CCA Art Events

Alt - W Application Surgery

08 Feb 2008 00:00:00 GMT

Applications are now invited for the 2008 Alt-w Fund with both production and research and development awards of up to £5000 available. Guidelines for application will be available from the Alt-w website on 26 June 2008 and free application surgeries will be held at the CCA on 2, 9 and 16 August from 12-4pm. Places can be booked by emailing rsvp@mediascot.org.

The deadline for applications is 22 August and the 2008 award winners will be announced at the Alt-w exhibition closing party, on 13 September at the CCA.

Initiated by Scottish Screen in 2000, the Alt-w Fund is for practitioners based in Scotland to make and develop new artworks, devices and creative applications that challenge the notions of what networked or web-based digital creativity can be. The 2008 awards are supported by Scottish Screen and the Scottish Arts Council and this year the focus of the fund is to support projects which dynamically engage audiences beyond the screen.

Since inception the fund has supported over sixty innovative projects.

The distribution of Alt-w awards is managed by New Media Scotland and funded by Scottish Screen and the Scottish Arts Council.

All surgeries are free, to book please email rsvp@mediascot.org

Alt-w: New Directions in Scottish Digital Culture

02 Aug 2008 00:00:00 GMT

Lorna Robertson's current work examines objects that might be found in car-boot sales or glass cabinets at the V & A.

This series of paintings tries to make a new context for these objects, re-claim them for her own means, and re-position them through pictorial language. Robertson concerns herself with the special aura and presence these can be given through heightening visual aspects of them – interpretating and altering proportions and colour, while being faithful to the essence of them.

Andrew Cranston draws and paints at the same time, and without conflict from both observation and imagination, and believes that the best art often has an element of both. His work affirms a belief in drawing/painting as a real kind of fiction. True Lies...

Much of the work looks at architectural space and creates an analogous equivalent in drawing. He enquires how presence and absence is felt and evidenced in interior space: old rooms, offices, apartments, studios, etc.

He wonders about his neighbours without making any effort to be neighbourly. "What are they doing next door?" ("What is he building in there?" Tom Waits asks).

His work also makes reference to descriptions of architectural spaces in literary texts (Kafka, Perec, Poe to name a few) – spaces that are fictionalised but nonetheless believable.

Alt - W Closing Party

13 Aug 2008 00:00:00 GMT

We're having a closing party for the Alt-W Exhibition. That's when we announce the 2008 award winners.

The deadline for applications is 22 August. Applications are now invited for the 2008 Alt-w Fund with both production and research and development awards of up to £5000 available. Guidelines for application will be available from the Alt-w website on 26 June 2008 and free application surgeries will be held at the CCA on 2, 9 and 16 August from 12-4pm. Places can be booked by emailing rsvp@mediascot.org.

Intermedia: This Dark Ceiling, Lorna Robertson and Andrew Cranston

23 Aug 2008 00:00:00 GMT

This Dark Ceiling promises the viewer pleasure and angst in equal measures...

Lorna Robertson's current work examines objects that might be found in car-boot sales or glass cabinets at the V & A.

This series of paintings tries to make a new context for these objects, re-claim them for her own means, and re-position them through pictorial language. Robertson concerns herself with the special aura and presence these can be given through heightening visual aspects of them – interpretating and altering proportions and colour, while being faithful to the essence of them.

Andrew Cranston draws and paints at the same time, and without conflict from both observation and imagination, and believes that the best art often has an element of both. His work affirms a belief in drawing/painting as a real kind of fiction. True Lies...

Much of the work looks at architectural space and creates an analogous equivalent in drawing. He enquires how presence and absence is felt and evidenced in interior space: old rooms, offices, apartments, studios, etc.

He wonders about his neighbours without making any effort to be neighbourly. "What are they doing next door?" ("What is he building in there?" Tom Waits asks).

His work also makes reference to descriptions of architectural spaces in literary texts (Kafka, Perec, Poe to name a few) – spaces that are fictionalised but nonetheless believable.

Intermedia: Pio Abad, Allison Gibbs and J.M. Thomson

26 Sep 2008 00:00:00 GMT

Pio Abad’s work employs images of failed narratives, both imagined and historical, in interrogating notions of power. His drawings explore the complicity between control and collapse, appropriating elements of baroque excess and the hegemonic structures of totalitarian aesthetics into a grotesque entanglement of forms.

