Test Dept return to the Kapital
inviting an assemblage of collaborators, to engage the popular imagination in spectacular involvement,
antipathy countered by the tactile, a catalyst of noise,
infiltrating the airwaves with raw static,
an act of disturbance to combat a state of mediocrity, a screaming voice in the face of apathy,
united in an alliance of rhythmic communication, against the disintegration of the social
into a perpetually tracked and monitored culture, looking to the revolutionary base of the senses, resounding profusely in the body, a greater musical collectivity
searching its deepest resonance, the senses re-engaged,
in a resistance to the retreat
into the straitjacket of the secure.
ASSEMBLY OF DISTURBANCE is produced by Aaron James and curated by Test Dept, Aaron James and David Altweger
KONTINUUM
TREVOR JACKSON Pres
TEST DEPT Presen
DISTURBANC
TEST DEPT Presents
NINA (DJ) | HANNA
AMÉLIE RAVALEC & T
& SPECIAL G
ELECTRIFICATIO
PERC (Three PUCE MARY presents A Fea
PROLEKULT (Test Dept DISINFORMATION pre
DISINFORMATION prese
RORY BOW
- THU 05.OCT
sents Metal Dance (DJ)
nts Kontinuum (DJ)
CE- FRI 06.OCT
s Disturbance (Live)
AH SAWTELL (Live)
TRAVIS COLLINS (DJ)
GUEST TBA
ON- SAT 07.OCT
Hour DJ Set) ast Before The Drought (Live)
t & autoPneumatX) and esent +Electrification
ents National Grid (Live)
WENS (DJ)
KONTINUUM OPENING PARTY - THURSDAY 05.10.17 RED GALLERY, DOORS 19:00 20:00-20:45
Welcome to the Assembly Talk: Test Dept [ENG], Aaron James [ENG], David Altweger [AUT] Project producer Aaron James introduces the festival alongside Test Dept, as well as Test Dept’s visual director and Assembly of Disturbance co-curator David Altweger.
20:45 - 21:30
From Linz to London: The Ride of the Apocalypse Malcolm Poynter [ENG] Fuckhead [AUT] Stirn Prumzer [AUT] David Altweger [AUT] Malcolm Poynter’s sculpture Horsemen of the Apocalypse (which featured on The Unacceptable Face of Freedom album cover) has been transported especially from his studio in Linz, Austria by Stirn Prumzer, Fuckhead and David Altweger. This performative journey taken along the battlefields of the first and second world war forms the basis of an experimental documentation film that will be premiered at Assembly of Disturbance. The film will be accompanied sonically by Fuckhead’s reworking of Victory, originally taken from the Test Dept album The Unacceptable Face of Freedom. In partnership with: Austrian Cultural Forum, SKE & Austrian Music Fund
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22:00-23:30
TREVOR JACKSON [ENG] Presents Metal Dance - DJ Set Trevor Jackson explores early eighties industrial culture in an iteration of his acclaimed Metal Dance series; a compilation Test Dept have featured on in the past.
23:30-01:00
TEST DEPT [ENG] Presents Kontinuum - DJ Set Paul Jamrozy and Graham Cunnington in a dissonant soundclash, as they journey through early industrial sounds into a soundscape of experimental electronic rhythms, dubbed out beats and driven bass.
DISTURBANCE FRIDAY 06.10.17 DAY PROGRAMME AT RED GALLERY
13:00 -13:05
Welcome Aaron James [ENG] Producer and co-curator of Assembly of Disturbance introduces the second day of Assembly of Disturbance.
