Vitascope, Ultre, Reactable, Rechenzentrum at Optronica

Since I have never been to the NFT or the BFI before, avid cineaste that I am, I thought I might prove to be a good idea to catch two birds with one stone and check out the Optronica festival at the NFT.

The overall programme seemed to be targeted at a wide (as in: mainstream) audience but there was a small pocket in the little cinema on Friday night called Optronica Lab at which the organizers were trying out the more experimental stuff in audiovisual performance.

First up was Vitascope, unknown to me prior to the event but interesting nevertheless. I only found out later that he is actually a VJ by trade and that he was editing sound as "added value" of his performance. Oddly enough, I personally liked the sound more than the images, which shouldn't mean that any of it was bad, but sometimes, the images were flickering a tad too much and were tiring to the eye...

Vitascope's new Optronica performance will be "expanded" VJing, where he improvises both sound and vision simultaneously; mixing four audio/visual sources in real-time with an AV mixer, using each source as a building block for an immersive sound-space. Dynamically welding the ambient sounds of Hannas Barber with the heightened abstract movements of film and audiovisual Flash loops, Vitascope builds an hypnotic, ambient and unique audiovisual performance.

Next up were Ultre and Flat-E. Having only known Ultre from recommendations via last.fm, I was intrigued whether the style of his I had previously listened to would be reflected in his live performance and I can say that I wasn't disappointed. I also really enjoyed Flat-E's visuals since they were solely based on "analogue" or organic material but had a rather cinematic quality to it at the same time.

Ultre (Finn) plays a stringed instrument that he's custom built himself to trigger not only sound, but also video loops (he describes it as "a little like a one-stringed electric cello") whilst Flat-e (Robin) overlays visuals specially prepared in High-Definition.

The third act for the night was the "interactive sonic systems team" hailing from Barcelona with their interactive sound-piece called "reactable". This was by far the coolest new media project I have seen in a while. Simple in its basic interface components, yet able to be set up to complex structures and at the same time very slick and pretty and also rather intuitive to use. I could probably go on and on of how great it was but I let you judge for yourselves. You can also find videos of various performances on their website as well as my personal video I took.

The reactable is a multi-user electro-acoustic music instrument with a tabletop tangible user interface. Several simultaneous performers share complete control over the instrument by moving physical artefacts on the table surface and constructing different audio topologies in a kind of tangible modular synthesizer or graspable flow-controlled programming language.

(...)

The reactable hardware is based on a translucent round table. A video camera situated beneath, continuously analyzes the table surface, tracking the nature, position and orientation of the objects that are distributed on its surface, representing the components of a classic modular synthesizer. These objects are passive without any sensors or actuators, users interact by moving them, changing their position, their orientation or their faces (in the case of volumetric objects). These actions directly control the topological structure and parameters of the sound synthesizer. A projector, also from underneath the table, draws dynamic animations on its surface, providing a visual feedback of the state, the activity and the main characteristics of the sounds produced by the audio synthesizer.

Headliners for the night were Rechenzentrum. Since I have never seen them live I was anticipating their show and although they had sort of a rough stand to perform right after so much audiovisual and tangible bliss by the reactable group, the nevertheless managed to do it very well. Some impressions below.

Victoria Miro, Parasol Unit, White Cube

Last weekend I took the time again to check on some of my favourite galleries.
Since Parasol Unit and Victoria Miro gallery are so close together, it always makes sense to visit them both in one go.

Parasol had a group show consisting of different kinds of video art. From animated short films with an actual narrative, some of them funny, some serious, to pieces without a narrative but focus on visual impact instead.

MOMENTARY MOMENTUM: an exhibition devoted to animated drawings, comprising a dozen installations and a film loop with the participation of Francis Alÿs, Robert Breer, Paul Bush / Lisa Milroy, Michael Dudok de Wit, Brent Green, Takashi Ishida, Susanne Jirkuff, William Kentridge, Avish Khebrehzadeh, Jochen Kuhn, Zilla Leutenegger, Arthur de Pins, Qubo Gas, Christine Rebet, Robin Rhode, Georges Schwizgebel, David Shrigley, Tabaimo, Naoyuki Tsuji & Kara Walker

Some impressions:







At Victoria Miro, there was another group show, this time, the focus was more on painting, installations and sculptures.

