DAGENS NYHETER
The
largest daily news paper in Sweden
Bonnier AB
This
article about as below:
was
published in
Dagens Nyheter
August 29, 1966.
By
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.
by
DIA (Journalist: Dick
Idestam-Almqvist)