Klangbotten history
The idea of a regional network for experimental “art” music emerged from a series of educational projects (supported by the Västra Götaland Region) carried out in collaboration with the Gerlesborg School of Fine Art and the Nordic Watercolour Museum. These included Open Musical Encounters with Children featuring Duo Gelland, as well as Syntjuntan visits to the Nordic Watercolour Museum, the Gerlesborg School, and Frilagret in Gothenburg.
As chair of the Levande Musik association, I expanded our contacts with the art museums in Skövde and Borås, as well as the artist collective Not Quite in Fengersfors, in order to initiate a network called Klangbotten (supported by the Swedish Arts Grants Committee’s Music Platform). Together, we invited sound artists Lene Grenager and Hanna Hartman to participate.
This led to a three-year cultural strategic initiative involving further collaborations. During the third year, in discussions with Anders Nyqvist (Klangforum Wien) and Ivo Nilsson (Kammarensemblen), the idea for the Kontinent Dalsland Festival for Contemporary Music was born. The pandemic intervened—which, in turn, gave us a long planning period—but in July 2022 we were able to present a festival featuring 36 internationally active musicians under the theme InterNationalromanticism.
Over the past decade, this network-building effort within the Västra Götaland Region has resulted in collaborations with the art museums of Borås, Skövde, and Dalsland; Steneby Konsthall and Röda Sten Konsthall; the Nordic Watercolour Museum; Lokstallet in Strömstad; the Not Quite artist collective; the Gerlesborg School of Fine Art; Kulturbruket på Dal; and Upperud 9:9.
Operational funding from the Västra Götaland Region made it possible to continue for an additional two years with several Klangbotten projects presented at various venues throughout the region and in Gothenburg. As I now step down from the board of Levande Musik, I am seeking to further develop the ideas behind Klangbotten along partly new paths.
For the past year, together with Centrum för Annan Konst, we have been based in a temporary venue at Första Långgatan 19 in Gothenburg, generously made available to us by Elof Hansson Fastigheter AB.
Klangbotten Idea
Contemporary music, much like other performative art forms such as dance, performance art, and theatre, is seeking greater proximity to its audience through concert formats that move beyond the traditional. In these formats, the structure does not need to follow a linear timeline with a clearly defined beginning and end, and the audience’s position is no longer fixed. The music moves away from conventional concert venues and instead seeks open spaces with a wide range of possibilities — spaces more akin to the exhibition halls of contemporary art galleries — where the audience can shape their own experience by moving through the room, approaching or distancing themselves in a more interactive mode of engagement.
A large part of contemporary music is drawn to spaces where acoustics can be used as an experimental tool, and this is equally true of early music. The ornamentation and improvisation of Baroque music, often so fleeting that they are barely perceptible, require a space in which they can truly be experienced. The sounds produced by historical instruments with plain gut strings and curved bows possess an exceptionally wide spectrum — from subtle, barely audible tones to harsher textures reminiscent of the distortion of rock music.
Klangbotten reaches out to both large and small art institutions, presenting organisations, and artist collectives in order to create shared spaces where artists and curators, musicians and organisers can come together, and where experimental music, visual art, and other artistic practices may discover new points of connection and new perspectives. Beyond the development of the individual art forms themselves, the aim is also to create room for conversations about art, collaborations on artist residencies, and educational projects.
