Focus Inexpectatus in Dala-Floda (part 3)

Focus Inexpectatus in Dala-Floda (part 3)

October 11, 2017

Written by:

Philipp Schmickl

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Fourth day, August 4

Little exhaustion. But the good food and the constantly fresh bread, that everybody (artists, audience, volunteers) shares three times a day, is immensely strengthening. Also the French vin naturel and the Swedish craft beer, which tastes a little like toothpaste, are like medicine against fatigue.

The last two concerts of the last night I heard from far, they were loud enough. The next-to-last concert: Jonathan Larsson, dragspel; Oskar Reuter, guitar, nyckelharpa.
Last concert: Ständernas SvallFinn Loxbo, guitar, singing; Vegard Lauvdal, drums.

I went to the bar and talked to the people. I got acquainted with Lucas Maia, a Brazilian from São Paulo who is living in Berlin and who, together with Léa Lanoë and Pierre Borel, is making a film, 16 mm, at the Hagenfesten. I talked to some volunteers and to some guests and I heard many stories, that are easily told to strangers. Justine told me, that she had heard from Mélody Justine who I told about my book-making and writing, that an écrivain (writer) is at the festival. She didn’t know how he looked liked, but judging from how I moved and looked, she thought it was me. So, I am identified and recognized as a writer. But am I really a writer?

The rain disregards any agenda
Under the stars
Howe Gelb


The instability of the cloudy. Today in the early afternoon I went to the gallery and saw Anna Högberg, saxophones; Susana Santos Silva, trumpet. The room was really bright compared to the general conditions. I sat down and closed my eyes until the end of the concert. I felt like being inside their instruments and I could have stayed longer. When I opened my eyes I saw two young elephants standing in front of me and I applauded.

It is half past three, 2016, I am 36 years old. The festival folks are speaking in different languages. Aimie has already opened the bar and put on Radio Nostalgie. Since days she didn’t remove her pink sun glasses which fits very well to her Moroccan face and her brazilian hairdo. She just stepped out of the bar and shouted, ‘The bar is open!’ and then she danced some steps in front of the entrance. Buenaonda. I am thinking about getting hold of a glass of rosé pettillant. with Itaru Oki

Later : Instead to the bar I went to the movies in the Ladan. The programme is curated by Pierre Borel and Léa Lanoë. This afternoon the films were accompanied by live music from Joel, Susana, Niklas, Linda, Antonin, Pierre-Antoine und Franziska, who were only introduced by their first names.

Voilà, the film-programme of the festival :

Mercredi 3/8
23H / Séance 1: Moullet/Smith
– Essai d’ouverture, de Luc Moullet – 14 ‘
– The Girl Chewing gum, de John Smith – 12′
– Gargantuan, de John Smith – 1′
– Barres, de Luc Moullet – 14′
– Associations, de John Smith – 7′
– Om, de John Smith – 4′

Jeudi 4/8
16H / Séance 2 : Jean Painlevé
–Le Bernard l’hermite, 14′
–La quatrième dimension, 10′
–Les amours de la pieuvre, 14′
–Le Vampire, 8′
01H / Séance 3 : Jean Rouch
–Cocorico Monsieur Poulet, de Jean Rouch – 92′

Vendredi 5/8
16H / Séance 4 : Ciné Konzert Bruce Lacey
– The Battle of New Orleans, 5′
– How to take a Bath 8′
– The Running and Stumbling and dumping Still, 10′
– The Kiss 8′
+ La Croissance des Végétaux, Institut Pasteur – 12′
01H / Séance 5 : Djibril Diop Mambety
– Badou Boy, de Djibril Diop Mambety – 56′

Samedi 6/8
16H / Séance 6 : 16mm
– Studie Zur Farbe, Lucas Maia, digital ton, 8′
– In the Traveller’s Heart, Distruktur, Optical ton, 20′
01H / Séance 7 :
–Dreaminimalist, de Marie Losier – 23′
–Germans taste the best , de Rosa von Praunheim – 26′
–Double Exposure, de Bruce Lacey – 3′

Léa and Pierre run the KK19. A space in Berlin for extraordinary musics, exhibitions, films, lectures, dancings, foods, and so forth, says the website. I have to visit them. With their choice of films, they pointed to a whole new world – there is so much that I don’t know and they added another dimension to that! Every film I saw during the festival I would watch again, but I don’t want to write about them. If I would, I would like to create a space wide as this text in order to show Connections and conditions but you know. What I want to say is that every festival that engages in experimenting, should provide a space for movies like on the list above. Live-accompanying is okay, but not necessary.

