THE HANDSTAND

june 2005
Beaconsfield
22 Newport St
London SE11 6AY
020 7582 6465


Carl Michael von Hausswolff

2 June ­ 31 July 2005
Thursday ­ Sunday 12 - 6pm
Preview Wednesday 1 June 6-9pm


Alamut ­ the Eagles Nest ­ prototype training ground for political assassins, is the subject of Carl Michael von Hausswolff¹s new commission for Beaconsfield - part of his first solo show in the UK.

Hassan i Sabbah so successfully simulated Paradise on earth in mediaeval Persia that his followers were willing to sacrifice their lives in order to return to its sensual pleasures. The charismatic leader¹s mountain fortress, Alamut, was the cultural epicentre that provided a romantic blueprint for generations of would be mystics and renegades and has been the focus of masculine fantasy for extremists such as William Burroughs and Adolf Hitler.

Carl Michael von Hausswolff¹s works in sound and light focus on the mystique of remote and abandoned habitations. Alamut, in northern Iran, provides inspiration for Beaconsfield¹s new commission and is complemented by existing works including Hashima, a haunting film made in 2002 with Thomas Nordanstad, documenting Japan¹s tiny  "Battleship Island" abandoned in the East China Sea.

Carl Michael von Hausswolff¹s output since the late 80¹s has been prolific and international. Recent hosts have included Portikus, Frankfurt am Main, Tate Liverpool (as part of the Liverpool Biennial), Astrup Fearnley, Oslo with Yoko Ono and Pierogi Gallery, New York. Solo exhibitions in 2004 have been in Austria, Finland, Thailand, Sweden and Germany. Hausswolff has shown work in La Biennale di Venezia for two consecutive years and will again premier a new work, Physical Interrogation Techniques, in Venice this September. Founder of the cult record label Radium he is better known in the UK for his electronic sound work and compositions recording sound where supposedly there is none.

Beaconsfield
22 Newport St
London SE11 6AY
020 7582 6465
info@beaconsfield.ltd.uk

Collaboratively, Hausswolff with Leif Elggren has worked on various projects, including the 2001 Venice Biennale Nordic Pavilion, and the on-going Elgaland-Vargaland, a kingdom over which they are kings. Despite the fact that the kingdom exists only in the imagination of the kings and their 500 or so citizens, they have Elgaland-Vargaland passports, national banknotes, stamps, holidays, a flag and other symbols of nationhood.

In a time of increasing nationalism, Elgaland-Vargerland [sic] understands itself to be independent of time and space and propagates a notion of agonistic citizenship, which...defin[es] itself outside the horizon of territory...
(Jens Hoffmann, Flash Art, May/June 2001)
Jens Hoffmann cho[se] to write about Elgaland-Vargerland [sic] because of its encouragement to finally admit that the common beliefs and collective certainties of every day life are just as made up as this country and its two kings. As playful as this project might appear upon first glance, ...it also proposes a serious look upon the organization of reality and moreover human mechanisms within society at large.

For the 2001 Nordic Pavilion, Hausswolff and Elggren collaborated with three other artists, Tommi Gršnlund, Petteri Nisunen and Anders Tomren. While each artist made individual contributions to it, the pavilion was conceived as a whole. No part of the exhibition was credited to any individual artist.

The pavilion was one of the most precise and manifesto-like reflections on the new position of artists today. ...Instead of combining individual concepts, the pavilion produced a multiplicity of singularities....
(Robert Fleck, Frame news, 2 / 2001)