Swedish Radio and is
working with similar things. He will show his result at the festival of
Fylkingen "Visions of the Present". But this will take place one
week after Sjolander-Wikstrom's demonstration, televised on Swedish
National Television.
Ture
Sjolander and Bror Wikstrom hold that they by "TIME" have accomplished a total
reflection of the present. Novelties and actualities have been interpreted by an
apparatus that per se is a novelty and an actuality. A vision of the
present.
Their Ideas
they spread in different quises like rings on the water. "Time" will be shown at
ABF (The Worker's Federation of Culture) during the festival, still
pictures of the film - made on silk-screen - will be exposed, and an
edition of 300 prints have already been sold to MULTIART, the darling of
Kristian Romare.
Finally a
summary of the film will be edited in book-form very soon. And then,
furthermore, Sjolander-Wikstrom are negotiating just now about contributing at
the festival which the Americans of "Fylkingen" are planning in New
York in October.
Possibly
parts of "Time" are going to be transmitted by satellite.
DIA
(Journalist
Dick Idestam-Almqvist)