13:05-13:45
A New Dawn / We will be Fire and give Strength to the New! Test Dept [ENG], Luke Turner [ENG] “The Quietus co founder Luke Turner reflects on Test Dept’s re-activation and how events such as the large-scale AV Festival production in Dunston Staithes seem prescient to recent political changes. This is followed by a Q+A with Test Dept’s Graham Cunnington and Paul Jamrozy led by Luke Turner.” In partnership with The Quietus [ENG]
13:45 - 14:30
Total State Machine Peter Webb [ENG], Alexei Monroe [ENG], Alex Nym [DE] How did a group of disaffected young people come to pose a serious threat to the symbolic order of the Thatcherite state? Test Dept were on the front line of struggles which are still playing out in the present day; raising questions, galvanising resistance and unnerving the titanic forces unleashed by the Thatcherite doctrine that still dominates the political mainstream. Their music was a full-frontal assault on the senses that also contained moments of reflection, beauty and echoes of post-industrial decay. Until now the full history of British music, culture and politics in the 1980s and 1990s had not been told – a chapter has been missing. Total State Machine is this missing chapter. More than just a history of a group, it captures a wider history of those troubled times. PC Press’ Peter Webb and Alexei Monroe discuss the release of the recent Test Dept book Total State Machine alongside Kultur Aktiv’s Alexander Nym. In partnership with PC Press [ENG] & Kultur Aktiv [DE]
14:30 - 15:00
An Unprecedented Campaign Test Dept [ENG] dir: Mikhail Kaufman, 1931 Film/Soundtrack Test Dept present a live soundtrack cut-up to an edit of Mikhail Kaufman’s recently rediscovered and restored Soviet silent film masterpiece An Unprecedented Campaign. Kaufman was the brother of Dziga Vertov and cameraman behind The Man With a Movie Camera. An Unprecedented Campaign was originally created during the rapid industrialisation and collectivisation of Stalin’s Five-Year Plan. Kaufman countered the poverty of the villages with the geometrical rhythm of mechanised factories; militarisation is shown as the next step of the ‘unprecedented campaign’. Vertov’s sound film Enthusiasm (Symphony of the Donbas) was an early influence on Test Dept’s use of found sound in creating film soundtrack and music composition.
15:00 - 15:15
Fuckhead Intervention Fuckhead [AUT] - Performance 15:15 - 15:45 - Break
15:45 - 16:30 RED GALLERY
Critique Of Power: Critique As Power? Alexander Nym [DE] - Talk Rock’n’Roll has from its very inception onwards, been associated with excess and challenging established systems of social control. The burgeoning Industrial subculture’s explicit political interrogation of the contemporary Status Quo took the discourse further, introducing the idea of an ongoing information war. Shedding the idea of entertainment, Industrial Music, offering a broad range of avant-garde-influenced sonic aesthetics, shock tactics and relentless treatment of suppressed topics and themes, was a hotbed of applied social critique, often veiled by (rather subversive than merely) superficial leanings towards pop aesthetics while transmitting (often debatable) concepts and ideas in accordingly radical fashion. The presentation seeks to follow the developments of Industrial Music as a medium for political commentary, as well as its interaction with general pop culture, and the cultural ripple effects it has caused over the decades since its appearance, its tools, tricks and strategies, its failures and successes, ultimately investigating the role of (pop) music as a means to interrogate and subvert power structures and media discourses in the current political climate.
16:30 - 17:00
Fuckhead Intervention Fuckhead [AUT] Performance
17:00-20:00
Yes, It’s Fucking Political Kris Canavan [NIR] - Performance Born from a need to rage against the machine in the wake of so many countless horrors; I cannot stifle the rage built up inside of me. This wound is a fist in the air in a land of hypocrisy. Families are being ripped apart, communities are on their knees, people are dying, starving & fleeing atrocities. Members of racial groups & LGBQT communities are being physically abused - we are surrounded by horror, we are inflicting it on our own brothers & sisters - Yes, it’s Fucking Political is a rallying cry to fucking wake up.
18:15 - 18:30 RED GALLERY
Introduction Rebecca Shatwell [ENG] - Talk AV Festival director Rebecca Shatwell introduces Fuel To Fight and DS30 In partnership with AV Festival [ENG]
18:30 - 18:45
Fuel To Fight Test Dept [ENG] - Film Dir. Brett Turnbull/Paul Jamrozy, 1984/2014 (12.22min) A document of the 1984 nationwide Fuel to Fight Tour in support of the miners, during which Test Dept collaborated with local activists and mining communities. These bonds lay the foundation of The South Wales Striking Miners’ Choir, with whom they recorded the album Shoulder to Shoulder to raise money for the Miners’ Hardship Fund. Radicalised miners such as Alan Sutcliffe from the Kent coalfields took to the stage (performing tracks with Test Dept on three albums) voicing their disaffection in a collaborative voice of protest.
