CARL MICHAEL VON HAUSSWOLFF
Playlist for webSYNradio

1/
Velemir Chlebnikov (1885-1922) – Esorcismo col riso (1908)
2/
Yoko Ono (b. 1933) – Let’s Go On Flying
3/
Mick Jagger (b. 1943) – Invocation Of My Demon Brother »
4/
Klaus Kinski (1926-1991) – Johann Wolfgang von Goethe – Der Totentanz
5/
Whitehouse – Pissfun
6/
Bob Cobbing (1920-2002) – Alphabet of Fishes, 1967
7/
Charlemagne Palestine (b. 1945) – Sliding Fifths For Piano (1972)
8/
Bengt Emil Johnson (b. 1936) – 1/1970; (bland)
9/
Mario Davidovsky – In Memoriam Edgar Varèse
10/
William S. Burroughs (1914-1997) – The Fish Poison Con
11/
Vladimir Ussachevsky (1911-1990) – Line Of Apogee (1967) Untitled
12/
Hugo Ball (1886-1927) – Karawane (1916)
13/
Angus MacLise (1938-1979) / Humming in the Night Skull
14/
Ilhan Mimaroglu (b. 1926) / Le Tombeau d’Edgar Poe, 1964
15/
Paul Bowles – Paul Bowles, narrator ‘Points in Time XI’
16/
Kurt Schwitters (1887-1948) – Ursonate, Merz #24 rec. Frankfurt, May 5, 1932
17/
Patti Smith (b. 1946) – Bitch
18/
Joseph Beuys (12. Mai 1921 in Krefeld; † 23. Januar 1986 in Düsseldorf) – B5 Endless Music
19/
John Cale – Loop – Aspen No. 5+6
20/
Sten Hanson (b. 1936) – Au 197,0
21/
Ilmar Laaban (b. 1921) – Eaux, 1975/1992
22/
Alvin Lucier (b. 1931) – I Am Sitting in a Room,
23/
Brion Gysin (1916-1986) – Junk Is No Good Baby
24/
The Gerogerigegege – Endless Humiliation
25/
Jean Genet – Jean Genet « Le condamné a mort » (1952)

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Since the end of the 70s, Hausswolff has worked as a composer using the recorder and sine waves as his main instruments. His concerts are often dynamic constructions using the acoustics in a specific space. His records has a conceptual and intellectual foundation where the composed sounds oscillates between sounding object and music. As a conceptual visual artist working with performance art, light- and sound installations and photography.

Hausswolff’s music has been performed throughout Europe and in North America and Asia in festivals such as Sonar, Electrograph, Cut&Splice and I.D.E.A.L. His compositions can be found released by labels such as Ash International, feld, Die Stadt, Firework Ed., Laton, SubRosa, Oral and RasterNoton. Hausswolff’s music is published by Touch, London. Musically he has collaborated with Graham Lewis (Wire), Mika Vainio (Pan sonic), Zbigniew Karkowski, Russell Haswell, and others.

Hausswolff’s audiovisual works have also found outlets in pictorial art. His « Red » series using red lights in various architectural misfittings has shown a rather critical side of his works. In Santa Fé an abandoned cemetery was lit up in the nighttime by 20 000 watts (Red Night, 1999); in Liverpool the river Mersey was treated (Red Mersey, 2004) and in Chiangmai, Zagreb, Rijeka, Kaliningrad and Chicago abandoned houses around the cities was lighted up and photographed (Red Empty, 2003-2010). His most recent red works include Red Sea Saw for the Luxembourg Cultural Capital 2007, Red Cochineal in Mexico and Red Dawn in Russia. His interest in architecture and topography has also resulted in the films “Hashima, Japan 2002”, “Al Qasr, Bahriyah Oasis, Egypt, 2005” and « Electra, Texas 2008″ made in collaboration with film maker Thomas Nordanstad.

In 1997 he launched a series of works under the title « Operations of Spirit Communication ». This work, inspired by Electronic Voice Phenomena (EVP) techniques, was combining and merging sound and vision using analogue and digital technologies such as oscilloscopes, radars and sonars. These ready-made machines were showing the possibilities of ghosts and other kinds of life forms living inside a certain space or inside the electricity grids. The cities of Paris, Linz, Bangkok, Shanghai, Banja Luka, Berlin, Kuala Lumpur, New York City, Tokyo, Frankfurt am Main, Stockholm and Copenhagen has been under this magnifying ghost glass. More recently the exhibition “The Complete Operations of Spirit Communication” was shown at OK Centrum in Linz, Austria. Hausswolff has also collaborated with EVP researcher Michael Esposito in several sessions.

