The Shredder Live at Longest Night

Performance artwork -
Used in performances at:
FIJUK MARKNAD/ Longest night, Gothenburg
Crippas Cafe, Gothenburg
Robot SM 2024 / Chalmers, Gothenburg

DESCRIPTION:


The Shredder Performance at FIJUK MARKNAD, hosted by Longest Night.

A live music performance featuring a self-designed and built shredder synthesizer, alongside a few circuit-bent electronic instruments. What makes this synthesizer unique is that all of its sounds are purely mechanical—no electronically generated tones. (Although electricity powers the motors, it does not create the sound.)

The soundscape was layered with samples from phone calls we've had with Gothenburg city officials—voices of those actively working to make the city artless and you powerless. During the performance, aluminum foil was fed into the machine, which is in itself mostly made of aluminum. This self-consuming ritual, a metaphor, was completed with the ink of the bureaucratic weaponry.

The performance began with the machine running smoothly, but as the foil clogged its system, it gradually slowed down.
The show ended when the motor burned out.

Compiled footage of the event:


The Shredder was also used at a performance at Crippas Cafe in Majorna 2023, and att Chalmers Robot SM 2024.



During our performance at Crippas Café, co-performer Sebastian Rudolph-Jensen received a live tattoo while Louise Hornberg painted in real time, and Adam Ward created music by shredding police reports from previous artworks with accompanying musical suport of Klara Hanehöj, on Cello, and Karl-Magnus Karlsson as activist/ Opera singer.