Tris Vonna-Michell:
No more racing in circles – just pacing within lines of a rectangle box set edition

The audiotape box set No more racing in circles – just pacing within lines of a rectangle is a numbered edition box set containing four audiotapes and liner notes with a text contribution by Jan Verwoert. The audiotapes contain either live performance recordings or performances made in recording studios, often merging spoken narrations, instrumental improvisations and musical compositions. They capture the various approaches to the artist’s use of spoken narration as well as documenting the collaborative aspects of performing and sound composition.

Artist: Tris Vonna-Michell
Description: Box set with 4 audiotapes and liner notes
Dimensions: 14,2 x 22,2 x 2 cm
Edition: 100 (numbered)
Publishers: Frans Masereel Centrum and Mount Analogue
Price: EUR 100
2021

No more racing in circles – just pacing within lines of a rectangle box set publication by Tris Vonna-Michell

The box set publication No more racing in circles – just pacing within lines of a rectangle is a reflection on the impact of performing several narrations during a concentrated timespan. It contains 44 sheets printed on a Heidelberg offset press. The accompanying colophon sheet introduces each offset sheet in the box set, which together represent the performative aspect of Vonna-Michell ́s practice in the forms of score and transcription. No more racing in circles – just pacing within lines of a rectangle addresses several time markers in his practice as well as the durational aspect of writing and performing.

Artist: Tris Vonna-Michell
Publication title: No more racing in circles – just pacing within lines of a rectangle
Edition: 200
Publishers: Bom Dia Boa Tarde Boa Noite, Mount Analogue and Slimvolume
ISBN 978-3-943514-63-6 (Bom Dia Boa Tarde Boa Noite)
ISBN 978-91-983195-0-7 (Mount Analogue)
ISBN 978- 1-910516-04-1 (Slimvolume) Slimvolume #9
2019

This publication was produced with support from Stiftelsen Längmanska kulturfonden.

Deconceptual Voicings 12 inch record by Marc Matter and Stefan Römer. Cover image: SCREAM (1964) by Ed Ruscha

Featured in the exhibition Broken Music Vol. 2
17.12.2022 to 14.05.2023
Hamburger Bahnhof – Museum für Gegenwart – Berlin

Deconceptual Voicings is a 12-inch record, which uses the extensive archive of interviews with artists of the historical post-minimal and conceptual art as a starting point. It was generated for the documentary film Conceptual Paradise (Stefan Römer, 2006).

Excerpts from the publication:

Musical compositions from interviews with conceptual artists Deconceptual Voicings consists of individual tracks composed from interviews with artists primarily recorded for the film essay Conceptual Paradise. We selected statements and transformed them into a musical composition, i.e. we turned the audio material (field recordings) into songs. Only speech and language material were used.

Sound fragments, syllables and consonants were processed into rhythmic patterns, while slogans, statements and text passages were sampled into sprechgesang.

We understand global conceptualisms as practices to oppose reactionary backlash. For us, this project marks a critical difference to the tendencies in the digitized commercialization of contemporary art. Our aim is to signify a strategic artistic activity, to challenge recent cultural conditions and to prevent depression. To SCREAM about the contemporary conditions would be an understandable gesture.

Instead, you may perform a neo-emancipatory dance. This is an homage to all the artists involved. By calling it Deconceptual Voicings we suggest a global polyphony of positions and sounds. Good ideas should be amplified.

Excerpts from interviews with the following artists:

Art & Language
Andrea Fraser
Shilpa Gupta
Sol LeWitt
Yvonne Rainer
Martha Rosler
Lawrence Weiner
Ed Rusch

Artists: Marc Matter and Stefan Römer
Publication title: De-conceptual Voicings
Edition: 500
Publishers: Mount Analogue and Slimvolume
ISBN 978-91-983195-7-6 (Mount Analogue)
ISBN 978-1-910516-09-6 (Slimvolume) Slimvolume #10
2019

Music as Seismographic Sound / Tracking Down the Idea of Cultural Translation (radio pitch by Ania Mauruschat)

The publication Music as Seismographic Sound / Tracking Down the Idea of Cultural Translation is a written radio pitch by Ania Mauruschat, closely following musicians in bi- or multi-lingual cultural contexts. Ania Mauruschat is a radio journalist who has produced several features on sound art, with the German radio station Bayerischer Rundfunk, and the Swiss national radio station SRF. The written pitch comes in the form of an appendix of source materials, including excerpts from interviews with selected musicians.

