Rich dronics in quad sound—and something rufescent from CM von Hausswolff.

Since the end of the 1970s, Carl Michael von Hausswolf (b.1956, Linköping, Sweden) has worked as a composer using recording devices (camera, tape recorder, radar, sonar) and as a conceptual visual artist combining performance art, light- and sound installations and photography.

His audio compositions are complex drone works—pure, intuitive studies of frequency, distorted electricity and churning feedback. He has performed throughout the world, alone and with collaborators including Russell Haswell, Pan Sonic, the Hafler Trio, Erik Pauser and John Duncan. Hausswolff received a Prix Ars Electronica award for Digital Musics in 2002.

In his visual practice Hausswolff has long explored the color red, particularly interested in how red light transforms different architectural and topographic settings into real-world monochromes. Works include Red Pool (Cities on the Move 1999); Red Night (SITE Santa Fe 1999); Red Code (CCA Kitakyushu 2001); Red Empty (Lampo/WhiteWalls 2003); Red Mersey (Liverpool Biennial 2004); Red Zoo (Kalingrad 2006); and Red October (Moscow Bienniale 2009).

Other major exhibitions and performances include Documenta (1997, 2012), Johannesburg Biennial (1997), ICC Tokyo (2000), Biennale di Venezia (2001, 2003, 2005, 2007), Portikus (2004), The Land Foundation (2005), The Morning Line, Thyssen-Bornemisza (2010), Stedelijk Museum (2013), and the Institute of Contemporary Art, Philadelphia (2014).

Hausswolff is also co-monarch (with Leif Elggren) of the Kingdoms of Elgaland-Vargaland, all areas of no-man’s land, territories between national boundaries on both land and sea, digital and mental spaces. This nation has its own national anthem, flag, coat of arms, currency, citizens and ministers.

CM von Hausswolff’s first Lampo appearance dates back to February 2001, when he performed Circulating over Square Oceans. In August 2003 he screened two films for Lampo—Hashima, Japan 2002, directed by CMvH and Thomas Nordanstad, and Pan Sonic Plays Kurenniemi (2002), directed by Mika Taanila. During that ’03 visit he also began work on his special project for Lampo and WhiteWalls, published as Red Empty (Chicago 2003) and the audio work There Are No Crows Flying around the Hancock, which he premiered in March 2005.

Presented in partnership with the Graham Foundation