Karl Georg Staffan Björk

Camouflage

Photographic series of different fruit and dairy products hiding out among each other.

1. Pear/Avocado (Photo)
2. Egg/Mozzarella (Photo)
3. Cucumber/Zucchini (Photo)

Blocks (pathway)

Echos of the calculated imprints and traces of human effort in the labyrinth mines of Sint Pietersberg, Maastricht. Drawing/print made for the exhibition A Common Dialect/Elementary Session at Marres, Maastricht, The Netherlands, August 2011.

Felt-tip, pencil and water on paper (64 × 48 cm), laser print (84 × 60 cm).

Illusion (42 Pieces)

Vase dropped to the floor and re-assembled without fixative.

The Sun Session

The Sun Session is the 12th edition of The Session, released in May 2011. An interplanetary web exhibition revolving around the Sun, edited and designed by KGS Björk. Each satellite refer to the worshipping, the celebration, the scientific discoveries and the human need of the Sun, but at the same time hints each contributors interpretation of the theme. Like astronomers continuos search for new matter, the viewer of The Sun Session explore art through an artificial universe, periodically disrupted by a 'solar eclipse'.

Variationer & Repetitioner på: Siffror, Hamburgare, Tid/rumsförvandlingar, Frisyrer, Grönsaker, Ljud & Ljusfrekvenser, Flexibilitet, Näbbar... Och Andra Sensationer Erfarna Under Yttre Och Inre Promenader!

A book that revolves around the constant fluctuations and volatility of information perceived in the urban landscape. Subconcious reflections presented next to concrete references of possible re-positions in the layout of the city, thus forming a sort of Hyperreality, throwing the reader between unlikely facts and veracious fiction.

Fig. 1–9; Variationer & Repetitioner (...), Swedish version, 56 pages, Projektion 2, 2011

Read chapter 8, Amsterdam, in Swedish. (Pdf)

Brahman Revisited

Installation made for the exhibition Exploitation Exhaltation at Besan Nagar beach, Chennai, India, February 2010. A work that reflects the indian quest of unification with the Brahman and the in India close relation between science/religion and clash between poverty/high-tech.

Kite made from recycled plastic bags (2×2m) with 'temple spaceship' screen print and launching pad. (Plastic bags, bamboo, 5m wooden pole, paint and ropes)

Fig. 1–4; Installation view/video documentation.

Fountain

Video (1' 40", loop) made for the exhibition Exploitation Exhaltation at Besan Nagar beach, Chennai, India, February 2010. Garbage picked up from the surroundings of a small village, brought back to some villagers yard and made into a fountain.

Trash fountain made from an electric fan, transparent plastic, found plastic/paper garbage.

The Naked City

Re-enactment – in text and (moving) image – of Guy Debords' psychogeographic drifting The Naked City. On the perception of city street sounds. Made for The Sweded Session at Krets Gallery, Malmö, Sweden, January 2010.

"You are now experiencing an acousmatic sensation reminiscent of the sound of a globe-sized, relatively light, object dressed in synthetic leatherimitation, by dimension merely somewhat larger than your own head; an object that, if one posits oneself at the top of a gigantic staircase, is put into movement and with vacillating, irregularly stifled – somewhat hollow pliable whistling bounces disappears down a plywooddraped corridor-like space; bounces that swiftly accelerate to an evenly distributed rhythmic, yet irregularly, rattling rainy sound. This sound is simultaneously fused with the droning of a centimetre-sized, extremely hot-tempered hovering winged insect, which most rapidly – barely noticeably – alternates repeatedly between moving away from and moving towards your right ear, which generates a sort of palpitating, by all means phlegmatically low tone; a tone refreshed by a monophonically pointed – trebling gliding, slightly crackling resonance, comparable to the sound of snow slowly compressed between thermonylon-lined hands.

If one multiplies the speed of these inharmoniously modulating sounds with five, give or take, their frequencies are adjusted to how you actually, right there, perceive them; these but a few small tunes in an unconducatble cacophonous orchestra. An orchestra trapped in an artificial structure that distributes and recreates phrasing and dynamics from both dissonantly clamouring units – which mercilessly signalise their existence after brusquely been put together and reshaped in fragmentary collisions; as well as surprisingly euphonious compositions of clangs – sharp-wittingly soaring in the wind high above devastating clamour, where they are spread kilometres and kilometres, way beyond the horizon’s unexposed perspectives and stored in the periphery’s infinite soundbank."