Untitled (Triple Gretsch with Kick) by Dave Allen

Release on Wednesday 20 April, 2016
5 – 8 pm at Mount Analogue, Lundagatan 57, Stockholm
Accompanied by site specific installation

Untitled (Triple Gretsch with Kick) is a series of prints of drums from images sourced from online auction sites. Stacked in attics or laid out on sofas these kits are clearly not in use anymore, and arranged as such they are soundly redundant. There is much at play here. Rastered in monochrome the kits become monumental and sculptural. Unwanted and now for sale they stand as a proud reminder of the ideals and chosen methods of youth’s rebellious role in proposing change and progression.

I always feel sad when I see pieces of musical equipment for sale, especially drum kits cos drummers generally have only one kit. So when I see a kit for sale it’s sort of signifying the end of someone’s musical aspirations and all that that entails. The end of the ideals that were once held and expressed in collaboration with others who thought likewise in the camaraderie of the isolated practise room. Plus, the images are often taken at the door of the apartment in a very sculptural arrangement, stacked proud on their way out. If the kit has to go to make space for whatever then I like to think that the 2D full size representation of the kit can be slipped into the home interior decor plan somehow as a reminder of progressive ideals encased in rock and roll.

Dave Allen lives and works in Stockholm

”Untitled (Triple Gretsch with Kick)”, 2016
12 sheets risograph printed in blue on Cyclus Ecoset 115 gsm paper
Composite image, 990 mm x 1088 mm
Edition of 50 (+5 AP)
Printed by Risiko Press, Antwerp
Supported by Elastic Gallery, Stockholm
ISBN 978-91-983195-2-1
75 EUR

Boxed In, Eight Corners by Pol Matthé 

Release on Wednesday 20 April, 2016
5 – 8 pm at Mount Analogue, Lundagatan 57, Stockholm
Accompanied by site specific installation

Pol Matthé’s multiple Boxed In, Eight Corners is related to his installation A Lag, A Stretch, A Triangle. The installation consists of two Liesegang overhead projectors connected by a plank of wood. An odd number of balls can be rolled from one octagonal frame to the other, and are projected on the ceiling of the exhibition space.

The multiple relates to elements of the actual installation. An octagonal shape, two parts becoming one piece, a ball and handle cut-out, an inside out. The ripped image shows the Danish artist Asger Jorn in front of the Silkeborg Museum holding a scrap wooden panel with the word ’malet’ painted in white, which in Danish means ’painted’. The panel includes a handle which is cut out. The image is ripped in two, shifted in order to fit the cut-outs of the lid, and glued to the bottom of box, generating an unknown ’in between’. In response to the works Sis Matthé has written a text, which is available here.

Pol Matthé is a Belgian artist based in Stockholm. He graduated from the Royal Academy of Fine Arts Antwerp in 2005. Matthé collects and works with notes, found objects, sketches and photographs. By meticulously layering these archives and their encounters, he constructs situation-specific works.

”Boxed In, Eight Corners”, 2016
Octagonal grey cardboard box with lasercut lid, glued and ripped b&w digital print
Printed on Munken Polar 170 gsm, stamped black ink, 187 x 187 x 27 mm
Edition of 50 (+5 AP)
Produced in Stockholm in collaboration with Z Forlag
ISBN 978-91-983195-1-4
75 EUR

Collapsing Ourselves by Mattin and Hong-Kai Wang

Release of twelve-inch vinyl record by Mattin and Hong-Kai Wang
11 December 2014, performative presentation by the artists at 7 pm
At Mount Analogue, Lundagatan 57, Stockholm

When artists collaborate, they collapse themselves – or that would be the promise, at least. They see their practice reflected in someone else’s and they try to pass through the mirror. What Hong-Kai Wang and Mattin have attempted in this record, and these recordings, is to reflect on that process of reflection and to explore the possibilities of collapse.

