Vision Forum is happy to have been given a last minute residency at MDT in Stockholm. The team will be working on a new project with the working title “Possession.” It is a mobile laboratory that moves between different European urban locations. The work is a collective investigation, where the team is actively involved in shaping the results. The final performance will be shown in Stockholm in 2027. The work will be carried out May 21-24. More info soon.

(Photo by Till Bovermann.)

Vision Forum has since almost a decade investigated what the arts can learn from the human microbiome, the micro-organisms that we live in symbiosis with. Over the years we have carried out such collective investigations as  The Nature Inside, Governings Bodies, Microbes in the Desert of the Real and When the Shimmer of Eternity Starts to Fade. The work has been carried out in many European countries, in the Americas and Africa. The projects have been deeply loved by our audiences.

The group’s work has taken its starting point in contemporary medical research on microorganisms and people like the researcher Stig Bengmark who promotes eating habits that support the human microbiota, biologist Lynn Margulis who has shown that symbiosis is just as important as competition in evolution and many thinkers and practitioners who discusses the humans relationship to living and non living organisms.  All three underline that our understanding of how our bodies function and what a human being is, is changing rapidly. Human beings can no longer be considered to be individuals, they need to be perceived as ecosystems who live in symbiosis with a very large number of microbes.

We are now considering new alleys to go down. We will therefore undertake a one day workshop at Ekerö, outside of Stockholm visiting Rosenhills trädgårdar and Rastholmens värdshus on May 20. More will follow here in a not too distant a future.

(Photo by Till Bovermann.)

Do animals communicate? Is there also important communication between species? If so, what can be learned from how animals communicate and can we facilitate dialogues between species?

Science tries to understand how animals communicate amongst each themselves.  Their communication offer new perspectives on language and a peek into a fascinating non-human world. Vision Forum is developing a fascinating new project that investigates how animals communicate and what the arts can learn from it. The group meets in Stockholm at Tekniska museet May 19 and 20, 2026 to develop a program that will be available for the general public in 2027.

The project is a collaboration with Curatorial Mutiny and is supported by Längmanska kulturfonden.

Vision Forum is proud to announce the book release of Performance Enigma at Hökarängens Antikvariat & Skivbörs, Saturday May 9 at 16h. Address: Pepparvägen 4, 123 56 Stockholm.

The book investigates and unravels Per Hüttner’s multifaceted performances, spanning artistic inquiry from 1988 to 2024. His work constitutes a labyrinth of intertwining perspectives and mirrors a multidisciplinary practice that bridges music, dance, neuroscience and more. At the book’s core lies a meditation on the ephemeral nature of performance; a medium that defies preservation and resists commodification, standing as a political act in an age fixated on documentation.

Offering a dynamic, non-linear exploration of art as process rather than object, Performance Enigma invites countless interpretations, each shaped by the reader’s journey through its pages, coalescing into a kaleidoscopic vision that questions how we see and interpret the world at large. Events become fragments, and fragments spark narratives; challenging our understanding of memory, perception, and the human condition.

Texts and editing by Freddie Ross with further texts by Carima Neusser and the artist. All the contributors will be present and it will be followed by a concert by Alpha Xiao.

Graphic Design by Erik Månsson. The book has been created with support from Längmanska kulturfonden.

Alpha Xiao has been active in its musical exploration of mental and musical space since 2020. They often collaborate with other musicians and artists in different constellations such as Sebastian Campbell of God Mother, Petri Kuljantausta and Olav Westphalen. They have played extensively in various European venues in Sweden, Finland, Belgium, France and Germany. Alpha Xiao has also created music for Fabien Guillermont and Toan Van Che’s full-length documentary “Reality Check” in 2024.

Alpha Xiao is an experimental musical group using a portable electroencephalograph (EEG) and microbial activity to modulate designed audio samples in real time as well as a traditional Chinese flute called a Xiao. The two person constellation focuses musically on connectivity through rough sketches of compositions, sounds and themes. As brain waves and non-human life expressions influence certain dynamics of the sound, and vice versa, a type of feedback loop is generated between the activities of the technology and sound produced ad infinitum.

Alpha Xiao plays live at Hökarängens Antikvariat & Skivbörs, Saturday May 9 at 17h. Address: Pepparvägen 4, 12356 Stockholm

There are a small number of tickets left, make sure to book at ticket by writing to “hokarangensantikvariat [at] gmail.com.”

Listen to Alpha Xiao on Soundcloud.

xLEPH is a project that sets out to create and develop hardware and software platforms for contemporary music and performance Vision Forum has been developing such platforms for over a decade. xLEPH will in residency in Porto in Portugal May 12-18, 2026. During the residency they will strengthen the aesthetic and artistic potential of existing technology further. The goal is to develop technology that can be used by performers to create inspiring new music. This technology will consist of over the counter components, as well as custom created software solutions.

