First performance as a septet at the University of East Anglia, Norwich, England, 22nd of November 2000 on the EAM-class exchange concert.

What I mostly do, in musical terms, is to play in improvised groups on a number of different instruments, many of them my own constructions. Of course, I usually only play one instrument at a time. I have been curious about what a group playing all my favourite instruments would sound like. This is an attempt to do that. The virtual "Bergmark Nonet" consists of eight recorded and one live musician playing:
1. The Micro Moog analog synthesizer modified with radios, voice, feedback and a fuzz box.
2. The Blowfish - a construction of toy wind instruments and other wind sound tools - and voice.
3. The Finger Violin, a contact-mike-amplified instrument where the strings are attached on the finger tips, without fingering board.
4. A Sandviken Stradivarius musical saw and Pikaterä Speliplari (Playblade).
5. The Metal Harp which consists of triangular metal sheet around a tube.
6. The Clavinet, partly played directly on the strings.
7. The Whalefish, an amplified "one-man-band"-type construction played with different tools.
8. The Micro Moog, another take.
9. The Whalefish played live.

Tiden går (Time passes) by Lev Rubenstein. Translation: Lars Kleberg. Music and sound editor Johannes Bergmark. Director Magnus Florin. Duration: 26,25 "The sea is agitated. The moon is shining. The kitten is whining. The east becomes red. Time passes." The Russian writer Lev Rubinstein writes his lines one by one on small cards. Here he performs them together with his translator Lars Kleberg - as well as the part of the Swedish people that visited the Radio Theatre studio 10 at SR's Open House last autumn. Is part of Vita nätter (White Nights), Radioteatern, Sveriges Radio P1, 10, 15, 17 June 2001.

Lev Rubinstein (right). Together with his Swedish translator Lars Kleberg.

Lev Rubinstein (b. 1937, Moscow)
[Enquiry response on 00-tal's poetry festival nov. 2000]
Resistance! - I'm interested in the resistance that language makes to the reality it is put to serve. Every text by me exists (in original) on a number of separate sheets or cards. In this form, most of my texts exist since 1975. The longer this "card system" has existed, the more significances and motives it has come to be filled with.
This is a material metaphor for my opinion about the text as object and reading as a serious work. Every card is at the same time an object and a universal rhythmic unit, corresponding to any language gesture - it can be a developed theoretical sentence or an interjection, a stage instruction or a fragment of a phone call.
A stack of cards is an object, a volume, it's a NON-book, it's a child of the "non-gutenbergian" existance of language culture. The solution is a work, a play and a spectacle. I imagine that the authentic, i.e. "three-dimensional" version of a text by me relates to the flat version in something like the way that the orchestra script relates to an arrangement for one or two instruments. Maybe I exaggerate. But it's desirable to take that possibility into consideration.
Translation by JB, from Lars Kleberg's translation into Swedish.

About the music
The music I made for Time Passes, I partly tried to make in a similar way as Rubinstein writes his literature: in the form of separate fragments with different expressions, and also with the special contrast between comic, absurd, every-day, detailed, tragic. Rubinstein is fascinated by the phenomenon of time. For me, time is nothing, non-existing, without its matter, the concrete and material, that which has extension, direction and speed. Soul if you want, filled with contradictions, changes, failures and unforeseen, unplanned triumphs. That's why I use sounds from instruments as well as from objects, gestural sounds, and sounds that sound "objective" or "found" in spite of that they might not be so, like fragments that are browsed forth like the cards.
I've had fun, I used the opportunity and am glad for the meeting with Rubinstein's text that I didn't know about before Magnus Florin presented it to me. I feel related to Rubinstein's attitude.

From the Coffin Tape piece, 13:02 First performed on the PolarE-concert in Rålambshovsparken 2001, arr. EMS. Sören Runolf did a live treatment version during the support concerten for John Duncan's Stockholm visit, Fylkingen 2002. The Singing Coffin is an instrument that was in a dream by my friend Petra Mandal and I built it after her instructions: a box in body length with strings on, that you are lying inside, singing. By the mouth, you have a microphone, from which the signal is doubled to a number of small piezo speakers, lying on the strings. I discovered that this easily leads to a feedback sound that you can play on with the mixer knobs. This is a treated recording of that sound, made at the EMS studio. The piece also exists in a 52 minute version and a 5.37-minutes version on the Elgaland-Vargaland 10 years anniversary double cd which was released in '02 on Ash International: KREV X MM11, editors: JP Wozencroft & MSCHarding, England 2002.