Since December 2012, Hong-Kai and Mattin have been developing a dialogue focused on the material conditions in which they find themselves embedded as artists, using oral conversation as a formal expression. They started with a private one-hour conversation about their respective practices, which they recorded. Then in a sequence of live performances they incrementally layered their original conversation with more dialogues, all of which were duly recorded in turn, including the contributions (witting or otherwise) of their live audience. In the performances, both of them would listen to the previously recorded conversations on headphones, whilst simultaneously addressing the audience and each other in a sparse, ambiguously dialogic manner. The final result, which is not at all final, is a recording consisting of the four layers (temporalities) of conversations superimposed.
– Above excerpt from liner text by Mike Sperlinger

Born in Huwei, Taiwan, Hong-Kai Wang works and lives between Vienna and Taipei. She is currently a PhD in Practice candidate and part of the Spaces of Commoning research team at the Academy of Fine Arts in Vienna. Her works are concerned with the questions of geo-politics and invisible social organization within listening and construction of cultural memory, focused on a collaborative and process-driven approach to research and production. Wang has presented her works at Liquid Architecture (Melbourne/Sydney, 2014), Kunsthall Trondheim (Trondheim, Norway, 2013), Para Site (Hong Kong, 2013), Museum of Modern Art (New York, 2013), among others. Her work spans performance, workshop, text, video and installation. 

Collapsing Ourselves was written in Stockholm, on 28 March 2013 at EMS; and 30 March at KONSTAPOTEKET; in Z Space Taichung on 16 May 2013; and then at Noise Kitchen in Taipei on 18 May 2013. All the recordings were made on a ZOOM H4.
Collapsing Ourselves is published and distributed by Mount Analogue and Audio Visual Arts (AVA), 2014
15 EUR

Thanks to: EMS, KONSTAPOTEKET, White Fungus, Lacking Sound Festival and Mike Sperlinger 

Port an exhibition by Elisabeth Kihlström and Yuki Higashino

Open by appointment 13 November – 11 December 2014
Closing event on 11 December to coincide with the completion of the artists’ publication Travelling Light
At 5-8 pm at Mount Analogue, Lundagatan 57, Stockholm

Works featured above: A Celebration of Love and Life (Sunset), 2013, slide projection, silk and wood screen, Electro-Faustus EF102 Photo Theremin and The Host, 2014, stainless steel and wood table sculpture (the wood element designed by Leif Kihlström).

Artists move around. In the past, they went to beautiful places, usually in the south, to be inspired, joined artists’ colonies or ran away from creditors. Today, we do residencies, teach in foreign cities, get funding to go on research trips or fly in to oversee installations. We‘ve been making works about the history of artists’ movements, while thinking about our own travels for the production and presentation of works in this show:

Capitol Complex / Ulterior Vistas by Tris Vonna-Michell

Publication release accompanied by a film installation and DJ-set by Tris Vonna-Michell and Martin Konie Ehrencrona
21 August 2014, 6-10 pm
At Riche/Lilla Baren, Birger Jarlsgatan 4, Stockholm

Tris Vonna-Michell´s latest publication is constructed around the two works, Capitol Complex (2012-2014) and Ulterior Vistas (2012-2013), both of which are encapsulated on a ten-inch vinyl record. The spoken-word compositions are enclosed within a gatefold design and accompanied by the Capitol Complex manuscript as a booklet insert and a bound series of Ulterior Vistas photographic montages.

The Capitol Complex (Side A) recording pans between improvised spoken word and musical composition, evolving around a manuscript set in the Indian city of Chandigarh, which serves as an underlining blueprint for the work. Traveller, the protagonist, extends his leisurely strolls to navigating the city by night in order to induce an experience of greater intensity and anxiety of its urban architecture. After his nocturnal explorations in the city’s single-zone sectors he starts to grow weary and changes his course from architectural appreciation to searching for crevices and enclosures to reflect and observe. But urban fixtures of obstruction, surveillance and derailment direct his passages, until a shift in perception occurs.

The spoken word aspect of Ulterior Vistas (Side B) is backed by a musical score, and contextualised around the notion of a driven sales agent, orating a prospectus based on grand 18th Century English landscape garden design. The protagonist is soliciting a global perspective characterised by appropriation of cultural heritage in order to cultivate a desirable public persona for an unidentified client. Aside from offering an array of landscape gardening solutions and attributes he also proposes more abstract features such as synthetic spirituality and symbolic gestures of generosity. The conceptual framework for the Ulterior Vistas photographic series derives from the English landscape architect Humphrey Repton´s (1752-1818) famous Red Books. His books were bespoke landscape and architecture propositions for improving the estates and pleasure grounds of potential clients. The before-and-after illustrations were a key feature in Repton´s Red Books as were his verbal presentations.

