The First Video Art - First
Video Synthesizer
Satellite Art project
with USA 1966
DAGENS
NYHETER
The largest daily news
paper in Sweden
Bonnier
AB
This article
about: "TIME" by Ture Sjolander and Bror
Wikstrom,
was
published in Dagens Nyheter
August 29,
1966.
Signed:
DIA
(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 synthesized
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".
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)
Dagens Nyheter
Sweden
----Original Message Follows----
From: Christopher
Meigh Andrews <cmeigh-andrews@uclan.ac.uk>
To:Ture Sjolander
Subject: RE: Monument
Date: Wed, 01 Jun 2005 12:14:19
+0100
Ture,
As you
rightly say, there is a sense in which the American artists
have
written everybody else out of the history of video art. I would like
to
put some people (such as yourself) back in! I would like to use an
image
or two from the stills of Monument that I have found on the web,
but
they are very low resolution. Would you be willing to e-mail an image
of
greater resolution? (300dpi would be best- jpeg or tiff, if
possible)
also, i attach a little form so that you grant me the rights
to
reproduce the image in the book. Is this OK? if so, please fill it
in
and send it back to me.
I would like to do more than simply
paraphrase what Gene (Youngblood)
has written in Expanded Cinema, which as
you say is what M. Rush
has
done. Any chance that you can tell me a little bit more about your
ideas
with Monument and how it began? I will of course piece togther what
I
can from the web site, and from what Aapo Saask has written. I also
will
talk to Brian Hoey and Peter Donebauer. i also have the Biddick
Farm
catalogue from the exhibtion at Tyne & Wear, which has a little
info.
All best wishes to you- and i will certainly send your regards to
Brian
& Peter!!!
Chris
Dr. Chris Meigh-Andrews PhD (RCA)
MA, HDCP
Electronic & Digital Art Unit
38 St. Peters Street
Preston
PR1 7BS
www.uclan.ac.uk/edau
Tel: 01772-893204
Fax:
01772-892921
Mobile: 07855954298
www.
meigh-andrews.com