Åsa Ståhl |
Residency with NICA in Burma 2007-08 Despite the volatile situation after the September 2007 events, as well as calls for boycotts from many Western countries and organisations , Erik Sandelin and I decided to go to Burma for a ten-week artist residency with NICA from November 2007 to January 2008. Little information gets in and out of the country. In our artistic practice we deal with communication, everyday action spaces, participation and storytelling, so we figured we'd have to go ourselves to learn more on location.
Have a look at the film Time Is in the Air and read some about a Burmese version of the tape salad or read a text about the art works I did, in collaboration with others, in Burma.
It could not have happened without support from IASPIS.
Presentation at the Signals from the South-seminar at Pixelache 2008 in Helsinki
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| X-front formerly known as Fittbyxor |
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| Fittbyxor is a practice-led research project about fashion, social space, anxiety, and standing up to pee. It is also about the joy of doing and reflecting together. The aim is to explore how to make it possible for women to stand up and pee as well as the potential implications of changing behaviour and clothes. One week course in close collaboration with Malmö Fria Kvinnouniversitet, August 2007. On the last days of 2007 the unmentionable word (we call it X-front nowadays) has, paradoxically, been mentioned AND disgraced in Swedish national newspaper SvD and then defended by Ingrid: "I Bang (4/2007) diskuterar jag ett projekt som undersöker hur byxor, men även offentliga urinoarer kan underlätta för kvinnor att kissa stående. Istället för att referera innehållet i min text och bemöta sakfrågan förlöjligar Per Gudmundson..." Thanks Ingrid for having such a clear and strong voice in the debate! X-front featured in Bang, the course Fashion and Technlogoy at K3, Malmö högskola, Aftonbladet and City. X-front is invited to the exhibition Fennofolk - new Nordic oddity at Design Museum in Helsinki 11.6.-28.9.2008. Our own, peculiar, oddity will be presented by two art works by Heidi Lunabba, in a fanzine, seminars and workshops. DOWNLOAD X-FRONT PUBLICATION FOR FREE >> |
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| Bandsallad |
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| Tape Salad is a sound work that I have been working on since 2001. When I did my MA in Radio at Goldsmiths College in London I started to collect thrown-away cassettes. I was really curious about the traces of sound that people threw away and curious to hear what sounds there were on the magnetic tapes that were lying around like waste in the streets. So I started to wind up the litter onto new cassettes to make the sound come back to life. And into my life. Several of the tape salads are mute souvenirs from trips (Romania, Georgia, Poland etc) that then have sort of unfolded themselves when I have winded them up. The sound is often damaged, worn-out and aged since the magnetic tapes have been outdoors in the wind and rain. I have done several features for Swedish Radio where I have been playing out the new-born sounds, combining them with texts about where and when I found them. One version is to be found on: SR c Among many other things, I did a show for the gallery Konstakuten in Stockholm, Sweden in 2003. I made a performance with the tape salads that was broadcast on Swedish Television in 2005. In May 2006 I took part in the show Momental at the gallery Sparwasser HQ in Berlin with my archive of tape salads. During the show i invited the public to hand in their found sounds. At the finissage I worked with the Berlin-tape salads in a performance with Marcel Türkowsky. 2007 is also a tape salad year. Presentation at the Alt.SPACE festival in London in July. Invitation by the curatorial platform Dispatx to develop a tape salad project. Continued collaboration and performance with Marcel Türkowsky on September 6th in Malmö at Full Pull 07 - Experiments around the sound. |
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| Laika |
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Laika is a sound art group based in Malmö, Sweden. Since 1998 we have been working with sound in different media and in various contexts. Laika started off as a radio show and then transformed into a digital sound magazine on the web. Laika has also done installations, concerts and live performances. During 2005 we started a podcast called "Viktigt meddelande!" (Important message). "Viktigt meddelande!" is an idea derived from the vma-signal which is a warning signal to the public to go inside and listen to the radio. In Sweden this signal is tested quarterly, so Laika releases a new podcast every time you can hear the signal. In our work process, we treat all sounds in a similar way, whether they are found sounds, field recordings, interviews or musical pieces. The sounds can be set loose from their original environment, intended meaning or narrative, and then be recomposed through recontextualising, juxtaposing, cutting and layering. It is important for us to have both associative narrative connections and a musical flow in the editing. Perhaps we try to put everything on the same level - the sound material, our working method, sound quality, narrative meaning and aesthetics. Our personal tastes and interests inform what sounds we choose. |
