Images Festival-Live Images
THE 21st ANNUAL IMAGES FESTIVAL
Toronto’s 2nd Oldest Film Festival
April 3 - 13, 2008
www.imagesfestival.com
Live Images is one of the most popular series at Images Festival, featuring film; video and audio artists, musicians and other performers live and in person - with spectacular media art performances. Live Images refers to all of the live performances and Events that are scheduled throughout the 10 days of On Screen. In this year’s six Live Images programs, the performances offer the marriage of sound and image.
LIVE IMAGES I
Light Trap by Greg Pope with Knurl (a.k.a Alan Bloor)
Sunday, April 6th, 9:30 p.m. The Music Gallery (197 John Street)
$15 general/$12 students/seniors/members
Oslo-based filmmaker Greg Pope’s Light Trap is a performance using four prepared 16mm projectors and a sound artist. Something of a “live punk homage” to Anthony McCall’s Line Describing a Cone, the work is a voluminous and spatial sound/light sculpture, performed live and in constant flux by factors both random and controlled. Without a screen, seating, or a traditional beginning and end, Light Trap explores the raw elements of cinema: the projector, the film material, the darkened room and synchronized sound.
The imagery in Light Trap begins with loops of completely black film, a dark room filled with haze and only the hum of the projectors’ motors. Slowly, the emulsion is whittled away on each loop with sandpaper and an array of hand tools, allowing bursts and streams of light to pierce through the darkness. Synchronous to the unfolding cascade of light emanating into the room, the aberrations on the film loops create pops, cracks and hisses. This constant, reductive physical process applied to the surface of the film loops results in a slow transformation of the physical space; out of aural and visual darkness builds a cacophonous crescendo of sound and light.
After dabbling in punk rock bands and absurdist performance, Greg Pope founded Brighton based Super 8 film collective Situation Cinema in 1986. From this group came Loophole Cinema (London 1989) using 16mm multi-projection techniques, they were self-styled shadow engineers performing numerous events around Europe until their demise in 1999. They also produced The International Symposium of Shadows in London in 1996. Working collaboratively and individually, Pope has made video installations, live art pieces and single screen film works since 1996. He currently lives in Norway in a small wooden house and is active with Atopia, an artist’s film and video collective in Oslo.
Knurl, a.k.a. Alan Bloor is one of the premier noise artists in Canada. Using contact microphones and scrap metal Knurl creates incredibly powerful harsh noise. At times reminiscent of the likes of Daniel Menche and Haters, Knurl has released 2 efforts for Alien8 Recordings as well as appearing on the Coalescence compilation. Other labels that have documented Knurl include RRR, Self Abuse, Labyrinth, Entarte Kunst and Musicus Phycus. Knurl has performed with Keiji Haino, David Kristian, Haters, Princess Dragon Mom, MSBR and Government Alpha and collaborated live with Jim O’Rouke and Thurston Moore.
LIVE IMAGES II
The Conversation, a.k.a. Everything is Everything
Tuesday, April 8th, 9:30 p.m.
Workman Theatre (1001 Queen Street West)
$10 general/$8 students/seniors/members
As the speed of information grows, culture viruses expand and coalesce. The global homogenization of symbols, meanings and voices seems inevitable. Two artists, their common first language is video. Through sound and vision, Kentaro Taki and Tasman Richardson will attempt to harmonize, synchronize, and improvise a culture clash of stolen air transmissions from their native broadcast geographies. What differences if any are left in our spectacular conversations of post-everything tele-presence? Kentaro Taki was born in Osaka Japan in 1973. He completed his Masters in Fine Arts in the Department of Imaging Arts and Sciences at Musashino Art University. Kentaro has exhibited his video works and installations throughout Europe and Asia. He is currently the director of Videoart Center Tokyo, and devotes his time to innovating audio video techniques and building a global alternative artist’s network.
For over a decade Tasman Richardson has exhibited or performed extensively throughout the Americas, Europe, North Africa and Asia. He graduated from The Ontario College of Art and Design in 1996 where he developed the JAWA editing technique as his thesis and in 2002, co-founded the media arts collective FAMEFAME. He spends his time developing video as a universal language by pursuing international collaborations with other video/audio artists. He lives in Toronto, Canada.
LIVE IMAGES III
The Valerie Project
Wednesday, April 9th, 10:00 p.m.
