The largest daily
news paper in Sweden
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This article about as
below:
was published
in
August 29,
1966.
By the journalist:
Dick
Idestam-Almqvist
TV "exposes" the present in electronic pictures
"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)