Drawing points of reference from 20th century roadside service architecture, anecdotal narratives and sonic deterrence, Allison Gibbs presents new work as a consideration on spectacular violence and negative iconography. Suggestive of transitory happenings and assertive interventions upon built space and objects, Gibbs' floor based audio and sculptural work offers possible counter narratives of digression and assimilation, absurdity and banality.

J.M.Thomson utilizes mnemonics when reading, which result in a personal visual language. The desire to engage with a living philosophers writings, has led to the selection of Slavoj Zizek’s ‘magnum opus’ The Parallax View (2006, MIT Press). The first of these drawings will be presented for the current exhibition.

Autoconstrucci?n

26 Sep 2008 00:00:00 GMT

The result of a six month joint residency at the Centre for Contemporary Arts (CCA) and Cove Park, Autoconstrucción opens at the CCA in Glasgow on 26 September. In the exhibition, Mexican artist Abraham Cruzvillegas, charts the evolution of his family’s house and finds, in its making, the roots of his current sculptural practice.

Cruzvillegas’ roots provide a metaphor for the self-conscious process of creating an identity and methodology for the construction of his artistic practice. Drawing together a diverse series of elements including an exhibition, a series of musical performances, a procession across a city and a book, the key element in all off Cruzvillegas’ work is the concept of sharing, framed by a makeshift DIY aesthetic.

Cruzvillegas comments, “Very important parts of this project are collaboration and creation in a ‘contaminated’ cultural environment, which means shifting something very personal and subjective, from my own experience, to a very local platform and circumstance…

“Improvising with materials from the context: wool, sheep shit, chicken wire, discarded furniture, cardboard, stones, grass or my own hair…” All elements of Cruzvillegas’ work typify his practical and metaphorical uses of the labyrinthine building process of his family’s house in Ajusco, Mexico.

To support the exhibition, Cruzvillegas has written a text drawn from his own memories that records the social life of Ajusco and how the area’s unique, organic architecture evolved. He has also written a series of 18 lyrics that transform his childhood memories into something more surreal. The lyrics were offered to a wide variety of musicians in Scotland for their own interpretation. The songs are currently being recorded and will be published on CD and broadcast by Cruzvillegas throughout the streets and squares of Glasgow, using a sound system constructed as a mobile sculpture.

In the exhibition spaces of Autoconstrucción, the sound system and the documentation of its life in the streets will be on display. Besides this large scale work, Cruzvillegas presents the sculptural improvisations made in his rural studio at Cove Park.

Finally, one room will be dedicated to situating Cruzvillegas’ personal and artistic experience of Ajusco within the broader social and historical context of Mexico since the 1960s.

Autoconstrucción

is the result of a six month joint residency at the Centre for Contemporary Arts and Cove Park, supported by the Henry Moore Foundation.

Abraham Cruzvillegas

(born 1968) is a

Mexican

artist and sculptor. He studied Philosophy and Fine Arts at the

National Autonomous University of Mexico

(UNAM), where he was a student of

Gabriel Orozco

In 2002 he represented Mexico at the

São Paulo Art Biennial

, and in 2003 he participated in the 49th

Venice Biennale

in the section curated by Gabriel Orozco. Museum solo shows include amongst others

Contemporary Arts Museum Houston

, and

Museo de Arte Contemporáneo de Oaxaca

(MACO), Mexico. Furthermore he has participated in shows at the

Walker Art Center

, Minneapolis;

Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago

and The Hayward Gallery.

In 2007, Cruzvillegas collaborated on the book 'Los Dos Amigos' with Mexican artist

Dr Lakra

He was brought up in an area of Mexico City called Ajusco. Driven by necessity the community was built through collaboration which bred a system of social and political solidarity. It was a culture of hybridity and the model of construction became intertwined with the model for living.

Cruzvillegas outlines the political and cultural context surrounding the troubled growth of Ajusco and similar communities. Drawing on his own memories, Cruzvillegas has recorded in a text the details of the ways in which the area’s unique architecture evolved.

Cruzvillegas’ mobile sculpture was constructed in collaboration with John O’Hara, a fabricator working in a project called The Common Wheel, a charity that provides ‘meaningful and therapeutic activity for people with mental illness.’ The charity’s approach to its work, achieved through recycling old bikes, mirrors the ethos of the artist.