Karl Georg Staffan Björk – The Naked City, 2010.

English translation by Martina Larsson

Herengracht

Installation at Plan B, Herengracht 32, Amsterdam, The Netherlands, November 2009. Made from plastic tubes, plastic, wood, tape, water boilers, pump and drainage channels.

The Herengracht is being manipulated; through hoses tapped into the Plan B gallery where it is boiled in six waterboilers, steamed into a plastic tent-like weather chamber (creating a sort of forced artificial micro climate) where it quickly evaporates, and through tubes re-distributed back into the main canal.

Fig. 1–7; Installation view.

Meteorite Impact

Video installation for the exhibition The Last Session at De Brakke Grond in Amsterdam, The Netherlands, September/October 2009.

The heard non-existing sound of meteors, interpreted into moving image and re-projected onto the firmament. "Visual sounds" generated from various household utilities, groceries and everyday things.

1. The faint sizzling of cellophane (Video still)
2. Frying Bacon (Video still)
3. Smothering the fire (Video still)
4. Opening soda bottle (Video still)
5. Steam from a cooker (Video still)
6. Whipping the flyswatter (Video still)
7. Installation view

Proposal For Neopangaea To Align With The Equator

Towing the continental plates to align them with the equator. Part of the ongoing work Proposal For Interplanetary Equilibrium.

Proposal For Outwitting Gravity

Gravity studies/photographic still life series. Part of the ongoing project Proposal For Interplanetary Equilibrium. (Zucchini, pineapple, onion, PET-bottle, paper/transparent tape, banana, apple)

Som Man Bäddar Får Man Ligga

Proposal for restoration of unbalanced mindflow. Part of the ongoing series Proposal For Interplanetary Equilibrium. Embrodery, 2009.

Proposal For European Anthem

The primitive sound of the horn has been used to draw attention to citizens of tribes and communities for thousands of years; from the early Stone Age men to the Sumerians, Indians and Greeks to modern day. Signals from trumpets and horns are nowadays used to attend costumers to the ice-cream car as well as to make clear way for ambulances.

Composition of the European Anthem are made from the monumental drones of several EU-countries 'emergency alarm signals'.

Part of the ongoing work Proposal For Interplanetary Equilibrium.

Proposal For Interplanetary Equilibrium

Repositioning of meteorites to pre-impact orbit. Video, 54 sec. (Bicycle pump, tube, PET-bottle, wood, metal, kork, water, stone)

Proposal number one (repositioning) in the ongoing work Proposal For Interplanetary Equilibrium – in which the artist provide various suggestions for the reorganization of physical and psychological structures in the universe with the intention to create interplanetary balance.

Meteorite Replicas

Photographic series of meteorite replicas. The replicas are made according to witnessed dutch meteorite impacts (findings) during the years 1840-1990. From here derives the original idea behind all work in the ongoing series Proposal For Interplanetary Equilibrium; to reposition meteorites which have fallen down on earth to avoid its mass to increase and eventually be sucked into the Sun.

Chiseled out to correct weight from found concrete blocks.

1. Utrecht, 7kg (Photo)
2. Uden, 720g (Photo)
3. Ellemeet, 970g (Photo)

Variations & Repetitions on: Numbers, Hamburgers, Time/Room Transitions, Hairstyles, Vegetables, Sound & Light Frequencies, Flexibility, Beaks... And Other Sensations Experienced During Outer And Inner Walks!

A book that revolves around the constant fluctuations and volatility of information perceived in the urban landscape. Subconcious reflections presented next to concrete references of possible re-positions in the layout of the city, thus forming a sort of Hyperreality, throwing the reader between unlikely facts and veracious fiction.

Fig. 1–9; Variations & Repetitions (...), English version, 84 pages, Projektion 1, 2009

Read chapter 8, Amsterdam, in English. (Pdf)

Expansion/Kollaps

Object (balloon) scaled 1:1 and presented on A4. On the (meta)physical transition of an object.

Translations

Video based on the confusion of language and its translations. Dialogue from a Dutch/Swedish tourist dictionary. Made for screening at Lloyd Hotel, Amsterdam, 2007.

Satan

Semi-analogue drum machine made in collaboration with Monica Tormell.

Video documentation of the installation at the exhibition When Hell Freezes Over, Galerie van Gelder, Amsterdam, 2007. (Arduino, wires, wood, paint, plexi, electric hoisting magnets, beach racket, water pitcher, paper roll, mp3-player, speakers)