Energetic (im)materialities of the elemental field: transductive practices in Lars Fredrikson's sound art
Lars Fredrikson (1926-1997) was a Swedish artist who settled in the south of France in the early 1960s. He was successively a radiotelegraphist and a television repairman, and later a painter and a kinetic sculptor. At the end of the decade, he began an electronic media practice that led him to view sound projection as a plastic medium. His sound work comes under an intermedia approach, falling under the post-minimalist concept of sculpture in the expanded field, as well as it is part of an antivisual context (Krauss, 1979 ; Krauss, 1986). The artist posits himself in a direct heritage of an early 20th-century pictorial and sculptural tradition, claiming the influence of a body of vibratory experimentalists who sought to project their gesture beyond the world of form and vision (Henderson, 2002).
In his wound works, Lars Fredrikson is committed to a non-visuality, a non-referentiality and a non-teleological relationship to time that distances him from the practices of musical composition. This art of sound is constantly negotiating with perceptual thresholds, and in particular with the electromagnetic spectrum – radio waves, gamma rays, etc. – within the framework of a transductive approach – i.e. based on transitions from one energy state to another. Fredrikson's practice is linked to the scientific advances of his time, notably in the fields of quantum physics, astrophysics and biology. As such, it extends the speculative correspondences between perceptual regimes specific to the historical avant-gardes to embrace those of the analogical, transductive relationships of the different energy kingdoms, without appearing to be a definitive demonstration of their ductility. This scientific imaginary is augmented by the major spiritual trends of the time, starting with the numerous encounters between quantum materialism and Far Eastern spiritualities, of which Fredrikson is fond - particularly Zen Buddhism and Taoism (Kaiser, 2012). The latter were the driving force behind ecological and counter-cultural thinking in the 1960s and 1970s, a period when the conceptual and epistemological shift from classical physics to the theories of quantum physics definitively contaminated other fields of knowledge, notably psychoanalysis, sociology, philosophy, the visual arts and literature.
Undertaking an elemental media perspective (Peters, 2015), we will focus on revealing the material specificities of the elemental field as an experiential medium (Heider, (1926) 2017), and its part in the formation of what the artist designates as "plastic space" (espace plastique). This talk will explore the epistemic and aesthetic challenges at stake, in Lars Fredrikson's sound work, regarding sonification (Akiyama and Sterne, 2012), and practices that, in the wake of the development of electronic technologies of detection, amplification, transmission, recording and diffusion, establish a dialogue with invisible energies, whether electromechanical, electrical, or mechanical, anthropic, or natural (Kahn, 2013).
(This talk can be held in French or in English, according to preferences)
SELECTIVE BIBLIOGRAPHY
Akiyama, Mitchell, et Jonathan Sterne. « The Recording That Never Wanted to Be Heard and Other Stories of Sonification ». In The Oxford Handbook of Sound Studies, édité par Trevor Pinch et Karin Bijsterveld. Oxford handbooks. New York: Oxford University Press, 2012.
Clarke, Bruce, et Linda Dalrymple Henderson, éd. From energy to information: representation in science and technology, art, and literature. Stanford, Calif: Stanford University Press, 2002.
Enns, Anthony, et Shelley Trower, éd. Vibratory Modernism. Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire, UK ; New York, NY: Palgrave Macmillan, 2013.
Henderson, Linda Dalrymple. « Vibratory Modernism: Boccioni, Kupka, and the Ether of Space ». In From energy to information. Representation in science and technology, art, and literature, édité par Linda Dalrymple Henderson et Bruce Clarke, 126‑49. Stanford, California: Stanford University Press, 2002.
Heider, Fritz, et Emmanuel Alloa. Chose et médium. Paris: Vrin, 2017.
Kaiser, David, How the Hippies Saved Physics: Science, Counterculture, and the Quantum Revival, New York, London, Norton, 2012
Kahn, Douglas. Noise, Water, Meat: A History of Sound in the Arts. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 2001.
Kahn, Douglas. Earth Sound Earth Signal, Energies and Earth Magnitude in the Arts. Berkeley / Los Angeles / Londres: University of California Press, 2013.
Krauss, Rosalind. « Antivision ». October 37 (Printemps 1986): 147‑54.
Peters, John Durham. The marvelous clouds: toward a philosophy of elemental media. Chicago ; London: the University of Chicago Press, 2015.
Léa Dreyer est doctorante et enseignante en Histoire de l'art à l'Université Paris I Panthéon-Sorbonne, où elle a été A.T.E.R entre 2021 et 2023. Elle travaille sur les pratiques médiatiques et sonores de Lars Fredrikson (1926-1997) sous la direction du Pr. Pascal Rousseau. Ses recherches ont entre autres été publiées dans Les Cahiers du Musée National d'Art Moderne et Perspective. Elle co-organise le colloque international Télé-visions : technologies de l'ubiquité dans les arts visuels (XIXe - XXIe siècles) (INHA, octobre 2023). En 2020, elle a reçu la bourse "Mission Recherche" des Amis du Centre Pompidou, pour son projet de recherche "Les sons plastiques de Lars Fredrikson (1926-1997) : étude d'un corpus sonore et de ses modes de diffusion", sous la direction de Marcella Lista. Elle a également été chargée de recherche au MAMAC de Nice (bourse de recherche du Nouveau Musée National de Monaco) en 2019.
Léa Dreyer is a PhD candidate and lecturer in Art History at Université Paris I Panthéon-Sorbonne, where she was A.T.E.R between 2021 and 2023. She works on the media and sound practices of Lars Fredrikson (1926-1997) under the supervision of Pr. Pascal Rousseau. Her research has been published in Les Cahiers du Musée National d'Art Moderne, Hybrid and Perspective, among other peer reviewed journals. She is co-organizing the international colloquium Tele-visions: technologies of ubiquity in the visual arts (19th - 21st centuries) (INHA, October 2023). In 2020, she received the "Mission Recherche" grant from Centre Pompidou, for her research project "Les sons plastiques de Lars Fredrikson (1926-1997): étude d'un corpus sonore et de ses modes de diffusion", under the supervision of chief curator Marcella Lista. She was also a research fellow at the MAMAC in Nice (research grant from the Nouveau Musée National de Monaco) in 2019.
Lars Fredrikson (1926-1997) was a Swedish artist and radioamateur. His electronic media practice led him to view sound projection as a plastic medium. In his sound production, which lies at the encounter between quantum materialism and Far Eastern spiritualities, Fredrikson constantly negotiates with perceptual thresholds, and in particular with the electromagnetic spectrum – radio waves, gamma rays, etc. – within the framework of a transductive approach – i.e. based on transitions from one energy state to another. As such, it extends the historical speculative correspondences between perceptual regimes to embrace those of analogical, transductive relationships between different energy realms.