Artist Karl Holmqvist reads “ANOTHER WAR IS POSSIBLE” and “NUMBERS,” and speaks with artist and e-flux founder Anton Vidokle.
Karl Holmqvist is known for using a wide range of formats—poetry readings, installation, and sculpture–to bring out the primal qualities of language. He is one of a current generation of artists working with language and text as sculptural or performative material. Holmqvist says his work is meant to spark the creative process in the viewer, seeing his art and poetry as a translation of the complexities of contemporary life. He blends poetry with pop music and his texts, composed of anecdotes as famous as they are diverse, explore the themes of communication and language. Together, the works unpack the many operations of language, how it can occupy space and provoke “invisible images” within memory and imagination.
In February 2019, e-flux’s Bar Laika presented a new work by Karl Holmqvist: #FLU$$CH (29 minutes, 2017), with an introduction by and Q&A with Pati Hertling.
You can read “GORILLAZ GRRLZ,” Holmqvist’s contribution to e-flux journal’s SUPERCOMMUNITY project at the 56th Venice Biennale, here.