PAINTIN’ & PLAYIN’ #2 is a 25-minute sound and video installation for three screens, conceived by Mikael Eriksson and first presented at Weltecho, Chemnitz, in 2019.

The work is loosely inspired by the Bardo Thodol (བར་དོ་ཐོས་གྲོལ, Liberation Through Hearing During the Intermediate State), commonly known as The Tibetan Book of the Dead. Its idea of passage and transition provides a point of departure for a work moving between abstraction, memory, and transformation.

The three projections begin with black lines that multiply and condense into a rotating sphere. The sphere shifts into color and bursts into moving fragments. Gradually, fleeting images emerge: archival 8mm footage shot by Eriksson in East Berlin in 1989/90, fragments of his paintings, and footage from a journey by car from Berlin to Sweden. Altered through color, animation, and layering, recognizable images appear only briefly before dissolving again into abstraction.

Each screen follows its own sequence, while together the three projections form an expanded panoramic field. Images overlap, separate, and reappear across the screens, suggesting a hidden narrative without resolving into a linear story.

The music follows a parallel trajectory and has an almost symphonic structure. Rhythmic and percussive passages gradually open into a sparse, meditative middle section, where isolated sounds and a violin melody create a sense of suspension. Toward the end, rhythm and movement intensify again. The images accelerate, dissolve back into black lines, and finally disappear as each screen turns black.

Sound and image move through corresponding states of emergence, transformation, fragmentation, and disappearance. PAINTIN’ & PLAYIN’ #2 becomes a passage through different states of image, sound, time, and memory.

Credits
Mikael Eriksson — concept, animation, camera, editing, soundtrack, piano, Hammond organ, album art
Klaus Killisch — church organ (Paul-Gerhardt-Kirche, Berlin), soundscape guitar, drum programming
Florian Merkel — percussion
Alex Solowkowski — piano
Anja Solowkowski — violin, clavinet, voice
Jana Weiz — saxophone
Johan Irebjer — double bass, congas

The archival footage includes Klaus Killisch, Beata Palucka, Sabine Herrmann, and Sangare Siemsen.