The residency in Porto is supported by Helge Ax:son Johnsons stiftelse

‘One Step Closer to the Abyss’ is a musical collaboration between London-based composer and musician Tomas Nordmark and Paris-based musician and artist Per Hüttner, both originally from Sweden. On ‘One Step Closer to the Abyss’ the electronic music is improvised in a digital environment. The two artists have been inspired from the British cultural theorist Mark Fisher and his publication ‘‘The Weird and The Eerie’ (2017). The music is not only improvised but also, using bespoke hard- and software, modulated in real time from a participant’s brainwaves for an additional layer of spontaneity. The recording was made at Permian, a microscopic venue for improvised music situated in a basement in the Tokyo ward Shinagawa. The pulse from the Japanese capital is thereby also present in the recorded improvisation, filtered down to a slow, modulated and minimalistic, dub-oriented ambient soundscape.

‘One Step Closer to the Abyss’ will be available for streaming and on vinyl from April 24, 2026.

The dates for the Finnish tour are:

- Black Sheep Pub, Jakobstad, 20.00, April 29.
- Ääniasema festival, Jyväskylä, 19-23h, May 1.
- Korjaamo, Helsinki, 18.30, May 2.

Swedish choreographer and performance artist Carima Neusser and Paris-based artist and musician Per Hüttner both have been returning to work in Brazil regularly. They have previously presented performances with institutions like Pinacoteca do Estado de São Paulo and Museu de Arte Moderna de São Paulo. The two artists returned to Sao Paulo in February 2026 and presented new work that had been developed in Mexico during a 2,5 month residency in Mexico City.

SPET have published extensive interviews with both artists. You find them here and here. (In Portuguese).

The album is released April 24, 2026. Order here.

 
The 40 minutes long performance recorded live at Permian in Tokyo will be released on vinyl and on streaming platforms April 24:th 2026. To celebrate the release the duo will announce new performances of the piece ‘One Step Closer to the Abyss’, previously performed in Tokyo, Fukuoka, Beijing, Paris and Sousse.

London based composer and musician Tomas Nordmark and Paris based musician and visual artist Per Hüttner have been working together since 2021. Together they develop creative and visionary performances using the technology platform the EEGsynth. The EEGsynth is a hard- and software platform that allows performers to create sounds and images using neural signals from the human nerves and brain. The technology is unique because it has been has been developed by European artists, musicians in close collaboration with neuroscientists since 2014. In the performances the artists use measurements of a performer’s brain signal on his/her head using an electro encephalogram (EEG) in real time.

In the performance entitled “One Step Closer to the Abyss” they present music and images that are generated and modulated by a performers brain activity in real time. They work with sounds from a traditional electric guitar which has been modulated by the brain multiple times to create aesthetically interesting sounds. They also have dynamic visuals that are influenced in real time by the brain. The performance takes its inspiration from Mark Fisher’s writings and his reflections on the weird and the eerie: how humans and art deal with the unknown in their everyday and in artistic creation.

The EEGsynth platform is used by artists and researchers in Sweden, France, Norway, the Netherlands and in the UK. They use signals from the human brain, but also from trees, fish and microbes to create performances. The team has made over 80 performances and workshops in a number of European countries, Mexico, Egypt, Brazil and the US. There has been a lot of interest both in the performances and in the technology. For instance French film maker Fabien Guillermont has made a full length documentary on the project.

Per Hüttner is a Swedish visual artist who lives and works in Paris, France and in Stockholm, Sweden. He graduated from Konsthögskolan in Stockholm 1993. He also studied at Hochschule der Künste in Berlin 1991-1992. He is mostly known for his photographic work and for his interactive, changing and travelling exhibition projects. A number of monographs about his practice has been published including Per Hüttner, 2003; I am a Curator, 2004; Repetitive Time 2006, Xiao Yao You 2006 and Democracy and Desire 2007

Tomas Nordmark is a Swedish-born artist, composer and producer living and working in London, United Kingdom. He was educated at the Department of Culture and Society at the University of Linköping in Sweden where he studied Audio Culture and Contemporary Art. His compositions and works have been featured in opera, public installations, film, theatre plays and in exhibitions. Since 2019 he has released music on the Brooklyn-based label Valley of Search with live performances in London, Paris, Berlin, Stockholm, Helsinki, Ljubljana, Tokyo and more.

Composed and performed live by Per Hüttner and Tomas Nordmark at Permian | Tokyo, May 31, 2024
Recorded, edited, mixed + artwork designed by Tomas Nordmark
Photography + video still by Per Hüttner
Mastered by Philip Granqvist

The artists would like to thank Riuichi Daijo, Philip Granqvist, Atau Tanaka, Jo Kazuhiro, Christophe Charles and Carl Stone