Art Internship Opportunity

03 Nov 2008 00:00:00 GMT

CCA is offering a six-month arts internship commencing in January 2009.

The successful applicant would help contribute to the day to day running of the venue. It could also involve shadowing members of the staff, assisting with CCA events and exhibitions or carrying out specific projects on your own.

You must be available to work at least 1-2 days per week. Interviews for this Internship will be held in December.

To apply please email louise@cca-glasgow.com for an application form and complete and return to Louise Shelley by noon, Friday November 21 2008.

Arts Internship Role Description:
This role is designed to offer an intern insight and experience in art management and administration.

Duties of the Role
In addition to assisting and work-shadowing for events, the role may include assisting with:

general office duties such as opening and distributing daily mail, daily collection, stamping and postage of mail at end of day, receiving and distributing other deliveries
the display and distribution of publicity material and weekly press coverage
mailing out and delivering of flyers and other promotional material
sourcing and updating databases and mailing lists
the preparation and event management duties of CCA events
sourcing and arranging best value travel and accommodation arrangements for artists
attending regular CCA team meetings
any other reasonable duties as requested by the Office and Programme Assistant

Hours Worked
This is a volunteer role for 7 to 14 hours per week over 2 days. A regular weekly pattern to be agreed with the Office and Programme assistant.

Position in the Organisation
Reports to the Office and Programme assistant.

SalaryThis is an unpaid role. Complimentary passes to some CCA events may be provided.

Person Specification

Desirable:

Experience of working in an office environment
Experience of working with people

Essential:

An interest in the arts and arts administration
Knowledge of and experience working with Microsoft office.
A flexible approach to work
A helpful and positive disposition
Ability to work in a team and independently.
Time management skills
An understanding and commitment to equal opportunities

Please download the job description and application form on the left hand side.

Applications should be emailed to Louise Shelley, louise@cca-glasgow.com, by noon, Friday November 21 2008.

For further information, please contact louise@cca-glasgow.com or on 0141 352 4900.

Intermedia: Chris Dyson and Stephen Murray

06 Nov 2008 00:00:00 GMT

Utilising an open process of research and making, drawing from archives, interviews, a variety of materials and processes, Chris Dyson will be presenting video and sculpture examining ideas of amateurism and professionalism. He spent a year observing and researching individuals and societies related to the Paisley Rocketeers. Using materials based research as a means of exploring his observations new work has been formed.

Stephen Murray – Rich Sticky Full Of Promise And Half-Baked Truths
Stephen Murray will be showing a new sculpture that operates as a dividing screen come pictorial surface. A divided and manipulated image that sets up differing viewpoints, text and repeats through construction, edit and cutting back into the timber structure.

CCA Book Fair

14 Nov 2008 00:00:00 GMT

CCA book fair pulls together a series of alternative and independent publishers from Scotland and further a field, aimed at anyone interested in contemporary art, design, architecture or new ideas.

Participants will include Cornerhouse, Manchester; Bookworks, London; Black Dog publishing; Film Video Umbrella; Transmission; Fruitmarket; Sick Happy Idle; Dot Dot Dot, New York; Garageland; Arty; Printed Project, Ireland; Black Dogs, Leeds; Aye Aye Book Depot; Alec Finlay; Peacock Visual Arts, Aberdeen; Malcy Duff; Still Gallery; Media Art, Bath; Basso Magazin, Berlin; Strategic Questions; Boekie Woekie, Amsterdam; AK Press.

Special features at the November fair include:

DIY Survival Kit: For Consultation in Sticky Situations presented by Black Dogs.
Boekie Woekie from Amsterdam curate a selection of Dutch publications.
Aye Aye books will be offering a 10% discount on everything.
Transmission gallery will be selling new publications to coincide with their exhibition MOOT POINTS: Exercises in self-organisation, discourse and collaboration.
The Centre for Artists’ Books Dundee will display a selection of artists’ books from their archive.

