Carl Michael Von Hausswolff is yet another artist in Matière Mémoire Éditions’ MMXX series with decades of remarkable work behind him. Stockholm based, since the 1970s he has worked as a composer using the tape recorder as his main instrument, while making often controversial interventions into the world of visual art.
Collaborating with numerous artists over the years - notably John Duncan, Graham Lewis, and Jim O'Rourke - as well as creating a vast body of solo efforts that date back to 1980, his works - attempting to create sonic efforts that "charge the air with subliminal force" using "drones, radio signals, and sonic frequencies" - belong to an ongoing investigation of electricity, frequency, architectural space, and paranormal electronic interference.
For the MMXX series he created a work entitled For Marietta, a vast reverent expanse of ambience, filled with shadowy images of the natural world, presumably collected as field recordings. Crawling forward at a glacial pace - an almost industrial hum binds with organic elements, its untraceable figures and objects looping in and out of view. While very different in its materiality, like John Duncan’s aforementioned contribution, Hausswolff’s For Marietta is a rippling and immersive expanse that, through a kind a uniformity, requires focus and attention to draw out the remarkable detail within.
Matière Mémoire presents the MMXX Series. In anticipation of the year 2020, Matière Mémoire asked 20 great artists to create an original 20 minutes piece and an artwork. Throughout this year, each quarter will see the release of 5 new vinyls, available individually or as a bundle. Each record is limited at 500 copies and comes as a crystal clear vinyl featuring an original track of 20 minutes on one side, and a laser engraved artwork on the other. Each contained in a transparent sleeve printed with the MMXX logo, and each coming with a print of the artist artwork.