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| Sounds, Camera, Interaction! |
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| A quick and dirty audiovisual interactive installation workshop. The goal of this sprawling, three-night workshop is to work together in creating one or more interactive audiovisual installation(s). Participants should wake up after the last night with fresh eyes, curious ears and dirty hands. This workshop was hosted by Erik Sandelin and Åsa Ståhl at the first Pixelazo in Medellín, Colombia, February 27 - March 3 2007 with the subtitle "Interfacing Medellín secrets". |
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| Sounds like words |
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| Words are everywhere in my head. Sometimes they're combined with sounds. During autumn 2007 I've tried to say some witty and insightful things about new electronic music in Monitor, Swedish Radio. Alison Gerber invited me in 2007 to write about her project The Artist's Work Classification in a new edition of her book with the same title. You can read my text about knowledge, research, art and identity by going to Collective Foundation Pod Press Artist collective Raketa asked for and got a text for their ten-year-anniversary-publication in 2007. Written together with Erik Sandelin on two keyboards and one computer. For the exhibition Me Myself and I in Linköping, Sweden, Helga Steppan and I collaboratively wrote a text about her artistic practice in general and her installation See-through in particular. We met in Berlin in the summer of 2006. I asked questions. Helga answered. I transcribed the interview. We sent the text back and forth between the two of us, asking more questions, taking out words, adding sentences, until we sent it to the editor of the book. In 2007 I wrote an introductory essay to the book 'Belongings Apart' by Helga Steppan, accompanying her exhibition 'Be Long A Part'. |
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| Yatzy! Playing with Okinawa |
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| Yatzy! Playing with Okinawa was a four week long artistic fieldwork in Japan, where me and Erik Sandelin chose to not document in order to have non-medialised meetings with the people we played games with: "Yatzy! Playing with Okinawa" happens when you play the games that Åsa Ståhl and Erik Sandelin have in their playkit. They appear here and there and somewhere on the islands until November 27. If you don't play with them this project will never have happened to you. www.unsworn.org/wanakio/mikado.htm This link is for a project within the project where we arranged a pick-a-stick match on the internet (mikado) between Rooseum, Malmö, Sweden and Naha, Okinawa, Japan. There were only sticks in Japan, so the players had to collaborate with their opponents. |
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| Habitant |
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I wanted to experiment with a concept of sound that also could incorporate a physical postcard. Almost like a voxpop I walked around in a neighbourhood in London, E2, and asked people to describe a postcard with a picture taken by Nan Goldin. I also asked them to circle what they thought was the most important part of the postcard so that the next person in the "voxpop"would have some traces of other people as a starting point. Superman, London E2 has been broadcast in Resonancefm - London's first art radio channel, as well as in Frispel Swedish Radio P3. |
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| Superman, London E2 |
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I wanted to experiment with a concept of sound that also could incorporate a physical postcard. Almost like a voxpop I walked around in a neighbourhood in London, E2, and asked people to describe a postcard with a picture taken by Nan Goldin. I also asked them to circle what they thought was the most important part of the postcard so that the next person in the "voxpop"would have some traces of other people as a starting point. Superman, London E2 has been broadcast in Resonancefm - London's first art radio channel, as well as in Frispel Swedish Radio P3. |
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| Karta/terräng |
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In 2004 Laika held three workshops on the theme of map/terrain. some of the questions we posed were: In what ways can sound be represented? What sounds guide us in the city? As a consequence of these questions we did sound installations in Ljudkullen, the Scania park in Malmö, where there are outdoor loud speakers where the sound is played out 24 hours. My sound piece "Om farmor Adina hade varit i korsningen Amiralsgatan/Nobelvägen" was part of that installation. |
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