Kill Your Timid Notion Tour

[barry esson]

Hiya:

just a quick post from me to let you all know that the KYTN tour is coming up, with shows in London, Bristol and Glasgow.

loads of info here: http://www.arika.org.uk/kytn/2008/tour/home/

in case you don't know, KYTN looks at the possible relationships between what we see and what we hear via experimental practice. this touring version of the fest is a kind of compendium and best of the last 5 years.

it features:

PERFORMANCES
Ken Jacobs & Eric La Casa
Kjell Bjorgeengen, Keith Rowe & Philipp Wachsmann
Greg Pope (in london with Ben Drew, in Bristol and Glasgow with Jerome Noetinger)
La Cellule d'Intervention Metamkine
Bruce McClure
Shutter Interface by Paul Sharits
Andrew Lampert

in our opinion, these are some of the greatest film-sound/ sound-image performance artists around right now and of the last 50 years.

CINEMA PROGRAMME
4 programmes including work by Walter Ruttman, Hollis Frampton, Kurt Kren, Peter Kubelka, Guy Sherwin, Jeanne Liotta, Peter Rose and a whole bunch of some of the other great film artists of our time.

DATES:
29/30 Nov: London: BFI, BFI IMAX (special Ken Jacobs perf) and ICA
2/3/4 Dec: Bristol: Spike Island and Arnolfini
6/7 Dec: Glasgow: CCA

it's a special project for us, and a summation of 5 years work with the Scottish KYTN Fest. it's your best chance to explore experimental work that intelligently deals with more than one of our senses.

please do come along!

best: Barry/ Arika
http://www.arika.org.uk/kytn/2008/tour/home/

[Stephen]

Wow. Thanks a lot. I will definitely be going to one of the Bristol days, I may even try to make it on both Tuesday and Wednesday. Line-up looks awesome.

[barry esson]

hi all:

just a quick reminder that our KYTN tour kicks off in London this week, i do hope some of you can come along.

here's the London running order.

see you there(?)

Barry/ www.arika.org.uk

SATURDAY 29th NOV
Performance Venue Time
Location, Location, Location NFT 3 14:00
Word Associations NFT 3 16:00
Andrew Lampert NFT 1 18:30
Bruce McClure NFT 1 19:45
Shutter Interface NFT 1 21:00
Ken Jacobs & Eric La Casa BFI IMAX 22:15


SUNDAY 30th NOV
Performance Venue Time
Ken Jacobs in Conversation NFT 3 12:30
About Face NFT 3 14:00
Out of Sight, Out of Synch NFT 3 16:00
Keith Rowe, Kjell Bjørgeengen & Philipp Wachsmann ICA Theatre 19:00
La Cellule d'Intervention Metamkine ICA Theatre 20:30
Light Trap: Greg Pope ICA Theatre 22:00

[Stephen]

I've changed plans and am coming up to London for this, even though it works out more expensive - frustrating that there is no two-day pass. Anyhow tix booked for the imax and ica shows, looking forward to em.

[barry esson]

yeah, sorry there's no two day pass in London. there is in Bristol and Glasgow, but London has been very difficult to get agreement between venues, their ticketing systems, what prices are their standard and the ones we'd like to set (much cheaper)...

still, should be a good w/end.

see you there: Barry/ arika

[nirav]

I hope someone has a chance to report back from KYTN, looks to be an incredible time, maybe even a landmark tour in the film/sound art crossover area...

[Stephen]

I went to the Ken Jacobs & Eric La Casa piece at the IMAX, which was good. Visually, a series of circular pulsating/flashing abstract close-ups of ice, light, smoke etc, with a dense collage of field recordings, which perhaps lacked subtlety and spatialisation - it pretty much all came from behind the gargantuan screen, not much from left or right. The image and sound were so anti-synced that I was fairly convinced they had been queued at the wrong time, but impossible to know for sure.

The real treat was Sunday night though. First up the Keith Rowe, Kjell Bjørgeengen & Philipp Wachsmann piece, which would have been excellent if it adn't been for the violinist (Waschcmann?) who pretty much ruined it for me. The room was strewn six or so large monitors, all with identical b&w visual noise on them. What appeared to be happening was Bjørgeengen using the sound signals from Rowe and Wachsmann to create/modulate the visuals, he was using a laptop and large analogue device to do this. Rowe's sounds were very fitting for this, most of the noise was coming from radios and maybe a little oscillator like device (?) through his usual pedals, one of his guitars was there, and he used fan, bow and a rod on it, but only sparingly. Wachsmann was just dreadful though. He shouldn't have been there imo.

Got to eat dinner now... more on this later...

[barry esson]

hey:

the ken jacobs/ eric la casa piece at the IMAX was performed live, so synching isn't really the issue.

also, there were issues with the PA at the IMAX that meant the level of control we had over the side speakers was minimal

the link between ken and eric is more conceptual than time based: ken's work has developed out of a long interest in the everyday, to a point where it is now totally abstracted from this. eric's input is an attempt to root kens imagery. there are noes on this on our website, if you're interested.

glad you enjoyed some stuff though.

Barry/ Arika

[Stephen]

Thanks for clarifying that Barry. I hadn't got round to talking about the two pieces that I liked best yet:

Second on sunday was La Cellule d'Intervention Metamkine, which consisted of two performers manipulating 16mm projectors and Jerome Noetinger on Reel-to-reel tape, cassettes and Korg synth. This was honestly one of the best performances I have ever witnessed. The projectors were in front of the audience and pointing towards us, reflected by two large square mirrors onto the screen behind them - meaning we could watch the projectionists manipulating the film, machine and light and simultaneously see the results. This was pretty magical stuff, the projectionists were incredibly adept at sculpting the imagery, getting inside the mechanics and intervening between lens and screen with great effect, it became impossible to tell who was doing what and it all blended into a very busy collage of footage, silhouettes and more abstract stuff sourced from the cellulose's own materiality. This was accompanied by Noetinger's masterful live musique concrete. Unlike previous tape composers I have seen, he was extremely active, rifling through cassettes urgently, manipulating the heads and tape of the reel-to-reel machine, composing on the fly. The piece absolutely rejects the 'less is more' tendency that is so dominant in so much contemporary visual art and improvised music. Personally I found it glorious to see people reveling in addition, and making something which only became more engrossing the more that was added. If anyone gets a chance to go and see this, ever, do so.

Last up was Greg Pope's Light Trap although very similar in strategy to La Cellule d'Intervention Metamkine, it made a virtue once again of simplicity. Four film projectors stood, one at each corner of the room, their beams crossing in the centre, all projecting continuous loops of film which extended off the back of the projector. The room was filled with a light haze of theatrical smoke, and the audience free to move about between the four projectors. To begin with and for the first few minutes there was darkness and a heavy bass rumble throughout the space which I think came from the heavily amplified soundtrack strip of the films themselves. Slowly each projectionist produced a small dremel/grinder and started mark-making on the film loop as it passed in front of them, each scratch in the film's surface producing either a beam of light or, if it was on the soundtrack, a bleep, fix or splutter. The density of laser-like flashes and noisy scrapes built throughout the performance until all the projectors shone more on than off and the speakers producing a thick wall of scrapes and noisy swooshes. Just an awesome piece of work.

Thanks to everyone who made this event happen, seriously some of the best stuff happening in the UK currently, and in a world where interdisciplinary work usually compromises one of its components it was great to see film and sound interweaved so effectively.