18:45 - 19:15
DS30 Test Dept [ENG] - Film
Dir. Test Dept, 2014 (30.25min) Marking 30 years since the 1984-5 miners’ strike, DS30 is a political collage of sound and image. The film is set within the monumental structural lines of Dunston Staiths built on the River Tyne in 1893 to ship coal from the Durham coalfields to the world. Featuring footage of mining communities and industry along the River Tyne and of the wider mining community together with footage and sounds from Test Dept’s own archive related to the strike, DS30 reflects on the group’s nationwide Fuel to Fight Tour in support of the miners, during which they collaborated with local activists and mining communities. These included Kent miner Alan Sutcliffe, who performed as writer and guest vocalist on live and recorded material and the South Wales Striking Miners’ Choir, with whom they recorded the album ‘Shoulder to Shoulder’ to raise money for the Miners’ Hardship Fund. In partnership with AV Festival [ENG]
v20:30 - 00:00
Screening programmes both Friday&Saturday night. Various Artists
DISTURBANCE FRIDAY EVENING PROGRAMME AT KAMIO (DOWNSTAIRS)
19:30
Amélie Ravalec & Travis Collins (DJ)
20:30
Hannah Sawtell (Live)
21:30
--- special guest to be announced --DEBONAIR (DJ)
22:30
Test Dept Presents Disturbance (Live)
00:00
Nina (DJ)
The Disturbance evening programme at KAMIO opens with a DJ set from Amélie Ravalec and Travis Collins who recently released Industrial Soundtrack for the Urban Decay, a film tracing the origins of industrial music through the crumbling industrial cities of Europe to America’s thriving avant-garde scene. Multi-disciplinary artist Hannah Sawtell joins the bill in a rare live performance. The former head of NTS Radio DEBONAIR who has recently lit up the Turbine Hall, Berghain and Fabric DJs before Test Dept present the first live iteration of their much anticipated new album alongside visuals by Sagberg. Golden Pudel resident and VIS label owner Nina presents a two hour DJ set to close the evening.
ELECTRIFICATION SATURDAY 07.10.17 DAY PROGRAMME AT RED GALLERY
13:00 -13:05
Introduction Aaron James [ENG] - Talk Producer and co-curator Aaron James offers some words in response to the first few days of Assembly of Disturbance and introduces the next wave of the programme.
13:05 - 14:00
Gododdin Mike Pearson [WAL] - Talk Brith Gof co-founder and author of Site-Specific Performance Mike Pearson explores Gododdin, a collaboration with Test Dept which formed their first large-scale site-specific production.
14:00 - 15:00
Gododdin Brith Gof [WAL] - Film Dir. Mike Parker and Martin McCarthy 1990, Gododdin. Green Eye Productions for HTV (50.42min) A documentary about the site specific performance collaboration of Brith Gof and Test Dept.
15:00 - 15:30
Gododdin Mike Pearson [WAL], Angus Farquhar [SCO], Heike Roms [DE] & Paul Clarke [ENG] - Discussion Paul Clarke chairs a discussion on Brith Gof and Gododdin with Mike Pearson who is joined by Heike Roms and Angus Farquhar In partnership with Brith Gof [WAL]
15:30 - 16:30
Reclaiming the Future Angus Farquhar [SCO] - Talk Former core Test Dept member Angus Farquhar reflects on Test Dept’s early site-specific work and how that led to him founding NVA and occupying St. Peter’s, Scotland’s infamous modernist ruin. In partnership with NVA [SCO]
16:30 - 17:00 Break
17:00 - 19:30
Disturbulence Timothy Morton [ENG] - Talk In this talk Timothy Morton will show how disturbance is not something accidental, that happens to things once in a while. Disturbance is part of the ontological structure of the way it appears. The “feel” (phenomenology) of this region is a form of turbulence, a being-moved by some larger entity that is impinging on one’s existence, such as what he calls hyperobjects. Timothy Morton will sketch out how industrial systems manifest in what this talk will be calling the disturbulence fundamental to causality. In partnership with Rice University [USA]
ELECTRIFICATION SAT 07.OCT EVENING PROGRAMME AT KAMIO (DOWNSTAIRS)
20:00
RORY BOWENS (DJ Set)
21:00
PUCE MARY
21:45
DISINFORMATION
22:00
PROLEKULT
A Feast Before The Drought (Live)
National Grid (Live)
(TEST DEPT&AUTOPNEUMATX)
& DISINFORMATION 23:00
PERC
(Three Hour DJ Set)
Electrification begins with with a DJ set from NTS Radio’s rising star Rory Bowens. Denmark’s Puce Mary follows with A Feast Before The Drought, a new live show that premiered at Berlin Atonal 2017. Disinformation presents National Grid, one of the pioneering experimental music and installation art works, which uses electromagnetic (often VLF radio) noise, radiated by live mains electricity;
a
monolithic soundtrack for the genius of electrification and for the bitter conflicts between government and organised labour for control over the nation’s electrical infrastructure. Disinformation will then rework National Grid for live performance alongside Prolekult, an electronic collaboration and interaction between Test Dept and autoPneumatx mixing kinetic sound sources and machine sculpture with the utilisation of revolutionary art manifestos. Prolekult will be using a new ensemble of computer-controlled acoustic machines to deliver an intense battery of audiovisual percussive performance. Driven by pneumatic actuators and industrial controls, the system will act as a multi-digit prosthetic enhancement for the stage-based performers, whilst providing an animated object theatre experience for the attendant audience. UK techno luminary Perc will close Assembly of Disturbance with a three hour DJ performance.