The Royal (608 College Street)
$15 general/$12 students/seniors/members
Philadelphia musicians bring new life to a forgotten classic of the Czech New Wave: Jaromil Jires’ Valerie and Her Week of Wonders (1970). The sound goes off and the amps get cranked as a collective of Philadelphia’s finest underground musicians pay tribute to this seminal film of the new folk movement. Spearheaded by Greg Weeks (Espers, Grass), Margie Wienk (Fern Knight) and Brooke Sietinsons (Espers, Grass), the ensemble includes harpist Mary Lattimore, cellist Helena Espvall (Espers), Vocalist Tara Burke (Fursaxa), bassist/percussionist Jesse Sparhawk (Fern Knight, Timesbold), flutist/keyboardist Jessica Weeks (Woodwose, Grass), enigmatic electronicist Charles Cohen and percussionist Jim Ayre (Fern Knight, Rake).
The film Valerie and Her Weeks of Wonders is a screen adaptation of Vitezslav Nezval’s short novel of the same name. Published in 1945, the novel is as surreal and uninformative as the film itself. Director Jaromil Jires was unerringly faithful to Nezval’s myopic approach, lingering on expressions, oblique gestures, the subtle nuances of actor performance and the rich, complex set design of Ester Krumbachova. Lubos Fiser’s original score is so perfectly woven throughout the action it becomes the atmosphere within which Jires’ actors exist.
Considered by many to be the last film of the Czech New Wave - tank treads are uniquely effective at suspending cultural momentum - Valerie marked a reprieve for Jires from a long series of political exposes, which may account for just how remarkably visual the film became. Coming from black and white film to color, relative realism to a work of surreal fantasy, Jires must have exploded creatively from the options then at his fingertips. One can only imagine what unfettered creations could have come had not so many of his fellow filmmakers fled to more welcoming creative climates, Jires making the decision to remain and endeavor under the oppressive thumb of Soviet tunnel-vision.
LIVE IMAGES IV
Every Time I See Your Picture I Cry *WORLD PREMIERE
By Daniel Barrow with Original Soundtrack by Linton
Thursday to Saturday, April 10th - 12th, 7:30 p.m.
Harbourfront Centre (235 Queens Quay West)
$15 general/$12 students/seniors/members
Daniel Barrow’s newest “manual animation” combines overhead projection, with video, music, and live narration to tell the story of a garbage man with a vision to create an independent phone book chronicling the lives of each person in his city. In the late hours of the night, he sifts through garbage, collecting personal information and then traces pictures of each citizen as they sleep through the windows of their homes. ~The garbage man is however unaware that a deranged killer is trailing him, murdering each citizen he includes in his book, thus rendering his cataloguing efforts obsolete. “Every Time I See Your Picture I Cry” traces the development of the garbage man’s interior monologue as he attempts to slow down and creatively reflect, in a process of coming to terms with his own isolation and fear.
Daniel Barrow is a Winnipeg-based media artist, working in performance, video and installation. He has exhibited widely in Canada and abroad. Recently, Barrow has exhibited at The Museum of Contemporary Art (Los Angeles), New Langton Arts (San Francisco), and The Contemporary Art Gallery (Vancouver). Since 1993, Barrow has used an overhead projector to relay ideas and short narratives. Specifically, he creates and adapts comic book narratives to a “manual” form of animation by projecting, layering and manipulating drawings on Mylar transparencies. Barrow variously refers to this practice as “graphic performance, live illustration, or manual animation.”
LIVE IMAGES V
Charles Atlas and Alan Licht
Friday, April 11th, 9:30 p.m.
Workman Theatre (1001 Queen Street West)
$15 general/$12 students/seniors/members
On Friday, April 11th Charles Atlas and Alan Licht create an improvised collage of image and sound in their world debut collaboration. A live video mix of sampled film footage and prepared loops is buffeted by waves of electronic volume, feedback and drone. This intense, relentlessly recurring collision of dream atmospheres is at once emotive, sensual, violent and alarming. Video performance has been an integral part of Atlas’s practice since his early days with Merce Cunningham and Nam June Paik. His most recent musical collaborators include Antony and the Johnsons and Christian Fennesz. Alan Licht is a New York musician, composer and writer. Licht’s most recent appearances in Toronto were with Michael Snow and Aki Onda in October 2006 and his group Text of Light in October 2007 (presented by Pleasure Dome and SOUNDplay). His latest book is Sound Art: Beyond Music, Between Categories, published in November 2007 by Rizzoli.
