Luleåbiennalen 2020 | Isak Sundström – Mordern Magic

Luleå Biennial 2020:
Time on Earth
21.11.2020~14.2.2020

Information regarding Covid-19

Last chance The Luleå Biennial 2020: Time on Earth

Wednesday February 10, 16~20 and Saturday February 13–Sunday February 14, 12~16
Galleri Syster is open. Group show with Augusta Strömberg, Susanna Jablonski and Ana Vaz.

Thursday February 11–Sunday February 14, 12~16
Havremagasinet länskonsthall in Bodenis open. Group show with Beatrice Gibson, Susanna Jablonski, Birgitta Linhart, Fathia Mohidin, Charlotte Posenenske, Tommy Tommie and Danae Valenza.

Saturday February 13–Sunday February 14, 14~18
The former prison Vita Duvan is open with an electro acoustic installation by Maria W Horn.

Saturday February 13, 15~19
The artist Markus Öhrn and the poet David Väyrynens sound installation "Bikt" is exhibited on the ice by Residensgatan in Luleå. Listen to older generations of Tornedal women and their testimonies.

Book your visit via Billetto. Drop in is possible as far as space allows.

For those of you who do not have the opportunity to physically visit the Luleå Biennale on site, a radio show including artist talks, sound works and specially written essays will be on stream on Saturday February 13–Sunday February 14. Visit our radio page here.

The exhibitions at Norrbotten's Museum, Luleå konsthall, Välkommaskolan in Malmberget and the Silver Museum are unfortunatly closed.

2018~2021

Lulu is how Luleå first appeared in writing in 1327, a name of Sami origin that can be translated as “Eastern Water”. This is the title of the Luleå Biennial’s journal, fiirst published in conjunction with the Luleå Biennial 2018. For this years edition of the biennial readers are offered different points of entry to the biennial’s overall theme: realism today. The Lulu journal is made by the biennial’s artistic and invited guest editors. It is published here on the biennial’s website and can be downloaded for printing. Design: Aron Kullander-Östling & Stina Löfgren.

ISSN: 2003~1254

2020

Isak Sundström – Mordern Magic

He was born on the 4th of May 1928 in Nelkerim and died at the age of 58 in Voullerim, on the 22nd of October 1986. Between 1953 and 1962 he ran the Nordic Magic-trick-Device-Factory in Mattisudden. The factory was situated far into the woods. He sold magic tricks by mail-order and fabricated devices for illusional tricks. His house and factory were torn down as Vattenfall bought the land when the dammin of the Lule River was to take place. They feared the houses were to be submerged under water, this never happened however. In a barn next to the left-over house foundations the remnants of the magic factory were left behind.

A relative recalls that Arne had a room in the cellar, the door secured with a padlock, into which nobody was allowed to enter. A woman in Voullerim who was young in the 70’s remembers the way Arne looked: dark aura, ginger hair down to his shoulders, rings on his fingers and often chains around his neck, very quiet and somewhat stoop. A man bought an imported sable from China off Arne at a market in Jokkmokk in 1983. An 87-year old school friend remembers Arne of the 60’s a a very kind but terribly shy person who wouldn’t let himself be photographed. They eventually lost contact.

He created the alias Guide Steiner to establish his own career as an illusionist, but there is no one who can assert whether he ever performed. He died of a heart attack in a car out in the woods. His life and work were again swallowed by the earth.

This radio play consists of instructions to illusional tricks from mail-order catalogue no. 16.

Read further about Isak Sundström's work Modern Magic here.