Performers & composers

Johannes Bergmark

Johannes Bergmark plays improvised and live electronic music for invented instruments, selected objects, the musical saw, toys, voice, electronics etc. He makes his own instruments and contact microphones.
Bergmark is also a writer, electroacoustic music and text-sound composer, sound poet, piano technician and surrealist. He has toured internationally and collaborated with many artists worldwide. He also makes sound sculptures, interactive sound installations and teaches and lectures. In some settings he also done acting, dancing, used objects and even done jester tricks.
He lives in Stockholm, sweden, and Szczecin, poland, and has been chairman in the organization for radical and experimental art Fylkingen (Stockholm) and also in FRIM, the swedish association for free improvised music. He has worked a lot at the electronic music studio EMS and in the Surrealist Group in Stockholm.
Groups he belongs to include:

  • The Najo Royal Family, multi-disciplinary duo with Anna Bergmark
  • Smullotron with Lise-Lotte Norelius, Sören Runolf
  • Duo with Martin Klapper
  • Think Pink with SU-EN
  • Slip with Jaap Blonk, Mats Gustafsson, Lou Mallozzi)
  • Fågelpingis with Tomas Halling, Jacob Ullberger
  • Cloudchamber with Martin Küchen, Sören Runolf

THE STRINGED STIRRUPS (ca 10')

(…) When I heard that every string in the piano is under the tension corresponding to about 70 kilos, I imagined a man hanging in every string, and that was not very far from actually mounting a model in the ceiling of the workshop, with stirrups in the lower end of two strings. A stool was made into a resonator, [a] kind of loop bridges (…) through the seat. (…) I found out a way of fastening a strap around resonator and shoulders (…). Playing became comfortable and liberated both hands and four sounding string lengths for bowing, and beating with specially made felt- and skin-covered blocks. With a contact microphone, the floating, long-ringing, thundering bass tones and intense, whistling overtones come out clearly. Vibrato and pitch change can be achieved by displacing the weight between the feet. (…) I also developed longitudinal vibrations (…) These shockingly strong tones were made by rubbing along the strings with rosined pieces of cloth. The thickness of the piano wires are 1.5 and 1.0 mm, which makes a pitch difference of a fifth if the tensions and lengths are equal. For safety, I climb and play the instrument with protective goggles, which might be unnecessary, but the astronaut- or frogman-like appearance at a performance I think is rather desirable. The spotlight ladder I mounted the instrument in at Unga Atalante in Göteborg (Gothenburg) formed a triangular room which related me back to childhood obsessions: vehicles, outer space, climbing, circus, diving, aquarium. (…)

Johannes Bergmark