I helgen äger en intressant festival rum på Fylkingen i Stockholm: Visions of the Now. Den är en slags upprepning av den legendariska festivalen Visioner av Nuet, som ägde rum på Tekniska museet 1966.
The 1966 festival Visioner av Nuet was initiated by Knut Wiggen, Chairman of Fylkingen, and was originally called ‘Stockholm Festival for Art and Technology’. Knut Wiggen had involved the Swedish engineer Billy Klüver, who worked at Bell Telephone Laboratories in New Jersey, in the project of exploring how artists could use the ‘new technology’, and what would happen if artists and engineers collaborated. Billy Klüver coordinated new performances by the New York artists Robert Rauschenberg, John Cage, David Tudor, Yvonne Rainer, Deborah Hay, Robert Whitman, Steve Paxton, Alex Hay, Lucinda Childs and Öyvind Fahlström, who collaborated with a group of engineers from Bell Laboratories. The group worked together for months, preparing the performances for what in New York was referred to as ‘The Stockholm Thing’.
But after conflicts between Fylkingen and the Klüver group (mostly due to financial and some technical issues, but arguably also because of unresolvable differences in mindset) the American contribution was cancelled last minute, leading the Americans to organize their own event — what became the now-famous 9 Evenings of Theatre and Engineering, held at the 69th Regiment Armory in New York in October 1966.
I helgen samlas konstnärer, artister, teoretiker och forskare för att utforska gränslandet mellan konst och teknologi. Bland annat kommer organisatören Anna Lundh att berätta “Saga om den stora datamaskinen” och Holly Herndon spela sin kroppsliga elektronika. Plus en massa annat intressant, ska försöka hinna dit.