Curated by Test Dept, Aaron James and David Altweger
Culture is Not a Luxury voices the manifest dissonance, with the emergent anger and resistance in Britain in the year 2017, one hundred years on from the Russian Revolution and the unleashing of radical artistic forces that sought to build an idealistic new society. The exhibition unveils manifestos, documents and artworks traced from Test Dept’s inception in an 80’s landscape of industrial rationalisation, via their networking and travels through Western Europe and behind the Iron Curtain, alongside their collaborative work with other cultural and political activists. A journey mapped through the rise of neo-liberal free market capitalism to a precarious world disorder on the precipice of conflict, economic and ecological disaster.
Curated by Test Dept, and Cara Davies
Nothing is certain, we take risks and face daily challenges of disharmony, precarity, and uncertainty. Societal infrastructures bind us to live in a paradox of desiring that which is definite, consistent and constant, but this is an illusion as nothing can remain as it is. Change is always already in affect; we must embrace change; we must provoke change, we cannot escape it. The archive as an authoritarian infrastructure too, demands its material inhabitants of documents to live in a paradox of stasis and flux. Documents are consigned to the archive, accessioned into set categories, stored and labelled in accordance to a system, yet change is inevitable. Entropic processes physically alter the document’s substrates over time, and history affords us the opportunity to interpret and re-frame the value and importance of a document’s contents. The Only Constant is Change therefore explores the currency of precarity in Test Dept’s archive, reflecting on what has been constant and consistent throughout Test Dept history alongside that which has altered, provoked or evolved their trajectory as a group. The exhibition showcases a range of documents from the archive that evidences changes in the group’s dynamic; changes they have affected; concurrent changes in society; and changes that have been inflicted on the archive itself.
ALISA OLEVA [RUS] PLEASE HOLD “On vacation, near Lake Ilmen. There was a lumber-mill which belonged to a landowner called Slavjaninov. At this lumber-mill I arranged a rendezvous with my girlfriend…I had to wait for for her for hours. These hours were devoted to listening”. This experience inspired Denis Kaufman (a.k.a Dziga Vertov) to begin his experiments with sound, which he called the Laboratory of Hearing. He later switched to film and camera as he was not satisfied with the sound recording equipment available at that time. With a reasonably good audio recording device on our phones today, it might be a good moment to come back to the Laboratory of Hearing. Please Hold explores the idea of waiting and the sound of it: from the cheesy tune you are listening to on the phone when waiting to connect to home office; to the poetic alertness when waiting for a rendezvous, like in Vertov’s case. Waiting is also a very political notion - utopias are also some kind of ecstatic waiting as are the kafkaesque endless corridors of bureaucracy. The project has evolved over series of workshops, interventions and interviews within the Laboratory of Hearing framework. This combined with Oleva’s personal research and experience has resulted in a sound and movement instruction-based performance, which is available throughout the event. *Requires booking available at the event
PK FISKULTURNIK [CRO] REVOLUTION YOGA Revolution Yoga is a 2017 take on PK Fiskulturnik’s Yugo Yoga piece (2008-2013) as a nod to 100 years since the Russian revolution. It is a series of participatory performances that fuse elements of yoga, archived physical exercises (fiskultura), poses from socialist-realist sculptures, revolutionary slogans and New age messages of self improvement. Whilst emphasising a need for theory to manifest itself as a practical deed, Yugo Yoga wishes to communicate through an act of embodiment – directly to and through the body. The viewers are invited to immerse themselves directly in the artwork thus arousing the spirit of egality and collaboration. *Requires booking available at the event
PropaGate [CAT/UK] Propagate collective produces visuals and use visual communication as a tool for amplifying the grassroots social struggles going on in London at the present time. Propagate Collective works with, and alongside, the diversity of struggles including: housing justice, migrants rights, anti-cuts and anti-austerity policies, workers rights, equality, and LGBT rights.
