Staircase Mystery
Karl Holmqvist
Staircase Mystery presents language as sound, rhythm and structure. Drawing on newspaper headlines, fragments of conversation and pop lyrics, Karl Holmqvist recomposes found language into spoken works that move between poetry, performance and visual art. Recorded in Geneva and Berlin, the LP brings together four readings in which repetition, ambiguity and voice continuously shift the meanings of familiar words.
A-Sides/Speckled Toshe 02, www.a-sides.ch and HEAD-Genève, 2020, SPT20-AS2
LP, black vinyl
Rather than conveying fixed meanings, Karl Holmqvist’s works expose language as something unstable and performative. Quotations, slogans, everyday speech and song lyrics are displaced, repeated and recombined until familiar expressions begin to oscillate between sense and sound. Rhythm gradually takes precedence over narrative, while repetition opens language to unexpected associations.
Read in the artist’s characteristically restrained voice, these recordings continue Holmqvist’s long-standing exploration of the territory between concrete poetry, visual art and spoken performance. His delivery avoids theatrical expression, allowing the slightest shifts in rhythm, emphasis and repetition to become central compositional elements.
Selected by the artist, the four recordings were made between the Centre d’Art Contemporain Genève and Holmqvist’s Berlin studio. Together, the four recordings unfold as a single listening experience, their differing rhythms, repetitions and vocal cadences continually echoing across the two sides of the record.
Staircase Mystery – 13:39
The Man Who Sold The World – 02:07
Declare Independence – 06:54
Addition Addiction – 03:58
Karl Holmqvist – concept, texts, text selection and voice
Recorded at Centre d’art contemporain (A1, A2), Genève and in Karl Holmqvist’s studio in Berlin (B1, B2)
Cover – Karl Holmqvist
Laquer cut – Flo Kaufmann
Staircase Mystery was recorded in two sessions: Staircase Mystery and The Man Who Sold the World at the Centre d’Art Contemporain Genève, and Declare Independence and Addition Addiction at Karl Holmqvist’s studio in Berlin.
The selection was made by the artist. The Geneva recordings were subsequently complemented by a second session at Holmqvist’s studio in Berlin.
Karl Holmqvist
Karl Holmqvist is a Swedish artist and writer based in Berlin. Working with language across poetry, performance, publications, painting, installation and video, he draws on quotations, song lyrics, slogans and everyday speech. Through repetition, rearrangement and shifts between written and spoken forms, his work examines how language circulates and how meaning changes through voice, rhythm and context.
A-Sides is a series of artist records developed within the research project A-Sides at HEAD – Genève. Conceived around the vinyl record as a medium for artistic research, the project brought together artists, musicians and researchers in editions where listening, publication and exhibition became part of a shared editorial practice. Several of the editorial and conceptual approaches explored in A-Sides later became integral to the direction of Speckled-Toshe.