DIY Survival Kit: For Consultation in Sticky Situations presented by Black Dogs.
Black Dogs, Leeds bred art pups, will use the CCA bookfair as an opportunity to lend out their DIY Survival Kit participatory publication to the fine people of Glasgow. The project is part of the ever-growing Black Dogs People's Library which intends to share skills and knowledge, map and create networks of affinity by distributing things made out of paper and words and drawings. Over the course of the afternoon two Black Dogs representatives, resplendent in flat caps and warehouse jackets, will sign up interested parties to the Black dogs library (a free service naturally) and loan out their latest publication - The DIY Survival Kit -The publication is hired out for a period of two-weeks in which time it is used and contributed to by the lendee. The survival kits are then brought back to the CCA for collection by Black Dogs and to be lent out in another town or city. Black Dogs will take the necessary details and hire appropriate heavies to ensure the return of the books.

Boekie Woekie from Amsterdam curate a selection of Dutch publications.
"Boekie Woekie began on the 1st of January 1986 by six artists who wanted to do something about the shared fate of having to store cardboard boxes full of editions of their own books. A small shop space was found in downtown Amsterdam: It was as if their books had only now really been published.

"A partly different constellation of "business partners" decided 5 years later to move to a much bigger shop, near the old place. By then it had become clear that there were many other artists who knew of no way to make their books be seen and possibly bought. Boekie Woekie felt like becoming a platform for a phenomenon.

"As a shop for artists' books and small press publications Boekie Woekie has since then been paying its rent, buying many beers and keeping its proprietors and visitors well entertained." Henriëtte van Egten, Rúna Thorkelsdóttir, Jan Voss
www.boekiewoekie.com

Aye-Aye Books
Aye-Aye Books is a contemporary art publisher and bookseller, propagating publications that are independent, intemperate, indigenous and intercontinental. Currently based in the CCA, it sells contemporary art books, critical theory, art magazines, periodicals, journals, artists’ books and DVDs. It is Glasgow’s only contemporary art bookshop. At the CCA bookfair Aye-Aye Books will be playing records and offering a 10% discount to everyone on everything.

Transmission – Moot Points
In addition to the usual marvellous selection of Transmission publications, there will be a number of brand new publications available that have been commissioned as part of the project:
MOOT POINTS
Exercises in self-organisation, discourse and collaboration
An agenda of events, screenings and commissioned publications at Transmission Gallery throughout November 2008

Featuring: Cinenova, Dexter Sinister, Emma Hedditch, The Faculty of Invisibility, Islington Mill Art Academy, Kajsa Dalhberg, Olivia Plender, Resonance FM and Variant

New publications will include:
Bring Back Robin Hood: Notes on an imagined community, Olivia Plender, (Published in November 2008 in an edition of 50 by Transmission gallery)

The Signatures, Dexter Sinister, (A series 14 of pamphlets published in November 2008)

Transmission will also have a selection of free publications pertaining to November’s project available as well as information about activities and events due to take place in the gallery.

The Centre for Artists’ Books Dundee
The Centre for Artists’ Books is a space dedicated solely to artists’ books, the first combined archive and exhibition space of its kind in the United Kingdom. It is a specially designed book display unit, the creation of Roland Ashcroft and Jeanette Paul, researchers based in the School of Design at Duncan of Jordanstone College of Art and Design. The unit has drawers for small exhibitions and bespoke spaces for stocking artists’ books.

From 1999 – 2002 the exhibition programme at CAB was curated by publisher and artist Alec Finlay, and it explored all aspects of the medium of the artist’s book, and included focused exhibitions on individual artists and small publishing presses. Books by many major contemporary Scottish Artists from Ian Hamilton Finlay and David Shrigley to Jaqueline Donachie and Zoë Irvine, have been displayed. One of the aims of CAB is to publish its own titles, the first being “Selected Walks” by Richard Long. The Centre for Artists’ Book will curate a selection of works to be exhibited at the CCA bookfair.

2HB

14 Nov 2008 00:00:00 GMT

CCA is launching 2HB, a new quarterly publication dedicated to creative writing. Edited by Louise Shelley and Francis McKee, each issue will feature new work.

Submissions from interested writers are welcomed. The selection process will focus on creative writing or fiction with a critical awareness of issues. Subjects for future issues include eroticism, sci-fi, philosophical fiction, art as writing and detective fiction but work beyond these suggestions will be considered.

Submissions for 2HB should be sent with a cover page detailing artist's/writer's name, address, telephone number and email address and a short CV. Submissions should be no more than 3000 words.

