Another atrocity, another mindless attack which has devastated hundreds of innocent families and friends for life. The problems which lead to these fascistic acts need urgent and democratic attention. Otherwise a combination of unacceptable intolerance and inhuman destruction will continue its carnage, worldwide, not just in the cauldrons of violence in Syria, Iraq, and other less-known sites of similar political disasters and fascist chaos.
DARK: Festival of the Unseen - Return of the DRON is the third exhibition organised by Jill Rock in collaboration with Hundred Years Gallery. Following the success of previous exhibitions, DrONUltImARAtio 2012 and WHITEOUT 2014, DARK is an exhibition featuring the work of 20 artists, and a programme of improvised music, performance and poetry over the Easter Weekend March 25th to 28th. The title is there to be interpreted individually by participants and visitors alike. The fascination in this exhibition is that diversity is at its core, embracing fears and joys, dark and light the symmetries and asymmetries of life. Central to the show is the Dron, an icosidodecahedron, mirrored internally with unaccountable acoustics which becomes Plato’s Cave, an ergasterion for improvised music and poetry. The exhibition of visual work runs alongside the programme of live events . Participating artists: Anna Burel, Andrea Maclean, Nicky Scott Francis, Jaime Valtierra, Curtis Radclyffe, Joanne Roberts, Martin Lau, Mary Lemley, Jason Gibilaro, Noel Macken, M. Profil, Peter Woodcock, Max Reeves, Helen Elwes, Jolanta Jagiello, Mervyn Diese, Rita Says, Phil Baird, Wayne Chisnal, Gudrun Sigridur Harraldsdottir, Elizabet Chojak-Mysko, Li Williams, Maria Lusitano, Neville Sattentau, Jill Rock. Sound piece by Montse Gallego ——————————- OPENING – Thursday March 24th 7 -9.30 BLAKE NIGHT – Friday 7 – 9.30pm -an evening of poetry inspired by William Blake by The Blake Congregation, solo flute by Nicky Heinen, celtic harp & songs by Sheila Moylan. PERFORMANCE – Saturday 7-10:30pm : The Re-Awakening Of James Joyce’s Night-time novel, The Wake, The Sandman Returns to Meet where Term’s Begin, a collaboration between poet and performer Grassy Noel, artist, performer and musician Giles Leaman, improvising ensemble KMAT, dancer Sofia Figueiredo, and film-maker Mervyn Diese. Piano recital by Gabriel Keen. SUNDAY AFTERNOON – 4- 6.30pm, RabelaisDADA with Robert Robertson, electronic music by Cos Chapman, open conversation amongst the participants and visitors chaired by Jill Rock, and a closing performance by Mervyn Diese, Yesterday I went to see the impressive Bells from The Deep show at the Hundred Years Gallery in Hoxton. The artist Montse Gallego directs this well-known international gallery, and the highly respected music part of their creative programmes is organised and led by musician Graham Mackeachan. Graham told me about an event which they held on the 31st January, during which they set up a network of tubes on both floors of the gallery, through which they projected live readings of various texts, including extracts from Rabelaisdada. Above and below are some of the photos of this performance, by kind permission of HYG. The artist Jill Rock read from Rabelaisdada, and the musicians Saul Eisenberg and Giles Leaman performed with their Junk Orchestra – altogether an intriguing multi-sonic and multi-text performance, with the children evidently also enjoying taking part. Many thanks to Montse and Graham. Here are two short extracts from the film of Rabelaisdada: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H3MKifg1MYY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cqtZER8VAbg Bells From the Deep (http://www.hundredyearsgallery.com/bells-from-the-deep-exhibition-2016/) was named after Werner Herzog’s film about Russian mysticism, and the works on display are strikingly virtuosic, from Neville Sattentau’s paintings in vivid tempera colours inspired by medieval illuminated manuscripts and Persian miniatures, to Gianluca Bonomo’s breathtaking image of a flock of torch-headed birds flying towards you, realised in ballpoint pen, though looking as if precisely engraved.
Last week I attended a most enjoyable conference at Canterbury Christchurch University. Convened by Dr Andy Birtwistle, Director of the Centre for Practice-based Research in the Arts, most of the contributors were practitioners: musicians, choreographers, composers, dancers, filmmakers, artists.
