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Bengt af Klintberg (Bengt Knut Erik af Klintberg) (b. 25 December 1938 in
Stockholm Stockholm () is the capital and largest city of Sweden as well as the largest urban area in Scandinavia. Approximately 980,000 people live in the municipality, with 1.6 million in the urban area, and 2.4 million in the metropo ...
) is a
Swedish Swedish or ' may refer to: Anything from or related to Sweden, a country in Northern Europe. Or, specifically: * Swedish language, a North Germanic language spoken primarily in Sweden and Finland ** Swedish alphabet, the official alphabet used by ...
folklorist Folklore studies, less often known as folkloristics, and occasionally tradition studies or folk life studies in the United Kingdom, is the branch of anthropology devoted to the study of folklore. This term, along with its synonyms, gained currenc ...
,
ethnologist Ethnology (from the grc-gre, ἔθνος, meaning 'nation') is an academic field that compares and analyzes the characteristics of different peoples and the relationships between them (compare cultural, social, or sociocultural anthropolog ...
, and artist who is known for his work on modern
urban legend An urban legend (sometimes contemporary legend, modern legend, urban myth, or urban tale) is a genre of folklore comprising stories or fallacious claims circulated as true, especially as having happened to a "friend of a friend" or a family m ...
s. His work reached a large audience with such books as ''Råttan i pizzan'' (''The Rat in the Pizza''), published in 1986, and ''Den stulna njuren'' (''The Stolen Kidney'') published in 1994. Klintberg is so widely known for his work on urban legends that the common Swedish word for
urban legend An urban legend (sometimes contemporary legend, modern legend, urban myth, or urban tale) is a genre of folklore comprising stories or fallacious claims circulated as true, especially as having happened to a "friend of a friend" or a family m ...
for a while was the eponymous "klintbergare" ("klintbergers"). Klintberg was co-host of ''Folkminnen'' (''Folk Memories''), a long-running
radio Radio is the technology of signaling and communicating using radio waves. Radio waves are electromagnetic waves of frequency between 30  hertz (Hz) and 300  gigahertz (GHz). They are generated by an electronic device called a tr ...
show on Swedish national public radio channel P1, together with Christina Mattsson, at that time the director of the Nordic Museum. The program invited listeners to write letters describing local legends, games, customs or other folklore traditions, as well as encouraging them to ask questions about their origin or significance. After 750 weekly installations, the last broadcast of the program aired in January 2005.


Artistic career

Klintberg gained an international reputation in the early 1960s as a member of
Fluxus Fluxus was an international, interdisciplinary community of artists, composers, designers and poets during the 1960s and 1970s who engaged in experimental art performances which emphasized the artistic process over the finished product. Fluxus ...
, the international laboratory of art, design, and music. Dick Higgins’s
Something Else Press Something Else Press was founded by Dick Higgins in 1963. It published many important Intermedia texts and artworks by such Fluxus artists as Higgins, Ray Johnson, Alison Knowles, Allan Kaprow, George Brecht, Daniel Spoerri, Robert Fillio ...
published Klintberg’s ''The Cursive Scandinavian Salve'' in 1967. This booklet brought Klintberg’s background in folklore traditions to the world of contemporary art. Art historian Peter Frank writes about the “sweetly silly and often picturesque events af Klintberg proposes. Af Klintberg fell in with Fluxus in 1962, and his pieces exhibit a Fluxus sense of subversion and quasi-magical activity. Purposeful intent is lent to apparently purposeless gestures, symbolic actions which effect desired change in the way of, say, necromantic ritual: ‘Open an empty envelope with both hands and talk loudly into it. Then close the envelope quickly and post it to anyone whom it may concern. – Calls, Canto 6’.” Ubu Web published a digital reprint of ''The Cursive Scandinavian Salve'' in the Ubu Classics series. Klintberg's lack of visibility as an artist had much to do with the fact that his most active years took place in the early 1960s when Fluxus was hardly known, especially not in Sweden. In the book ''Swedish Fluxus'', Klintberg writes: “The three Fluxus concerts which were arranged in Stockholm in March 1963 attracted only a handful of visitors and had no immediate influence on the Swedish cultural climate. It was not at all like in Germany and Denmark, where the concerts had been well-attended and caused a scandal and made a deep impact on a whole generation of young artists.” By 1990, however, things had changed and Klintberg's work was included in the major Fluxus exhibition at the Venice Biennale. Fluxus artist and scholar
Ken Friedman Ken Friedman (born September 19, 1949 in New London, Connecticut) is a design researcher. He was a member of Fluxus, an international laboratory for experimental art, architecture, design, and music. Friedman joined Fluxus in 1966 as the youngest m ...
explains Klintberg's career as an artist and an influence that exceeds his reputation: "In contrast to the internationally renowned folklorist, there is another Bengt af Klintberg, a Klintberg whose work is hardly known. I want to consider the work of this Klintberg in the light of re-received ideas. This Bengt af Klintberg was a pioneering artist in performance and intermedia. In the early 1960s, his work helped to shape central aspects of the event structure and performance art around the world". Friedman places this in the larger context of the art world, writing: "Art historians and critics specializing in performance art have generally undervalued artists whose work emerges from literature and music. Figures such as Jerome Rothenberg, Jackson Mac Low, David Antin, and Meredith Monk are less prominent in the art world than equally influential figures that also made salable art objects. This is understandable in a field traditionally tied to objects and object making. Object-oriented institutions – museums, galleries, magazines – shape the visibility of art ideas and structure recent art history". "Bengt af Klintberg is a public figure and a respected presence in literature and scholarship," Friedman concludes. "It is odd to call him an unknown artist. It is nonetheless true. Bengt af Klintberg is the most famous unknown artist in Sweden since
Strindberg Johan August Strindberg (, ; 22 January 184914 May 1912) was a Swedish playwright, novelist, poet, essayist and painter.Lane (1998), 1040. A prolific writer who often drew directly on his personal experience, Strindberg wrote more than sixty p ...
".Friedman, Ken. 2006. “The Case for Bengt af Klintberg.” ''Performance Research'', Vol. 11, No. 2, p. 143. DOI: https://dx.doi.org/10.1080/135281606000888703


Selected publications

*''Ormkungens krona'' (1961) *''Svenska trollformler'' (1965) *''Svenska folksägner'' (1972) *''Harens klagan'' (1978) *''Råttan i pizzan'' (1986) *''Den stulna njuren'' (1994) *''Kuttrasju'' (1998) *''Glitterspray'' (2005)


References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Klintberg, Bengt af 1938 births Living people Writers from Stockholm Swedish folklorists