Swedish Outsiders: Experimental Sound and Film in London, May 2008

In May 2008, London hosted a two-day festival devoted to Swedish experimental music and film. Titled Swedish Outsiders, it ran on 17 and 18 May and was presented by [no.signal], commissioned by the Embassy of Sweden in London with support from the Swedish Institute. The stated aim was to create a live hub for Swedish experimental music and film, bringing together artists whose work sprawls across avant-jazz, improvisation, modern composition, drone, noise and experimental pop.

The festival occupied two venues. The first day, Saturday 17 May, took place at the Institute of Contemporary Arts on The Mall, with an afternoon film programme in Cinema 2 and an evening music programme in the theatre. The second day, Sunday 18 May, moved to Cafe OTO on Ashwin Street in Dalston for a fringe music event. Tickets were sold per event and as combinations, including an ICA combo, a music combo and a full festival pass.

Music Across Boundaries

The music programme was deliberately broad. Among the performers was Mats Gustafsson, the Swedish saxophonist born in Umea in 1964, a stalwart of the Scandinavian free jazz scene whose activities have ranged across jazz rock and punk units since the early 1980s. He first came to attention through a duo with Christian Munthe and the band Gush, and later played widely with musicians including Peter Brotzmann, Joe McPhee, Paul Lovens, Barry Guy and Derek Bailey, as well as forming a particular affinity with Chicago musicians such as Hamid Drake, Michael Zerang, Ken Vandermark, David Grubbs, Jim O'Rourke and Thurston Moore.

He was joined in the programme by the British free jazz saxophonist Evan Parker, born in 1944, whose credits include work with Brotzmann, Bailey, Keith Rowe and Joe McPhee, and whose solo performances have expanded the recognised mechanical possibilities of his instrument. The percussionist Roger Turner, raised amid the Canterbury musical life of the 1960s, brought a personal percussion language developed through improvisation and collaborations spanning experimental rock, dance, film and photo-projection. The keyboardist Pat Thomas, who began playing at eight and moved through classical music, reggae and jazz, appeared with his characteristic use of programmed keyboards and prerecorded tapes.

A centrepiece of the festival was the first UK appearance of the composer Folke Rabe, born in Stockholm in 1935 and a student at the Royal College of Music in Stockholm between 1957 and 1964. Rabe was considered an avant-gardist in the 1960s, and from 1983 to 1997 was a member of the intermedia group the New Culture Quartet. At the ICA he presented three works, including the electronic piece What??, composed in 1967, alongside a screening of Ships of Fools with the New Culture Quartet.

Other music included Tape, the Stockholm trio of brothers Andreas and Johan Berthling with Tomas Hallonsten, whose work moves between experimental music and pop; Carl Michael von Hausswolff, the Stockholm composer, visual artist and curator born in 1956 in Linkoping, whose recordings investigate electricity, frequency, architectural space and paranormal electronic interference; Wildbirds & Peacedrums, the duo of singer Mariam Wallentin and drummer Andreas Werliin; and Hans Appelqvist, whose compositions blend song structure with field recordings and unusual sound design, in his first UK appearance. Johan Berthling, Joe Williamson and Henrik Rylander also featured.

Film: Ships of Fools and Experimental Shorts

The Saturday afternoon film programme at the ICA opened with a talk and projection. Folke Rabe presented a tape work and his film Ship of Fools, the 1986 video version of the stage work by the New Culture Quartet: Jan Bark, Fuzzy, Thord Norman and Folke Rabe, a Sweden/Denmark collaboration performed widely in Europe, Canada and the United States in the 1980s and 1990s.

This was followed by a selection of Swedish experimental short films, presented as a first-time selection. The programme included Leif Elggren and Kent Tankred's The Power Is Yours, Christine Odlund's Level, Lina Selander's 27 Kilometer Drawing, Johan Svensson's Deep Forest with sound by Ronnie Sundin, Petra Lindholm and Lars Akerlund's Iris, Olle Bonnier's Tesevs, Olle Hedman's Dialogue, Peter Weiss's Studie II / Hallucinationer, Ake Karlung's Homo ludens, Gunvor Nelson's My Name Is Oona, and Anna Linder's cum pane with sound by AALY. The total programme ran 77 minutes and was curated by Anna Linder of FilmForm and Eric Namour of [no.signal].

Swedish Outsiders was a one-off project, and its combination of a historic ICA programme with a Dalston fringe event reflected the festival's ambition: to place Swedish experimental practice in front of a London audience across two days of music and film.