IN THE YEAR OF TWENTY-ONE takes its title from Zager & Evans’ 1969 song In the Year 2525. The project is a collaboration between Mikael Eriksson in Stockholm and Klaus Killisch / ambientfunk in Berlin.

After more than thirty years in Berlin, Eriksson returned to Stockholm. The two artists continued their long-standing collaboration under the name playin’, now working at a distance. During the pandemic in 2021, Killisch sent sound pieces from Berlin to Stockholm. Eriksson responded with short video sequences filmed in and around the city, combining sound and moving image into eight audiovisual works.

Rather than illustrating the music, the images establish parallel atmospheres: an upright piano standing beneath a tree in a snowy landscape, a winter street seen from a balcony, a train moving through Stockholm’s suburbs, vintage cars, an apartment interior, passing landscapes, a bicycle ride, and shifting abstract forms. Everyday observations become fragments of a city experienced through distance, isolation, movement, and time.

Mikael Eriksson: video
Klaus Killisch / ambientfunk: music