Katarina's Soviet Experiences Text-sound-composition (Swedish) 2001, 18:00 Commissioned by the author Maria Zennström, I made music and sound editing of her selected readings from her debut book with the same name. This is released on Bonnier Audio together with three other debutants, "4 NYA" IFCD22 ISBN 91-7953-089-3 2001, as well as on a cd with a film based on the same book. See a web film version by Per Zennström on his blog!

A Useless Woman

Text-sound-composition, 28:40 Text (Swedish) and reading by Maria Zennström Music and sound editing: Johannes Bergmark Comissioned by the Swedish Broadcasting Corporation, Radioteatern Realized at EMS, Electro-acoustic Music in Sweden 2002. "I respect beauty. I hate it. My gaze is incessantly pointed towards it..." I have rarely felt such embarrassment for a text. It's painful. It makes myself insecure. I'm grateful and satisfied that Johannes B made sound design for the monolog. His music works uniquely good to a text, he plays newly invented instruments that can't be visualized, sometimes it reminds vaguely of something you think you have heard or experienced, but only just about. Maria Zennström (translated by JB) Maria Z:s strong texts inspire to room making sound work, field recordings and a free pleasurable improvising. Sometimes it reminds of the music of cartoons or horror film. Maria Z hasn't fled away from the resistant sounds but rather been delighted of them, at the same time as she has been very careful about the balance between text and sound. We were both against a passive illustrating. Johannes Bergmark Maria Zennström lived in Moscow 1982-1992 and is an educated film director. The debut as a writer was with "Katarina's Soviet Experiences" on Bonniers. She was given Borås Tidning's Great Debutant Price and the Kalleberger Grant of the Swedish Academy. Johannes Bergmark is music- and instrument maker, activ at Fylkingen and EMS. He builds instruments that he uses in improvised music, in musical performance and as material in electronic music. He has made text-sound compositions with other writers and with his own sound poetry, and often uses his voice as sound material.

Ilskan Som Lyfter Stenen (The Rage Which Lifts Up The Stone)

Text-sound-composition, 14:40 This piece only consists of documentary sound materials but is not in itself documentary. It is an expression of feelings. After the police violations on the freedom of speech and democratic and human rights, not only in the form of criminal actions, batons and murder attempts, but just as much in the form of a total control over the press and thus of the crowd, immediately after the riots it provoked, anger was boiling in me as well as in the entire critical movement that tried to express itself during the EU bureaucrats' and George Bush's meeting in June 2001. The feeling of "public opinion" was that all the throwing of stones that demonstrators did was unprovoked and unnecessary, on the other hand the deadly shootings of the police fully understandable. Those who had been there and tried to tell people about their experiences weren't believed. What is written in the paper is true, isn't it?! Demonstrators were terrorists. What they really wanted or really did, and why they did it, was never presented as long as the headlines were still big. Not until noone cares anymore, truth begins to appear. At the same time many very young people and often apparently innocent ones, are sentenced to prison sentences of many years for having been a "threat to democracy"! The reality around the Göteborg riots is one of the biggest juridical scandals ever in this country, and it will be remembered as the self-sufficient Swedish state's and social democracy's most evident betrayals of the democracy they so willingly are bragging about. The Rage Which Lifts Up The Stone is a defence of the well-motivated anger and a reminder that we shouldn't confort ourselves with our relatively comfortable positions in this false society. The state is on the same side of the money even when it smiles to us. Don't be fooled again. Sound sources: the films "Hotet mot demokratin" (Marionettfilm), "Så gör vi i Göteborg" (Independent Media Center), "Tre dagar i Europa", tv-reportage in "Uppdrag Granskning". Realized at EMS, Electroacoustic Music in Sweden 2002. The piece is made in support of the political prisoners after the Göteborg riots at the EU summit in 2001 and had its first performance at the protest festival "Ilskans Rätt - ett Göteborgsjubileum" at Fylkingen the 20th of June 2002. En new, slightly longer version was made for a radio transmission in Radio Yelah the 5th of October 2002, who also made it available on their web site along with an interview with me (in Swedish) about this, politics and art, and about sound art in general, Fylkingen and EMS. (Now it seems to be possible to load it down from here - search on my name on the page.) Another new, eight channel version of this piece was played at the festival Elsvets at Fylkingen the 8th of November, 2002. Solidaritetsgruppen, Gothenburg: solidaritetsgruppen@hotmail.com ph. +46 733 164296. Send money to the arrested and convicted: Nisse Lätts Minnesfond, Postgiro 27602-2, write: "Solidaritetsgruppen" as the message. (From abroad: Postgiro or Bank Service: SE-00506 Stockholm, Sweden, Swiftcode pgsisess 276 02 -2 , write "Solidaritetsgruppen) CALL for justice after the Göteborg events http://www.manifest.se/upprop Please sign there! ALL THE INCOME FROM PERFORMANCES OF THIS PIECE GO TO THE SOLIDARITY GROUP! Until now (feb. '04) this sum is 4.225,96 SEK.

