Karl Holmqvist at the Swiss Institute

Spoken Word Exhibition at the Swiss Institute

November 1^st, 2007, 6 pm: Karl Holmqvist

Curated by Mathieu Copeland, the Swiss Institute currently presents an unusual live exhibition. Instead of showing visual art, the institute’s staff reproduces spoken art given to them by visual artists.

The visitors are invited to walk up to any staff member, and pick one of the 15 artist names on the list. Included are: Vito Acconci, Robert Barry, James Lee Byars, Nick Currie (aka Momus), Douglas Coupland, Karl Holmquist, David Medalla, Gustav Metzger, Maurizio Nannucci, Yoko Ono, Mai-Thu Perret, Emilio Prini, Tomas Vanek, Lawrence Weiner, and Ian Wilson. Then, the staff member will briefly consult a piece of paper with directions previously given by the artist, and read out the designated text to the visitor.

There is also one black box room with an audio installation called “A series of spoken word retrospectives, Gustav Metzger/69 minutes, David Medalla/70 minutes”.

In addition, each night, one artist performs live from 6:00 to 6:30 pm.

I went to see Karl Holmqvist, and it was a real pleasure. After Tony Conrad’s torture two nights earlier (see review below), Holmqvist’s performance at the Swiss Institute was soothing and encouraging indeed.

The general atmosphere at the institute was pleasant, calm, unpretentious, and welcoming.

The presentation’s setup was simple—a small table, a chair, and a microphone, placed toward the middle of the space. On the table, the curator set up a folded brochure. This was the artist’s issue, of a new Berlin based publication called“FACEHUG.” Peeking at it, one could recognize blocks of text arranged in abstract patterns of rows and columns.

Without any spectacle or introduction, Karl Holmqvist took the microphone, and started reading from this folder, using it as if a score. Very soon, the audience found themselves immersed in an aura of meditation, and sensuality. Holmqvist’s narration started out by using fragments of David Bowie’s ballad “Five Years”: “Pushing through the market square, … So many mothers sighing, …”

His reading technique was impressively perfectionized: It created an organic blend of spoken words, repetition, and fragmentation of sentences. Holmqvist performed these words in an unusual breathing technique, sometimes as if inspired by a record that’s been bent or cracked, sometimes reminiscent of vocalists such as Bjork.

Linked associatively, Holmqvist repeated certain words or sentence fragments, using surprising ways of speeding them up and slowing them down, letting them fall, to then pick them up again. Mentally, one then could pull these links together in a musical but also visual manner.

From my first impression, most of the experimentation happened within an unusual, “bent” way of stressing and stretching syllables of a word, but I’d have to hear the piece more often to sure.

Visually, the artist’s presence, both in physical and facial expression, reminded me of a musician’s solo presentation, rather than a visual artist’s performance or a writer’s reading.

When it came to the content of the text, Holmqvist’s vocal color and experimental intonation of the sentence and word fragments brought in the perfect equalization between emotion and perfectionist technique. The writing drew a large cycle of emotionally and politically existential topics: alienation, pain, escaping the past, losing everything, private property, homelessness, media frenzy, celebrity obsession, dreams, love and loneliness, mission in life, sex, birth, and death.

However, Holmqvist’s reading/singing technique carefully walked the line and succeeded in avoiding banalization or kitsch. Rather, it touched directly on that certain state of the human condition that artists strive for throughout their whole lives.

The reading concluded with the ending lines of Bowie’s “Five Years.”

Much like David Bowie’s voice and ballads, this performance left us in a mood of tenderness and compassion.

Karl Holmqvist is the first artist of the publication called “FACEHUG,” #1/2007, and can be ordered for 13 Euros (ISBN 978-91-633-1375-2).

The Spoken Word Exhibition runs November 1^st to 7^th, 2007, 12 pm to 12 am. In addition to the staff’s live vocalizations on demand during the day, each night there is a live spoken word performance by an individual artist at 6 pm.