TAM DEAN BURN [SCO] Tam Dean Burn will be performing interventions at Assembly of Disturbance utilising poems from the revolutionary Mayakovsky, as well as work from the Test Dept exhibition. He first saw and was inspired by Test Dept during the Miners Strike in 1984 and last worked with Graham Cunnington in the Acid House Theatre show Headstate with Boilerhouse. He contested the Glasgow Central seat in the 1992 General Election as candidate for the Communist Party of Great Britain and is particularly keen to mark and celebrate the 100th anniversary of the Russian Revolution.
Test Dept [ENG] Test Dept are renowned for their enduring physical performances working with reconstructed raw industrial hardware, found sound, early sampling techniques and experimental electronics as a voice of resistance against forces of reaction. Having formed in 1981, Test Dept have had an expansive career creating sonic and theatrical artworks in a range of mediums. Test Dept are internationally recognised artists: representing Britain at Expo Vancouver (‘86) and other unique locations around Europe (including being one of the few Western groups to work in Eastern Bloc Europe in the ‘80s). They established The Ministry of Power, working collectively with diverse artists from all disciplines, and became renowned for producing large-scale site-specific performance events (The Second Coming shown at St. Rollox Railway Works, Glasgow was the centre-piece of the city’s European Year of Culture celebration in ’90). In 2014 TD re-emerged to explore alternative artistic modes of expression in a new programme of actions. These include a commission from AV Festival to deliver DS30, a collage of sound and image that marked the 30th anniversary of the start of the Miners Strike; the release of Total State Machine, a 385-page PC-Press publication documenting Test Dept’s work from 1981 to the present; and recent live performance commissions at Raw Power, Fat Out Fest, TPO (Bologna), L’Etrange International Festival (Paris) and international music festivals in Oberhausen and Leipzig (Germany) and Wroclaw (Poland). Aaron James [ENG] Aaron James is a London-based artist, DJ, curator and researcher who trained at Goldsmiths. He has received commissions from some of the UK’s leading art institutions such as Tate and Arnolfini and disseminated his work throughout Europe. As an independent researcher, Aaron is currently working on a practice-as-research project entitled Live Curation: A Methodology Towards a New Platform for the Reception of Art. This explores whether the artist as curator and the audience as active agents in the curation of an exhibition, can curate an exhibition live and explicate art and curatorial knowledge relationally. Alexander Nym [DE] Alexander Nym is a cultural theorist, writer, orator, editor and performance artist from Nuremberg/Germany, currently heading Dresden’s NGO Kultur Aktiv as managing director. He is also author of Schillerndes Dunkel (Shimmering Darkness, History, Development and Themes of the Gothic Scene) Alexei Monroe [ENG] Alexei Monroe is a non-aligned cultural theorist and freelance editor from London. He holds a PhD in Communication and Image Studies from the University of Kent. He is author of the books Pluralni Monolit (Plural Monolith, MASKA 2003) and Interrogation Machine (MIT Press 2005). These books deal with the Slovene arts movement Neue Slowenische Kunst (NSK). In Spring 2014, revised and updated French and German translations were published by Le Camion Blanc and Ventil Verlag. Alisa Oleva [RUS] Alisa Oleva’s practice aims to offer an alternative way to experience and engage with the everyday urban life around us by merging the sense of real and imaginary within the cityscape. She treats the city as her studio and urban life as material, to consider issues of private and public, visible
and invisible, urban choreography and urban archeology, traces and surfaces, borders and inventories, voids and silences. Her projects manifest through participatory performance, urban interventions, walkshops, audio walks and photography. Angus Farquhar [SCO] Angus Farquhar is a former core member of Test Dept and is the creative force behind the NVA organisation. Created to encourage pioneering artists the organisation seeks to produce Europe’s greatest site specific events. Having organised events such as the G8 Summit, the launch of the Channel Tunnel, the opening of the Scottish Parliament and Hogmanay events NVA have demonstrated an imaginative flair that has helped build the company’s excellent reputation. Brett Turnbull [ZWE] Brett Turnbull is a film-maker and artist who left Zimbabwe at the height of the civil war and moved to London to study art. In the early eighties he became the visual director and core member of the Test Dept collective, developing a visual aesthetic for the group that was deeply influenced by the revolutionary film-makers and artists of Soviet Russia in the early twenties, such as Vertov, Eisenstein, Rodchenko and Malevich. He now works as a Director of Photography in the film and TV industry, filming worldwide in many genres, but still often specialising in music-related projects. Cara Davies [ENG] Cara is a performance artist, curator and archivist. Activating