A man, an old Swede, is walking around the Hagen. He looks like Jean-François Pauvros with a radical haircut. (Unfortunately no photo).

A concert starts in the Stallet. I hope, I am going to hear it over to where I am sitting right now, still thinking of the two young elephants. Applause in the Stallet. Greta (three years old, fair-haired, like every Swedish child) is hiding from her mother (Franziska). I know where she is. Franziska does not.

The other child is wearing a mask upside down. In they kitchen dinner is being prepared. I can’t hear anything from the Stallet. The sun is shining on my black jacket.

Later : It was Martin Küchen, saxophones; Joel Bremer, violin who I finally went to listen to in the Stallet.

What is very frequent at the Hagen is a mixing of sounds, a mixing of the inside and the outside in the mind of the listener. The more quiet the concert, claro, the more you hear the sound of the surroundings. I thought : There is no will (and no possibility) to create an artificial/affectedly pureté (purity), ie to cut the music off from what is around. Thus, to let (in an anti-fascist manner) the mixing happen between music, humans, animals, machines, creaking wooden doors, le vent qui passe. One is relaxed and knows in what kind of world we live/love.

Half past eight, the sun is still shining. I am sitting by the river, most people are at the concert with Eva Rune, sång; Maria Misgeld, sång; Karin Ericsson Back, sång. Between the water and myself high grass and wild flowers are growing. Some mosquitos are circling round my ears. I will not write about every concert. I don’t have to say that much about music and I can’t listen to everything. And I won’t analyze any musical thing, but I will try to observe and find out what she does to people, what THIS music does to people and what effect she has on me. I am more interested in the relation between music and humans/societies than in the relation music to music or music to music history. I think like Andrew,

‘Really often, when the mind just wanders and lets the music do its thing, I mean, I keep coming back to really the primal things. (…) Because it’s really those things of life and death and food and animals and the stars and relationships with other people that I keep coming back to and then I think, those were the things that I’m thinking about in living, so of course those are the things that are going to come when I listen to the music.’ Andrew Choate, theoral no. 11


I sat down and closed my eyes until the end of the concert. I felt like being inside their instruments and I could have stayed longer. When I opened my eyes I saw two young elephants standing in front of me and I applauded.

Fifth day, Saturday or Lördag, August 6

Et puis, la pluie.

Everything is rippeling. Waves everywhere. The rain is falling onto the roofs of the tents and blurs the perception. I got to know Margarida Guia via Marc already in the first days of my stay and she told me many things about the recording of the environment (she also made under-water-recordings in the river, where the music flows), she told me about the sound design of films, the conservatism of the TV station arte and about Roy Anderson and his movies among many other things. When I came to the Stallet Joel was doing the announcement. I stood next to Margarida who said I could have her place in a second.

Her performance comprised poetry, her voice, poésie sonore, samples of every kind – musical instruments, humans, animals, machines, in short, the world outside – signs, paper rolls, &c. &c. She became a sorcière who cast her spell over me. Never before had I seen something like this and although she did not say it, I heard in my head the words paradis sonore.

