Leif Elggren (born 1950,
Linköping
Linköping () is a city in southern Sweden, with around 105,000 inhabitants as of 2021. It is the seat of Linköping Municipality and the capital of Östergötland County. Linköping is also the episcopal see of the Diocese of Linköping (Church ...
,
Sweden), is a Swedish artist who lives and works in
Stockholm.
Active since the late 1970s, Leif Elggren has become one of the most constantly surprising conceptual artists to work in the combined worlds of audio and visual. A writer, visual artist, stage performer and composer, he has many albums to his credits, solo and with the Sons of God, on labels such as
Ash International,
Touch
In physiology, the somatosensory system is the network of neural structures in the brain and body that produce the perception of touch ( haptic perception), as well as temperature ( thermoception), body position (proprioception), and pain. It ...
, Radium and his own Firework Edition. His music, often conceived as the soundtrack to a visual installation or experimental stage performance, usually presents carefully selected sound sources over a long stretch of time and can range from quiet electronics to harsh noise. His wide-ranging and prolific body of art often involves dreams and subtle absurdities, social hierarchies turned upside-down, hidden actions and events taking on the quality of icons.
Together with artist
Carl Michael von Hausswolff
Carl Michael von Hausswolff (born 1956) is a composer, visual artist, and curator based in Stockholm, Sweden. His main tools are recording devices (camera, tape deck, radar, sonar) used in an ongoing investigation of electricity, frequency, ar ...
, he is a founder of the Kingdoms of
Elgaland-Vargaland (KREV) where he enjoys the title of king.
History
Elggren spent five years at the Academy of Fine Arts in Stockholm, specializing in drawing, design and bookprinting. In the late ‘70s he began to associate with performance groups, meeting people like Hausswolff and
Thomas Liljenberg. With the latter he formed Firework in 1978, a duo that put up exhibitions and performances. Around the same time he purchased a press and started to publish art books. In 1982 he founded Firework Edition, a small publishing company, together with Liljenberg.
In 1988 he formed the duo Guds Söner (The Sons of God) with Kent Tankred, whom he had met four years earlier. The duo excels in creating long, puzzling stage performances that give equal roles to physical action (or inaction) and soundtrack (live or taped) with themes such as violence, love, the quotidian, food and royalty.
Elggren released his first 7" records in 1982 and 1984 on Hausswolff's label Radium. A first solo LP, ''Flown Over by an Old King'', came out in 1988. The inception of Firework Edition in 1996 allowed Elggren to release more of his music and the growing popularity of installation art in avant-garde music circles (thanks to its ties with experimental electronica) has given his work more international exposure since the late ‘90s. Other key solo works include ''Talking to a Dead Queen'' (1996) and ''Pluralis Majestatis'' (2000).
Together with Hausswolff, Elggren curated the Nordic Pavilion at the Venice Biennale in 2001.
In 2007 he appeared (with
John Duncan John Duncan may refer to:
Arts and entertainment
* John Duncan (painter) (1866–1945), Scottish painter
* John Duncan (artist) (born 1953), American artist and musician
* Big John Duncan (born 1958), Scottish punk musician
* John Duncan (harpist) ...
) at the
Netmage festival in
Bologna
Bologna (, , ; egl, label=Emilian language, Emilian, Bulåggna ; lat, Bononia) is the capital and largest city of the Emilia-Romagna region in Northern Italy. It is the seventh most populous city in Italy with about 400,000 inhabitants and 1 ...
organized by xing and executed "Something Like Seeing in the Dark".
Selected discography
*''Flown Over by an Old King'' (Radium 226.05, 1988)
*''Talking to a Dead Queen'' (Fylkingen, 1996)
*''Pluralis Majestatis'' (Firework Edition, 2000)
*''9.11 (Desperation Is the Mother of Laughter)'' (Firework Edition, 2000) with Thomas Liljenberg
*''UGN/MAT'' (2000) with Per Jonsson and Kent Tankred
*''Two Thin Eating One Fat'' (Firework Edition, 2000) with Thomas Liljenberg
*''Triangles'' (Moikai, 2001) with
Kevin Drumm
Kevin Drumm (born 1970) is an experimental musician based in Chicago, United States.
Biography
Emerging from the city's improvised music scene, in the 1990s he became one of the world's pre-eminent prepared guitar players. Since then his wor ...
*''Extraction'' (2002)
*''DEG'' (Firework Edition, 2002) with
Mats Gustafsson
Mats Olof Gustafsson (born 29 October 1964) is a Swedish free jazz saxophone player.
Career
Gustafsson came to the attention of lovers of improvised music as part of a duo with Christian Munthe (started in 1986), as member of Gunter Chri ...
and
Kevin Drumm
Kevin Drumm (born 1970) is an experimental musician based in Chicago, United States.
Biography
Emerging from the city's improvised music scene, in the 1990s he became one of the world's pre-eminent prepared guitar players. Since then his wor ...
*''The Cobblestone Is the Weapon of the Proletariat'' (Firework Edition, 2004)
*''Gottesdienst'' (iDEAL, 2006)
*''Das Baank'' (
Fragment Factory/Rekem Records, 2016)
*''MOTOR for an Unknown Vehicle (Opening of the Grave)'' (
Fragment Factory, 2019)
Compilation appearances
*''
Emre (Dark Matter)'' (2000)
*''suRRism-Phonoethics sPE_0100: Peak the Source Vol.3'' (2011),
Surrism-Phonoethics
*''30/4 (2013),
Fragment Factory
Interviews
interviewfrom Bananafish #16
interviewfrom Dusted (2004)
from Perfect Sound Forever (2005)
External links
Leif ElggrenThe Kingdoms of Elgaland-Vargaland*
AllMusic entrybr>
Discographyat discogs.com
{{DEFAULTSORT:Elggren, Leif
1950 births
Living people
Swedish artists
Multimedia artists
Micronational leaders