His interest in audio and radio technology also came in light at the 49th Biennale di Venezia in 2001. In a collaborative work with Tommi Grönlund, Petteri Nisunen, Leif Elggren and Anders Tomrén, he had constructed a radio receiver that could play all radio transmissions from the Venice area at the same time. The entire Nordic Pavilion was filled with this mix of sounds producing a beautiful and at the same time profound religious audio graphic environment. Other radio tech works include the usage of scanners and EVP frequencies.

Hausswolf has also created a series of social platforms, places where people can meet and consume. His “Thinner- and Low Frequency Bar” was used at the Momentum biennial in Moss, Norway, Prato, Italy and London and his “Glue- (Tobacco-) and High Frequency Lounge” was used in Geneva and in Prato. These works show Hausswolff’s critical view on the society’s hypocritical treatment of drugs and addiction. The audience could sniff the highly toxic substances thinner and contact glue while smoking cigarettes and getting penetrated by the either low or high sine wave tones.

In 1993 he and Leif Elggren developed the ever-lasting conceptual piece “The Kingdoms of Elgaland-Vargaland”. Here a new country was established in the world. Its territories was all border areas between every country, the No Man Land, mental territories such as the hypnagogue dream state and digital areas on the Internet. Paraphernalia such as a constitution including flags, coat of arms, and national hymn was produced and letters was sent to every government in the world asking for recognition. In 1995 an application for membership in the United Nations was sent in and in 2005 the New United Nations was proclaimed. Elgaland-Vargaland now has over 700 citizens and is frequently manifesting itself through the channels of conceptual art. Embassies has been established in Stockholm, Mexico City, Oujda, London, New York, San Francisco, Osaka, Barcelona, Helsinki and many other places. In 1995 the country annexed Schlaraffenland and t the 50th Biennale di Venezia in 2003 the state annexed Thomas More’s Utopia at the Utopia Station project. A new embassy was recently inaugurated at the Haus der Kulturen der Welt in Berlin and the Island of The Dead (Isola di San Michele) in Venice was annexed June 10, 2007.

Hausswolff was a freelance curator at Färgfabriken Centre for Contemporary Art and Architecture in Stockholm. From 1999 until 2008 he has curated retrospective exhibitions by the works of the EVP pioneer Friedrich Jürgenson, his long time colleague Leif Elggren, and Swedish electronic music pioneer Rune Lindblad. He also curated a special exhibition of works by his mentor Brion Gysin as well as works by Max Fredriksson, Henrik Rylander and Henrik Andersson. He has later “artistified” Jürgenson, as well as Swedish mail bomb inventor Martin Ekenberg and now plans to introduce other non-artists such as US astronaut James Irwin, a Swedish 1927 hero Olga Eriksson (introduced 2007) and the Norweigian spy Selmer Nilsen, in the field of contemporary art.

IN 2003-08 he curated the sound art project “freq_out”, in Copenhagen, Oslo, Paris, Berlin, Chiangmai, Budapest and Kortrijk. This project includes the individual works from 12 sound artists shown in a collective way. The frequency range from 15 – 12 000 Hz was divided up into 12 sections and handed out to the artists. These exhibitions has showed a new way to deal and treat sound works as an exhibitional form, a form that mostly has been chaotic and non functional in many recent group shows. Artists included were Jacob Kirkegaard, J.G. Thirlwell, Jana Winderen, Finnbogi Petursson and Pomassl.

In 2003 Hausswolff curated the 2nd International Biennial for Contemporary Art in Göteborg, Sweden. Here he mixed sound artists like Ryoji Ikeda, Else Marie Pade and John Duncan with dictator painters from Libya and Cambodia; contemporary artists like Phill Niblock, Simone Kaern-Aaberg and Surasi Kusolwong with ready-made artists like Friedrich Jürgenson and Martin Ekenberg; painters like Jan Håfström with painters like Kim Gordon and Russell Haswell.

In spring 2005 Hausswolff completed his Starhouse project for The Land Foundation, organised by Kamin Lertchaiprasert and Rirkrit Tiravanija in Chiangmai, Thailand.

+ http://www.cmvonhausswolff.net/