Absent Without Leave examines the ways in which contemporary artists might use elements of performance as a material in the production (or reception) of their work. The diverse practices on display here re-imagine performance and filter it into something 'performative' - expanding gestures, actions, characters, and roles into works which incorporate performance as process.

Conceptual and performance artist Vito Acconci has discussed how, at a certain point in his career in the early seventies, he decided to appear less in his work, so that his presence was more of an absence. Absent Without Leave borrows the spirit of Acconci's decision and uses it to platform an investigation of the idea of the 'absentee performer' - an idea in which the 'performer' (the artist ) is relocated from a visible presence, to a presence which is recorded in the conceptual fabric of the art works themselves.

The exhibition features works in which: there is potential within an art object for action to happen, which may or may not necessarily occur; there is a live event without a performer; there is a physical trace of an event which in fact never occurred; or there is a possibility to read the environment as something staged, or as a set awaiting a narrative.

My last stop for the day was White Cube gallery at Mason's Yard. I have to say that even after all this time in the city, some places are really hard to find. I spend some time circling around the area with increasing precision and with the help from local police, Transport for London staff and different versions of these handy area maps they distribute on the tube stations. Trouble was that the new editions of these maps don't contain the narrow streets and small open places anymore. Budgeting? Maybe, but surely not for the better. Anselm Kiefer currently has a few works on display at the West End outlet of White Cube. I was only able to take one picture before I was kindly asked not to take any more. In case you like what you see, I'd suggest that you check out the huge paintings of Kiefer in the basement for yourselves.

The title of the exhibition, Aperiatur terra, is a quotation from the Book of Isaiah, which translates as ‘let the earth be opened’ and continues ‘and bud forth a saviour and let justice spring up at the same time’. These contrasting themes of destruction and re-creation, violent upheaval and spiritual renewal underpin much of Kiefer’s work.

The focal point of the exhibition is Palmsonntag, an installation in the ground floor gallery comprised of eighteen paintings, hung as a single entity on one wall, with a thirteen-metre palm tree laid on the gallery floor. As its title suggests, the work evokes the beginning of Christ’s journey into Jerusalem prior to his arrest, Passion, death and resurrection. The paintings read almost as the pages of a book opened to reveal multiple layers and narratives. As is common in Kiefer’s practice, organic materials form the palette through which landscapes are created. These are then overlaid with texts which do not point to one single interpretation but rather suggest a rich, philosophically charged and resonant multiplicity of meaning and experience.

Pictures in this post are licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 2.5 UK: Scotland License.
All text in block quote is property of Parasol Unit, Victoria Miro Gallery and White Cube Gallery respectively.

Christian Marclay at White Cube

Okay, I have to confess, I've never been to the White Cube gallery before and, what's even worse, I can't really explain why. I just guess it never happened that I was at Hoxton Square when it was open. Maybe also because there wasn't anything which interested me enough to go. Well, until now that is.

Having seen Christian Marclay's exhibition at the Barbican last year, I was intrigued by his wide range of working materials and his cunning wit and humor with which he puts his concepts into practice.

During the time when he showed at Barbican, I could see his piece Video Quartet (2002) and some time later again at Tate Modern.

Crossfire (2007) is his most recent video-piece and kind of a different interpretation of Video Quartet. Rather than having four screens in one row which seem to interact with each other, you now have 4 screens facing opposite to each other and the audience is virtually caught in the crossfire itself. On the screen you can see various clip samples from action movies, some of them famous, some of them not which all entail some sort of shooting. The piece itself is well orchestrated, as is everything else by Marclay, really, and goes from silent preparation to an ever intensifying gun-battle which, after its climax, slowly comes to rest.
The first analogy that comes to mind is that of sexual intercourse, at least by the intensity curve described above. And since sex and violence intermingle with each other psychologically in various forms of desire and the cinematic silver screen is one symbolic embodiment of that desire, it all kinda made sense to me in the end.
After all, what I like best about Marclay's pieces is that you can think about them for hours or not at all, but you will understand them immediately. So I might just leave it at that for now. Enjoy.