an interdisciplinary approach to practice-led research Cara’s praxis re-thinks the construction, use and dissemination of performance documentation and archives as works of live art. Artistically her practice focuses on issues of archival lacunae, re-presentation of documentation in performance, re-documentation of documents and the juxtaposition of the live and documented body. Challenging how these processes impart a fragmented understanding of identity, memory and bodily experience, Cara’s work spans a range of mediums including dance, video, live art, multi-media installation, online broadcasting and social engaged itinerant performance. Charles Poulet [FRA] Charles Poulet started his venture into sound in the early nineties Manchester scene training at the NIA centre and Arden Centre before touring with 808 State as a monitor engineer. He has since dedicated himself to live sound and toured with Liars, The Kills, Kaito, Ali Love, Throbbing Gristle, Wire, Chris and Cosey carving himself a reputation within the experimental industrial scene as one of the loudest and creatively active sound engineers on the market. As an artist he created Whiteplane 2 with Alex Bradley, a nationally funded touring sound and light installation, using cutting edge LED technology and ambisonic sound diffusion. He has created sound design scores for Emergency Exit Art and Living structures. David Altweger [AUT] David Altweger is an artist, director and curator from Vienna based in London. Having graduated from Camberwell College of Arts, he became a founding member of the collective Salon Flux which has organised screenings, exhibitions and salons internationally since 2011. He is a specialist in sound reactive live visuals and video manipulation. He currently works as a VJ under the moniker SAGBERG and has been responsible for Test Dept’s visual communications since 2015.
DEBONAIR [ENG] The former head of radio at NTS has changed her tack to become one of the most revered selectors on the circuit. In recent years, her reputation as an innovative club DJ has also soared, playing at venues such as Berghain, Fabric and Tate’s Turbine Hall and sharing billings with Nidia Minaj, Lena Willikins and Norman Nodge. Disinformation Disinformation is a sound, video and kinetic art project, which, since 1995, produced a series of pioneering experimental music and installation art works, using electromagnetic (often VLF radio) noise, radiated by live mains electricity, lightning, industrial and IT hardware, railway and metro systems, and even the sun. Disinformation has performed more than 100 concerts, exhibited in over 50 gallery shows, and been the subject of 15 UK solo exhibitions. Disinformation rapidly crossed-over into the field of installation art, exhibiting the highly influential National Grid sound installation at the Museum of Installation. Fuckhead [AUT] Fuckhead (originally formed in Linz, Austria as a duo in 1988) have performed in venues and art spaces across Europe. Fuckhead constantly surprise audiences with their mix of industrial, experimental film and performance art and are regarded as one of Austria’s best known collectives. Jon Large (autoPneumatx) [ENG] Jon Large (autoPneumatx) is a Manchester based sound artist and creative producer whose work traverses the intersection of improvised performance and interactive installation, predominantly in the field of medium scale outdoor theatre. Combining technique and technology from current modes of digital production with traditional sculptural and visual arts, the work presents figurative sonic objects in an arena for public play and participation, developing emergent sonic tableaux through the sonic agency of fire, electricity, and peculiar resonant media. Hannah Sawtell [ENG] Hannah Sawtell has been included in group shows; SoundSpill, Zabludowicz Collection, New York (2013); With the Tip of a Hat, The Artist’s Institute, New York (2012) and Novel screening for Time Again hosted by SculptureCenter, New York (2011), Outrageous Fortune: artists remake the tarot, (Hayward Touring), Focal Point Gallery, Southend (2011) and The Great White Way Goes Black, Vilma Gold, London (2011). Her work has been shown by Dependance, Brussels and included in Display With Sound, International Project Space, Bournville and she was shortlisted for the Jarman Award in 2013. She is included in Assembly: A Survey of Recent Artists’ Film and Video in Britain 2008–2013 at Tate Britain. She had solo exhibitions at New Museum, New York, Bergen Kunsthall, Bergen and Focal Point Gallery, Southend-on-Sea. Heike Roms [DE] Heike Roms is Professor in Performance Studies at Aberystwyth University (Wales). She has published on contemporary performance practice, the history of performance art in a British context, performance historiography and archiving, performance and ecology and performance as a mode of knowledge formation and dissemination. Heike is director of ‘What’s Welsh for Performance?’, a project on the historiography of early performance art which was funded by a Large Research Grant from the British Arts and Humanities Research Council AHRC (2009-2011) and won the David Bradby TaPRA Award for Outstanding Research in International Theatre and Performance in 2011.