Pourquoi chantent-ils en pleine nuit les oiseaux ? Sur la place, il y a quinze arbres encore un banc pour reposer la journée. Que sont les bancs publics devenus ? Voilà les jardins bétonnés pour que Reine voiture puisse trouver domicile fixe et symétriquement au millimètre près clonés les arbres sont enfermés dans un cage afin que les racines rebelles ne défigurent le paysage.
TOUT EST SI CALME
Les rues vidées de leurs piétons. Que sont les hommes devenus ?
Margarida Guia, Pour Votre Sécurité

And Margarida a mis le chien (she played the dog). The day before we met by chance on the way home from the church (kyrka). I was walking along the street and she came on the wooden footbridge over the Vesterdalälven. We continued to walk together and passed by a house where a grey dog was barking, tied to a tree. A beautiful bark, Margarida said. She crossed the street and went over to the fence where she recorded him until he stopped barking and looked away. We went on towards the Hagen and she told me that barking sounds were her signature. When she does sound design, she always tries to place a bark. In the next days – both of us went past the house several times – there was no trace of the dog, the phantom dog. I am not sure if he really existed. Nonetheless he is on Margaridas recorder. Maybe the dog was me or it was an assistant of Professor Voland.

Margarida spoke about the memories that are triggered by a single sound or recording and how a tic-tac, the coming on of neon lights, or the barking of a dog, even made by humans, can bring back or evoke a whole world. I related an experience I had somewhere in France or Morocco. I came into a room and switched on the light and the click of the switch clicked exactly like in my room when I was a child. I can see myself in front of me writing into my notebook : Lichtschalter der Kindheit. Light switch of childhood. Hearing the click I felt transported into that time – until I put my backpack and bag on the only chair of the hotel room.

Eshu threw a stone yesterday; he killed a bird today.
Yoruba Proverb, in Pelton 1980

Then I saw the movie Badou Boy by Djibril Diop Mambety, in which a fat cop (like the clumsy but violent arm of the corrupt state) was chasing a slim gangster (the embodiment of the drive for survival). Very fine, almost invisible humor. For this reason I missed the concert in the Stallet with Jonas Kullhammar, saxophone; Marcelo Gabar Pazos, saxophone; Elsa Bergman, double-bass; Magnus Vikberg, drums.

After a short break the dance band came on stage. With Pat Thomas, computer, ipad; Daichi Yoshikawa, feedback; Seymour Wright, saxophone, Joel Grip, guimbri; Paul Abbott, drums, electronics; Antonin Gerbal, drums; Pierre-Antoine Badaroux, synthesizer, saxophone. And the people started to dance immediately, on-the-spot, and the dance floor got crowded until the Ladan was full. I got myself a craft beer and sat down outside in order to look into the sky. The cooking dance floor in my back, about 15 metres away. Focus inexpectatus – Félix came over and gave me a massage, neck and shoulders, very professional, like my haircut. I closed my eyes, surrendered my arms to gravity so that the bottle slipped out of my fingers. This kind of situation attracted other Hagenfolks, like Emma, who came to sit and talk with us. I went dancing. Movement. Merci, Félix.

This, Saturday, morning there were two concerts in the church. Two solos + satisfied babies. First one was Sofia Jernberg, voice. Since a long time I hadn’t heard her so clear, so solo, because when I had the chance to listen to her, it was always in groups or orchestras that swallowed large parts of her voice. But here, she was clear as ever. I just listened.

The second concert was a violin (fiol) solo by Joel Bremer. He played traditional Swedish tunes and in between he had a lot to say but in Swedish. I couldn’t even hear his voice from my bench, so I lay down and from time to time I fell asleep only to be woken up by the heavenly sound of the violin and marvelled at the church ceiling. It’s also these moments of seemingly lesser importance that make a festival, especially when they give you the freedom to sleep outstretched in a church.

Afternoon, cinema: Lucas Maia projected a 16 mm film that was made by two friends of his, Distruktur : In the Traveller’s Heart – very Jodorowsky – and two films made by himself – ‘they are the same but different,’ he said. Studie zur Farbe.

Sixth day, Sunday, August 7 – The Parting

Ahmed played yesterday: Seymour Wright, saxophone; Joel Grip, double-bass; Antonin Gerbal, drums; Pat Thomas, piano. A variation on a theme, 40 minutes, nothing new but good and it was fun.

In the evening I went to the movies: Dreaminimalist with Tony Conrad by Marie Losier. There is so much to discover.

And to miss – what I did not hear during the film was Alberto Pinton Noi Siamo – Alberto Pinton, saxophone, clarinet; Konrad Agnas, drums; Nikals Barnö, trumpet; Torbjörn Zetterberg, double-bass.