Content and concept by Tris Vonna-Michell
Edited by Diana Kaur
Recorded by Martin Ehrencrona at Studio Cobra, Stockholm
Spoken word by Tris Vonna-Michell
Instruments by Martin Ehrencrona and Markus Lindmark
Mixdown by Martin Ehrencrona and Tris Vonna-Michell
Copy editing by Andrew Hunt and Sophie Sleigh-Johnson
Designed by Konst & Teknik, assisted by Caroline Settergren
Image correction by Lena Hoxter
Printing and binding by Göteborgstryckeriet, Sweden
Published by Focal Point Gallery and Mount Analogue, 2013
Distributed by Cornerhouse
ISBN 978-1-907185-14-4
30 EUR

Band 2: Sunday by Robin Watkins

13 December 2012, 7 pm
At Mount Analogue, Lundagatan 57, Stockholm
Robin Watkins will stage a 24-minute sound screening between 20:00 and 20:24

A new edition by Robin Watkins, consisting of a hand-numbered letterpress cover, a compact disc and a 32-page booklet, published by Mount Analogue. The edition documents naturally occurring low frequency electromagnetic fields alongside man-made currents. The recordings were made in and around the derelict Cockatoo Island power plant, during night and dawn of 29 January 2012.

Seven slides
Seven takes
Seven windows
Seven dawns

The recordings were originally made for a site- specific installation in the powerplant on Cockatoo Island, Sydney Harbour (Australia), as part of the 18th Biennale of Sydney. Thanks to Nina Canell, Diana Kaur, Tris Vonna-Michell, Travis Rice and Catherine de Zegher.

Audio selections arranged by Robin Watkins
Mastering by Martin Ehrencrona
All photographs taken on site by Robin Watkins
Printed parts and layout by Robin Watkins
Published and distributed by Mount Analogue, Stockholm, 2012
ISBN 978-91-633-8522-3
25 EUR

Tris Vonna-Michell by Tris Vonna-Michell

15 February 2012, 7 pm
At Mount Analogue, Lundagatan 57, Stockholm
For the occasion the book will be displayed in an expanded form

Mount Analogue presents a recently completed book project (2009-2012) by Tris Vonna-Michell in which the stories and the visual material marks a continuation and implementation of his artistic practice through the medium of an artist’s book. Behind an identical cover, the seemingly same is presented in two variations that were developed through performative improvisations over earlier text versions, and repositioning of images and inserts.

The two variations were pendently constructed; book I began in November 2009 at Halle für Kunst in Lüneburg, in which several chapters, texts and images were printed on a Heidelberg GTO printing press on a daily basis during the exhibition ”Capstans”. In 2010 book II began as a revisitation and expansion of the first variation, in which the previous narratives, images and inserts were reconstructed.

Text and images by Tris Vonna-Michell
Graphic design by Manuel Raeder with Tris Vonna-Michell
Published by JRP|Ringier, together with with Fondazione Galleria Civica—Centro di Ricerca sulla Contemporaneità di Trento, GAMeC—Galleria d’Arte Moderna e Contemporanea di Bergamo, Halle für Kunst Lüneburg e.V., and Kunsthalle Zürich, 2011
Printed in Germany
ISBN 978-3-03764-170-5
35 EUR

This publication was supported as Catalogue No. 117 by the Alfried Krupp von Bohlen und Halbach-Stiftung under its support prize ”Catalogues for Young Artists”.

ak28 revisited and three parallell visions edited by Diana Kaur

27 May 2011, 7 pm
At Mount Analogue, Lundagatan 57, Stockholm
Presentations, projections and complimentary copies of the book

ak28 was a self-organised, primarily self-funded, collective of artists, architects and curators, which ran a space for exhibiting artistic practices in Stockholm between 2003 – 2009. This book combines the legacy of ak28 with the presentation of three individual artistic stances derived from varying collaborative experiences. These initiatives operate in the same non-profit sphere as ak28, but on different, or rather parallel premises. These are Elysa Lozano for Autonomous Organization, based in New York, John W. Fail from Ptarmigan Helsinki/Tallin and Ola Ståhl, from what was a loosely London-based artist collective, C.CRED.

Edited by Diana Kaur
Texts by John W. Fail, Johanna Gustafsson Fürst, Elysa Lozano, Ola Ståhl and Erik Torvén
Graphic design by Christopher West
Published and distributed by Mount Analogue, 2011
Printed at Exaktaprinting Malmö AB, Malmö, Sweden
ISBN 978–91–633–8523–0
6 EUR

ak28 revisited and three parallel visions was supported by Stiftelsen Längmanska kulturfonden and ak28.