Kris Canavan [NIR] Canavans’ art practice is rooted very much in the use of their body and it’s resources. They see their methods of creation throughout their artworks as a political ownership of the body - essentially a gesture of defiance and dissent. From images containing metaphors for failure and futility to statements of love and through aktions of conflict and rage they have sought to make beautiful images that convey collective shame, social decay, loss, longing and the desire for a level playing field through ritualised aktion, self sacrifice and labour intensive durational works. Canavan is an amino Associate Artist. Lara Ritosa Roberts (PK Fiskulturnik) [CRO] Lara Ritosa Roberts is a Croatian born, London based visual and performance artist, also working under the name PK Fiskulturnik. Lara’s work explores the relationship between visual art, movement, body culture and ideology within a performance art framework, drawing together her experience in both physical theatre and fine arts. Her performances have featured at Tate Britain, Museum of Yugoslav History-Belgrade, National Theatre Watch This Space Festival-London, Whitstable Biennale, City of Women Festival-Ljubljana and more. Luke Turner [ENG] Luke Turner is co-founder and editor of online music and arts magazine The Quietus. He has also contributed to Q, The Guardian, NME, MOJO and the BBC. Malcolm Poynter [ENG] Malcolm Poynter is an internationally renowned sculptor born in London and based in Linz, Austria. He has been the subject of six solo exhibitions at The Laden Gallery (Berlin), The Irving Sculpture Gallery (Sydney), Galerie Lucien Bilinelli (Brussels), Galerie Claude André (Brussels) and Galerie Mineta Move (Brussels). His work is also in the permanent collections of the British Arts Council, The Museum Beelden aan Zee (Holland) and The National Gallery of Jamaica. Mike Pearson [WAL] Professor Mike Pearson is Emeritus Professor of Performance Studies at Aberystwyth University, where he was responsible for designing one of Britain’s first undergraduate degrees in Performance Studies. He is a highly influential figure in contemporary British theatre and performance, as well as being recognised internationally. For over 35 years he has devised, directed, staged and performed over 100 works of professional theatre in particular as founding member of Welsh performance company Brith Gof (1981-9797). Mira Loew [AUT] Mira Loew is a visual artist working with movement and performance through the medium of photography & video. Her artistic practice explores the human body, and the physicality of taking and making space. She is co-founder and artistic director of London based artist collective Salon Flux. Nina [DE] Nina is a DJ and resident of Hamburg’s Golden Pudel club, known for her unique “Nina Trifft” night, singular DJ-ing style and eclectic sets full of experimental sounds. Her selection has resulted in many fascinating mixtapes available online, as well as a cassette for Blackest Ever Black’s Krokodilo sublabel. She also co-runs an imprint called VIS.
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Paul Clarke [ENG] Dr Paul Clarke is an artist, theatre director and Senior Lecturer in Performance Studies at University of Bristol. From 2008-2010 he was the Great Western Research Fellow on Performing the Archive: the Future of the Past, hosted by University of Bristol’s Theatre Collection and Arnolfini archive. He is an investigator on the AHRC-funded project Performing Documents and is currently co-editing the book Artists in the Archive, to be published by Routledge. Perc [ENG] Perc (aka Ali Wells) takes established forms of music and twists them into something new. He is a music producer that has released on scene-leading labels such as CLR, Kompakt, Drumcode, Stroboscopic Artefacts and Ovum as well as his own world-renowned Perc Trax imprint, Perc is as uncompromising as he is unique. He has played in venues such as Berghain, Tresor, Unit in Tokyo and many more. In the last year Perc has worked with Factory Floor, Black Asteroid, Mike Parker and Oscar Mulero. Peter Webb [ENG] Peter Webb is a writer, lecturer and musician who specialises in research into popular and contemporary music, subcultures, globalisation, new media, politics and social theory. As a musician he has worked with physical theatre companies Blast Theory and Intimate Strangers and film company Parallax Pictures. He has recently set up PC-Press, a publishing company whose first publication was a book on Test Dept called Total State Machine. Puce Mary [DK] Puce Mary is the solo moniker of Copenhagen based sound artist Frederikke Hoffmeier. Since her first LP released in 2013, the project has then explored the fields of industrial noise and experimental