In the meantime, on the square under the bell (see illustration above), we projected the film that Léa, Pierre and Lukas shot during the festival. Léa and Pablo were holding the screen, Pierre and some others the film, Lucas was operating on the projector, I was holding the lamp. To be honest, we couldn’t see much.

After that the final dance concert took place with The Joe DavolazVilhelm Bromander, elbas; Oscar Carls, singing, saxophone, flute; Dennis Egberth, drums; Joel Danell, synth; Linus Hillborg, guitar; Anders Af Klintberg, organ, lapsteel. Good rock show, white painted faces, two encores. The people danced and celebrated. Lena and Jon, Joel’s parents, were carried over the dancefloor by the crowd. We stayed up very long.

Seventh day, Monday

Seventh day, Monday, August 8, Stockholm, Arlanda Airport, 19.20 pm

I just payed € 8,50 for a small beer.

I got the Airport Blues.

A car ride (with Linda and Jon) of three hours ejected me from our small scale society in Dala-Floda, our tribe, like David Meier said, who was with us in the car, and I arrived in the loneliness of the airport.

I got the Airport Blues.

We were driving in a red Saab, Swedisch quality – a crown jewel! Nowadays they don’t produce cars any more, only military equipment. I asked myself if the pilots of the fighter jets also can enjoy such nice leather seats.

‘Sweden has become a major world supplier of weapons counting a number of regimes criticised for human rights abuses among its customers, while at the same time enjoying a global reputation for peacemaking and generous foreign aid.’ thelocal.se

It is a loneliness that is only possible after this kind of unity we had at the Hagenfesten. In front of me, a young couple is kissing and caressing each other and they make it all so concise and so clear that she (G.) is not here, I am thinking in the words of Bob Dylan. Soon I am going to be in Vienna, my plane leaves tomorrow at ten in the morning. Our community in Dala-Floda is dispersed. Very soon all the different individuals will be scattered all over (Western) Europe, they go back home or they keep on travelling, as artists, from one society to the other, as Minnesingers.

I got the Airport Blues.

In the last days we created a situation, a temporary society we wish to be lasting. This is how life feels right, this is how it makes sense. Our society was very open and everywhere we found friendliness. The Hagenfesten made it (again) clear that a festival is made by EVERYBODY who is there – organizers, artists, volunteers, audience – and that it needs the small scale. The bigger a festival becomes the more the individual is reduced to his or her function and becomes invisible. Here, the ones who actually made the festival work, were not invisible and those who were, maybe chose to be so or just to be seen less in doing their work. To some I talked more, to some I didn’t talk at all. Everybody brought his or her history, claro! like every human being and every animal and tree, &c. has one, but here the stories were part of the festival. Of course, less than the stories of the musicians and poets but quand-même. Most of the volunteers are in their early twenties. Some keep coming back for every edition and bring their friends and many who came for the first time, said that it was a unique experience. They never had experienced a community like this one.

This is EDUCATION.

I got the Airport Blues.

Some days later : Reading Emma Goldman’s Living My Life I learned the important word tyrannicide.

Literature:
Choate, Andrew 2015. In: theoral no. 11. Nickelsdorf.
Godard, Jean-Luc 2016. Österreichisches Filmmuseum. Wien.
Goldman, Emma 2008. Living My Life. Volume 1. Cosimo. New York.
Lesser, Alexander 1961. Social Fields and the Evolution of Society. Southwestern Journal of Anthropology 17: 40-48
Pelton, Robert 1980. The Trickster in West Africa. A Study of Mythic Irony and Sacred Delight. University of California Press.
Streifzüge. http://www.streifzuege.org
Wolf, Eric 1982. Europe And The People Without History. University of California Press.
Illustrations: Mélody Maitre
Photos: We who create this exhibition is Lisa Grip and Erik Viklund. In here we try to make photographs of the movement, people and moods that we meet during the festival. We see them as splinters in the jumble of Hagenfesten. Together they are as unpredictable as the rest of the program. In the beginning of the week the gallery is empty and then grows hand in hand with the festival. Everyday we take photographs, every night we develop them and hang them on the walls of the gallery.

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