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Kinetica once more

Kinetica put on a new show since I last was there. This time, it's about "Visionaries & Luminaries", so all the works exhibited have something to do with light or its absence.

One of the works that struck me both with its simplicity and effect was Jim Campbell's picture of moving shadows.


As you can see, the method is achieved via an LED panel superimposed on a photograph, but the effect is stunning since the matrix of the panel can be addressed dynamically. The shadows look very convincing and vary in size, shape and movement.

There were also some pieces experimenting with fluorescent surfaces like this "lamp-shade" here:



The picture below is of a camera-obscura-style piece which works with strobe light. It's hard to document it with a single frame, so in case you like it, make sure to check it out for yourself.



Some more images below...










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Richard Wilson at the Barbican

Sorry for not posting in a while. The last few weeks were unexpectedly busy.
Anyway, I had the pleasure to attend the last weekend of the Richard Wilson exhibition at the Barbican two weeks ago.

The show was free of charge and displayed three larger works along with two video pieces. First off was the gutted cab. Giving a somewhat dwarfing and bizarre impression already while being mounted on a structure and displaying its insides like an Emmental cheese, what was even more impressive is that all the alterations done to the cabs in- and outside happened in the shortest time possible. A video installation in the front showed the artist slowly but steadily piercing his way through the vehicle, starting at the engine and coming out at the trunk. From what I could tell, he used the same or similar tools which would be employed in professional rescue operations. Something which makes perfect sense in the light of the task ahead.



I found it interesting to witness how Wilson manages to capture the inherit and underlying force and violence of the machine and manages to throw it right back at its -or to be more precise, our- face(s). All the physical forces that a machine deploys and sets free seem to be captured in the aesthetic act of the performance, although its important alteration seems to entail a certain human element. It's still violent what Wilson did, fair enough, but it's not as cold and precise in its mode of operation like the mechanism he takes apart. The sweat, his problems breathing and getting the right angle with a tool to move on to the next step let the whole performance appear to be almost archaic. The humidity and elasticity of the human body against the solid and repetitive action of the machine.

Next up was a structure which resembled a squashed version of a chip shop trailer. Although the structure seemed chaotic at first, you realized that all the creases in the structure were done with mathematical precision. It served as a well-balanced contrast towards the concept of the first piece. Rather than struggling as human wetware against the mechanism, this tension is reversed and re-appropriated in this piece as a sort of artistic intervention into the shapes of chaos and complexity. Knowing that the creases on the structure would never exist like that in the event of its actual squashing, Wilson manages to liberate the common object from its sole teleology and transfers it to a new perceptive plane.



The last piece was a caravan mounted on a rotating frame and having one of the walls removed so that the audience could take a peek into it. It was interesting to see the caravan from all possible angles and in all detail, what was even more interesting was to see the inside move around, depending on what current angle the caravan was spinning. At the very end of the exhibition, you could find a video screen which displayed an inside-view of the caravan. The camera was mounted on the spinning part of the structure, so the only clue of movement which the audience had was the movement of the inside parts, since the camera itself was in perfect sync with the spinning object and therefore presented the illusion of a static view.

My impression of that piece was one of suspension. Firstly, a suspension from the obvious use of the caravan, to transform its usually horizontal movement into a rotation which didn't allow for an actual moving onward, but more of a perpetual movement. Secondly, the suspension of the observing eye via the static view of the camera. There was no movement to speak of judging from a quick glance at the video. It was only after a while that the eye recognizes cupboards being opened, cushions moving around in weird angles and doors being flipped open. It seemed very much like a recording of zero gravity, something one might be familiar with from movies like Kubrick's 2001.



All in all, a very good show and a very good concept explored in a lot of interesting and fresh varieties!


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