The presentations featured examples of their work and their research, all related in diverse ways to the computer glitch, but going beyond the digital to include happy analogue ‘accidents’. I read an extract about the perils of perfection, from my new book in progress, and showed my most recent music/film, Edge of Chaos. The final event was an improvisation by the multi-media band Bog Bodies, to a live multi-screen 16mm film projection, a dynamic conclusion to a stimulating conference. https://www.canterbury.ac.uk/arts-and-humanities/cpbra/conferences/glitch-2015.aspx Martin Gordon (1933-2015) - a personal recollection
Martin Gordon, former owner and director of the science publisher Gordon and Breach, would continually circle the globe, in his travels from office to office. Appearing unannounced, we knew he’d arrived when we heard his immediately identifiable laugh. Now, through the Net, I found out that he died on the 19th February this year, in Lausanne. An American, a New Yorker, he was actively involved in the Sixties underground music, art and modern dance scene. However, with a science degree under his belt, he entered science publishing. He went on to set up (with a Mr Breach), Gordon and Breach, a science publisher with a significant programme of Soviet science in English translation. Unusually for a science publisher, he later also set up an international arts publishing programme. He began with the performing arts, starting with contemporary music and dance, which he encouraged me to develop. Over time, I suggested adding contemporary theatre. Then he requested international poetry in dual language editions. All of these forms of art were explored by publishing not only texts, but also videotapes, audiocassettes and CDs. By the turn of the millennium Gordon and Breach had grown into a publishing group, and at a busy time for corporate take-overs, it was sold. So came to an end a type of publishing where publishers like Martin Gordon encouraged editors to get to know their authors well, to take them out to lunch or dinner, attend concerts, theatre and dance performances with them worldwide, and to set up book and journal launches with them. Such pleasurable and creative interactions have now more or less disappeared, paradoxically partly due to the development of the Net. Martin Gordon could on occasion be difficult to work for, but he was also charismatic and entertaining, and he encouraged creativity and innovation. Materials from the first production of The Kingdom, including the film of the opera, are now stored in the Special Collections in the library of the University of Amsterdam:
Universiteit van Amsterdam Bijzondere collecties Oude Turfmarkt 129| 1012 GC Amsterdam T 020 525 8045 www.bijzonderecollecties.uva.nl Details of the first production of this opera are available here: http://ocatilloaudiovisual.weebly.com/the-kingdom.html Many thanks to everyone who contacted me about my family in Paris - all are safe and well, fortunately.
Our thoughts and sympathies are with all the injured and the bereaved at this difficult time, innocent people caught up in acts of mindless terror. Spike Hawkins Poems In I'm Back, I set a selection of sixteen short poems by Spike Hawkins to film. Images appear out of the darkness, an evocation of how they may appear in the imagination of a poet during the creation and the writing of a poem. Assault on Time is in two parts: a film of Spike Hawkins performing his recent poems, as if we are hearing them in the process of being formed: plasmatic poetry. Death makes a brief appearance here, as do the shadows collected by Love. Also, music/films on my transcriptions of a Prelude and Fugue by Bach, and three Tenebrae by Tomas Luis de Victoria. J.S. Bach, from The Well-Tempered Clavier:
Prelude XXII Fugue XXII - Worthing version - Richmond version Prelude and Fugue XXII - black screen version ___________________________________________ In the visual track for these music/films I was influenced by Richard Feynman's explorations of the mechanics of the refraction and reflection of light. Some of the images may be used again in a different way with my music in a future music/film. In the two versions (the Worthing and the Richmond version) my different visual approaches bring out different aspects of my transcriptions of the music by Bach, which is why I'm again making available a black screen version. More details ___________________________________________________________________ 16/04/2015 I had a great time last week, as a guest at the international School of Sound symposium at the South Bank, London. I was invited by Larry Sider, the originator of this extraordinary biennial gathering of filmmakers, composers, sound designers, foley artists. It was good to meet delegates from other countries, several of whom had read Eisenstein on the Audiovisual, which was a delightful surprise. The new book Cinema and the Audiovisual Imagination was being sold at the daily bookstall, and a substantial extract from it, about Spike Lee's major film Do The Right Thing, was included in the selection of texts in the folder for the symposium. This year the School of Sound was particularly stimulating, with the participation of the American composer Pauline Oliveiros, who spoke to us via skype from Troy, just north of Albany in New York State. She got the three hundred delegates to sing, to each hum a different note, then to stand and sing out glissandi. Both requests produced audible sub harmonic frequencies in the Purcell Room, reminiscent of the deep rumblings heard near giant waterfalls. Another participant, the theatre and opera director Peter Sellars, spoke via skype from his home in Los Angeles. His very engaging talk about sound was so full of striking ideas that at times you forgot his presence - you were rapidly absorbing the new perspectives developing in front of you, before he went on to present yet another fresh and intriguing concept. There was one delegate who stood out due to his unusual appearance. He explained to me that he was dressed in the full costume (with a four-pointed hat) of a shaman from the Sami people from northern Finland. Ande Somby is a yoiker: he sings songs which express a distillation of the qualities of local animals, fish and insects. He told me that these songs are also used to express the nature of certain kinds of tree or plant, for example the waves in long grass stirred by the wind. He performed several yoiks, including an evocation of a wolf, with its uncannily echoing howls. Then, after a quiet moment in the song, he uttered an incredibly loud crunching sound which made everyone jump in their seats. The yoiks are songs in which every register of the voice is used, including overtone singing. The creature depicted in a yoik is not only expressed in terms of the sounds it makes, but its movements are also transformed into music. __________________________________________________________________ Here's the link to the new website, which has lots of info about Cinema and the Audiovisual Imagination, and lots of links to audiovisual work on YouTube, Vimeo, and related website pages. Enjoy!
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