The Metal Harp Suite 44.09 minutes, in 5 parts. Première at the Sleeping Bag Concert at Fylkingen 24th of January 2003. "For this sleeping concert I have made one hour of electro-acoustic suite which only consists of sounds, lightly treated, from one of my oldest instruments called the Metal Harp. It's a cupper tube with triangular iron plates of different sizes welded around it. You can play it with a bow, with clubs, or blow the tube." Realized at EMS, Electro-acoustic Music in Sweden 2003.

Hitler

10'38 minutes, after an idea of Allan Åkerlund. Première at Elektrisk Pingst, Rålambshovsparken, Stockholm, 30th of May, 2004. Essays have been written about Hitler's ways of speaking and writing. Thus, the timbre, melody and rhyhtm of his voice have been analysed, i.e. his art of speaking in terms of music. With this idea in mind I have used archive recordings of his speaches to put together an added sound, Hitler's own spectrum into a dense mass. "Hitler" consists of up to 1593 layers of his voice. This is the technical description. The ideological one is that, even if Hitler's body was blasted in the bunker, and his politics and aesthetics were officially destroyed with the same power of that explosion, his dust, his atoms remain in the dust and the air of the present, and might even have landed in our own bodies. We can't escape his existance only by demonising him. His tendences are regrouped and come forward in the expressions of other forms even in contemporary politics. If he weren't used as a weapon under taboo, it would be easy to draw parallels to contemporary totalitarian and racist regimes that instead of calling their enemies jews might say communists, terrorists or even anti-semites. To fight nazism today can't only be to remember the holocaust, it must be to fight all sorts of pursuit, probation, sweating and repression, no matter if it's in the name of our people, religion or nation, or in some other - or in (the swedish) democracy! Made at EMS 2004.

Love

unknown number of minutes. Première of the Great Learning Orchestra at Nordic Excellence, Kulturhuset, Stockholm October '04? and at a concert at Konstnärshuset, Stockholm. A4-composition for the Great Learning Orchestra, Stockholm, September 2004. For any kind of size of ensemble and any instruments. "Silently and carefully look around you in the room to observe every single person present, audience, musicians and others. Identify the one you have the warmest feelings for. Never, in the course of the performance, reveal for anyone who it is, through eye contact or in any other way. Play as beautifully as you can, as a present to that very person, as if you played alone, for him/her as the only audience. Stop when you are done. Silently think of this person until every musician is finished."

Eh-Ah 9'59 minutes. Commissioned and made for a compilation-cd "GO-TO-CAT-MAN-DO" Mono 001, MonotypeRec Warszawa, Poland 2005. Source material is a folk song from Nepal, which I got with full freedom treat in which way I wanted. Made at EMS 2004. Mp3 of my piece and some others can be heard here.

Wine Glass Fanfare

2'51 minutes. Made for the "Third Miracle" during the Okno Festival at Teatr Kana, Szczecin, Poland, the 27th of February 2005. Source material is the sound of two giant wine glasses making a long toast. Made at EMS 2005.

Fish Soup

Music for a short installation film by Kathy Fox, Kent, England; EMS 2006.

"The imagery in ‘Fish Soup’ was generated by the random movement of organisms living in mud, an ancient timeless dance, evocative of the primal soup from which all life forms developed.
There is a limitless cyclical element manifested in the flow of imagery which has no specific beginning or end, the video itself set on a continuous loop to enhance the concept of time as infinite." Kathy Fox
The music was made by me, using many layers of sound from the instrument the Whalefish.
It formed part of the exhibition 'Natural Order: Art, Science and The Clarity of Mud' and at 'The 5th International Symposium for Surrealism' at West Dean in '07 (funded by University of Essex, Manchester and Tate Britain). It was also shown at a festival of Surrealism that the Leeds Surrealist Group organized.

A photo by Kathy Fox of the film while on the computer screen.

The viewing box Fox made to house it. The box is covered with rabbit skin fur, and can only be watched one person at a time as a private experience.