music with a vast amount of releases on labels as Posh Isolation, iDEAL Recordings, Ascetic House and Freak Animal featuring collaborations with noise artists such as Loke Rahbek, Dan Johansson of Sewer Election and Rodger Stella of Macronympha. Her current other projects are JH1.FS3 and Body Sculptures. The performances and releases portrays her work methods to be many and diverse from textured sound collages and noise, to straight-forward industrial music. She has performed throughout Europe, Japan, Russia, Canada and America. Stirn Prumzer [AUT] The sceneries of Stirn Prumzer result from an attempt to create a complex and organic Gesamtkunstwerk: its goal is to demask a desolate reality, which has lost every claim for truth. He composes dense images, which provoke a dialectical flickering of cruel and beautiful, discomforting and amusing, surreal and archaic. This multilayered form of reception is rendered possible by the excessive lust for formal freedom. Stirn Prumzer hits the vital side of the extreme: the empowerment of various art forms, resulting in a crude mixture of concert, masquerade and exhibition that is put into new contexts. Rebecca Shatwell [ENG] Rebecca Shatwell is a curator with 16 years experience of working across visual art, sound and film. Since 2008 she has been director of AV Festival, re-positioning the event into a major biennial of contemporary visual art, attracting over 90,000 visits. She has curated the past three editions of the Festival, including solo exhibitions and newly commissioned projects with artists including Test Dept, Mathieu Kleyebe Abonnenc, Lara Almarcegui, James Benning, Duncan Campbell, Lav Diaz, Hamish Fulton, Cyprien Gaillard, On Kawara, and Jessica Warboys, amongst many others.
Tam Dean Burn [SCO] Tam Dean Burn is a Leith-born actor, musician and political activist who was the mainstay of agitprop street theatre group Workers Theatre Movement and Artists Against the War from the 1980s on. He was lead singer of the Edinburgh punk band Dirty Reds as featured in the recent award-winning documentary on the Scottish post-punk scene Big Gold Dream. He currently sings in The Bum-Clocks with post-punk legends Malcolm Ross (Josef K) and Russell Burn (FIre Engines) and performs with Tommy Smith’s Scottish National Jazz Orchestra. He has had an acclaimed career in theatre, working extensively with Steven Berkoff and at the Donmar, Almeida, National Theatre, Soho Theatre, Glasgow Citizens’ and the National Theatre of Scotland. He toured nationally and internationally with his one man show adaptations of Irvine Welsh’s Filth and Venus As A Boy by Luke Sutherland. He is well known for the films - Local Hero, The Acid House, WarHorse and most recently Moon Dogs. His TV work includes Hamish McBeth, Taggart and River City. He is renowned for his audiobook readings of almost all of Irvine Welsh’s novels. He has made many appearances on the London art radio station Resonance FM, including his long-running solo programme The Complete Works of William Blake. He is a regular member of the Resonance Radio Orchestra and guest on Johny Brown and Band of Holy Joy’s Resonance FM show Bad Punk. He and Johny recently collaborated on the live broadcasts of four plays by Bill Drummond. Timothy Morton [ENG] Timothy Morton is Rita Shea Guffey Chair in English at Rice University. He has collaborated with Björk, Olafur Eliasson, Jennifer Walshe, Haim Steinbach and Pharrell Williams. He is the author of Humankind: Solidarity with Nonhuman People (Verso, 2017), Dark Ecology: For a Logic of Future Coexistence (Columbia, 2016), Nothing: Three Inquiries in Buddhism (Chicago, 2015), Hyperobjects: Philosophy and Ecology after the End of the World (Minnesota, 2013), Realist Magic: Objects, Ontology, Causality (Open Humanities, 2013), The Ecological Thought (Harvard, 2010), Ecology without Nature (Harvard, 2007), eight other books and 200 essays on philosophy, ecology, literature, music, art, architecture, design and food. Trevor Jackson [ENG] Trevor Jackson is a London based Art Director, DJ and Producer. His work blurs the border between vision and sound via print, video, light installations and music. Trevor Jackson’s carefully crafted releases, remixes and compilations such as DJ Kicks and Metal Dance along with his Output Recordings Label (Home to Four Tet & LCD Soundsystem) have been cited as seminal compendia of experimental EDM. As a DJ, he regularly plays in large clubs (Fabric, London), festivals (Sonar, Glastonbury) and high-profile music and art events (Kraftwerk at Tate Modern, Serpentine Summer Party, V&A, Art Basel). Over the years he has worked with the likes of Massive Attack, Soulwax, Unkle, Dinos Chapman and Soft Cell.
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