Fabled New York video pioneer Charles Atlas, one of the premier interpreters of dance, theater and performance on video, makes his first visit to Toronto to present the Canadian premiere of Hail the New Puritan, his 1985/86 portrait of bohemian subculture in Thatcher-era London, and to perform an innovative live video processing with improvised sound by Alan Licht.
Composer, guitarist and electronic musician Alan Licht coalesces minimalism, noise and pop into waves of feedback, drone and volume washing against the solid footings of song elements. He too has a long involvement with creating sound for the moving image, and vice versa. Licht last visited Toronto in October 2007 with Text of Light, a group he co-directs with Lee Ranaldo, performing improvised music with the films of Stan Brakhage.
LIVE IMAGES VI
Theda
By Georgina Starr with live accompaniment by CCMC
Saturday, April 12th, 7:30 p.m.
Harbourfront Centre (235 Queens Quay West)
$15 general/$12 students/seniors/members
A chance meeting with an eccentric octogenarian film fan introduced Starr to the world of silent screen legend Theda Bara. Once the biggest silent movie star in the world, Bara appeared in over forty films, of which only two still exist today. Through extensive research into the art of Bara and other neglected silent stars, Georgina Starr has reconstructed key scenes from the lost films, with both herself and the film fan taking on the role of Theda. The work will look at the vicarious nature of the cinematic experience and explore the silent film form through image and live sound. Experimenting with performance styles and narrative techniques Starr considers the movie screen as a mirror and how we use film fiction to explore and escape our own identity. As well as the art of Theda Bara, Starr draws from many of the masters of the silent era, from the great early filmmakers Louis Feuillade and Carl Dreyer, to the German expressionist theatre of Max Reinhardt, and the theories and pre-1900 acting techniques of Francois Delsarte. She also looks to the lost or neglected talent of other actresses such as Alla Nazimova, Barbara La Marr, Marguerite Clark, Musidora, Maud Allen and many more.
Born in Leeds, UK, Georgina Starr studied at the Rijksademie in Amsterdam, and now lives and works in London. Her art practice, largely rooted in video, but incorporating objects, prints, drawings and photographs, often builds its narratives from various references and biographies in popular culture. Her work has been exhibited internationally at Tracy Williams, Ltd. (New York), Tate Gallery (London), nca | nichido contemporary art (Tokyo), the 49th Venice Biennale, and Annet Gelink Gallery (Amsterdam) among many others.
CCMC formed in 1974 in Toronto as the Canadian Creative Music Collective. Only the acronym was in use by 1978. Defining itself as “a composing ensemble… united by a desire to play music that is fluid, spontaneous, and self-regulating,” the CCMC, by its instrumentation, by the backgrounds of several of its founders, and by the improvised nature of its music, was initially aligned with the free jazz community. Current members include Michael Snow, Paul Dutton and John Oswald.
Watch the Images Festival website, www.imagesfestival.com for on going updates and for artists who will be at the festival in April!
We are presently confirming interviews.
The Images Festival is Toronto’s 2nd oldest film festival and Canada’s largest annual event devoted exclusively to independent and experimental film, video, installation, live performance and new media. The 21st edition of the festival runs April 3rd - 12th, in Toronto, Canada.
Many ground-breaking works have premiered at the Images Festival including Matthew Barney’s Cremaster 1, 2, 4 & 5, Bruce Elder’s 40-hour film cycle The Book of All the Dead, Zacharias Kunuk’s Nunaqpa, David Rokeby’s installation Guardian Angel, Philip Hoffman’s What These Ashes Wanted, Barbara Sternberg’s Like a Dream that Vanishes, Clive Holden’s Trains of Winnipeg, Robert Lee’s Minima Moralia and Babette Mangolte’s Seven Easy Pieces by Marina Abramovic.
Artists presented at Images over our 20-year history include: Rebecca Belmore, Catherine Breillat, Stan Douglas, Cheryl Dunye, Atom Egoyan, Harun Farocki, John Greyson, Mona Hatoum, Mike Hoolboom, Miranda July, Zacharias Kunuk, Helen Lee, Tracey Moffatt, Matthias Müller, Shirin Neshat, Walid Ra’ad, Pipilotti Rist, David Rokeby, Su Rynard, Jayce Salloum, Jane Siberry, Lorna Simpson, Michael Snow, Gariné Torossian, Apichatpong Weerasethakul and Joyce Wieland.
The Images Festival is made possible thanks to generous operating support from the following public funders: The Canada Council for the Arts, the Department of Canadian Heritage, the Ontario Arts Council, Telefilm Canada and the City of Toronto through the Toronto Arts Council.
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