2009 2HB submission deadlines and launch dates:

7th March
Launch of 2HB vol.1 at the CCA Book fair

27th February
Submission deadline for 2HB vol.2

10th April
Launch of 2HB vol.2

17th April
Submission deadline for 2HB vol.3

30th May
Launch of 2HB vol.3 / CCA Book fair

14th August
Submission deadline for 2HB vol.4

25th September
Launch of 2HB vol.4

16th October
Submission deadline for 2HB vol.5

28th November
Launch of 2HB vol.5 / CCA Book fair

For more information email louise@cca-glasgow.com

Curator's Talk: Galit Eilat

18 Nov 2008 00:00:00 GMT

Galit Eilat is a Curator and the Founding Director of the Digital Art Lab or The Israeli Center for Digital Art, Holon. She is Co-Editor in Chief of Maarav – an online arts and culture magazine, as well as a teacher at Tel Aviv University in the Department of Film Studies.

The Israeli Center for Digital Art is a dynamic platform for thinking, researching, producing, presenting, and analyzing contemporary art, as well as providing a meeting point for exchange between contemporary artists, curators, critics and the public.

Since it was established in 2001 in an abandoned school building in the industrial area of Holon, the center has grown quite rapidly from a one-room gallery six years ago. The center is a non-profit organization supported by the city of Holon. As a public art space it consistently questions the place of art institutions within their society. This brings to the front political and social issues we believe art should not be ignoring. By expressing views that do not correlate in many cases with policies of the state, the definition of an art institute and a publicly financed art space are examined and put into test.

In an effort to stimulate discourse in Israeli society, the center devotes a significant part of its work on art projects that foster questions about identity, ethnicity, nationalism and cultural exchange. This activity is lead by the overarching question of how an art institute can reflect and react to volatile conditions of culture and politics and produce a critical approach to the oppressive power of the government.

The center initiates partnerships and collaborations with contemporary artists, theorists, writers, curators, and other institutions in the Middle East and the Balkan region, to explore how creative communities from different peripheries of the world can connect, learn from one another, and break down nationalistic or regional barriers.

The activities of the center are concentrated in five main areas: the video archive, public presentations, the residency program, publications, and education. The video archive focuses on media art from the Middle East, Europe, and the Balkans, creates an area for research and functions as a space for gathering valuable data and resources for contemporary art curators, writers and theorists.

Various public presentations in the form of exhibitions, lectures, symposiums, sound events and workshops are organized, for which the center attracts a large number of participants. These take place in the center’s galleries and in other venues.

The residency program provides international and local artists, curators, and critics with an opportunity to spend a period of time living and producing work in the city of Holon in order to develop their artistic or theoretical work in relation to our local context.

The center publishes the online media, art and culture magazine, ‘Maarav.’ The magazine has been established for four years now and presents contemporary Israeli art and culture, to discuss and debate it from the perspective and reality of Israel and the world in these exciting and frightening times. ‘Maarav’ provides tools to those interested in art and culture – from theoretical discussions to information on artists, exhibits, events, technology, and theories. It has created a unique platform in which we inform, ask questions, influence, educate and widen horizons, a rarity in the Israeli discourse.

www.digitalartlab.org.il/

Open Field

22 Nov 2008 00:00:00 GMT

* Please note this exhibition will be closed to the public between 20 December 2008 and 6 January 2009*

Open Field is a group exhibition presenting new work by 15 Scottish based artists’, developed during The Caravan residencies in Balfron, near Loch Lomond.

The full list of artists includes: Ann-Marie Copestake, Anna McLauchlan, Barry Burns, Ben Craven, Belinda Gilbert Scott, Christopher Deans, Dick Gilbert Scott, Hayley Tompkins, Kate Davis, Katy Dove, Leigh Ferguson, Luke Fowler, Mark Vernon, Sophie Macpherson and Sarah Kenchington.

The exhibition comprises both individual and collaborative work, and includes an archive of previous performances from The Caravan Club, as well as painting, projection, film, sculpture, live performance, scientific demonstrations and haircutting, with a number of free public events throughout the exhibition.

The Caravan Residencies were set up by Sarah Kenchington, Belinda Gilbert Scott and Katy Dove, who recognised the benefits of having time to develop work, undistracted from pressure or deadlines. The 15 artists who took part in the residency used their time to experiment and be playful, working on scripts, devising impromptu performances, learning welding, chain sawing and making and playing an assortment of musical instruments.

The caravans used in the residencies are situated on the edge of a dairy farm situated between the Campsie hills and Loch Lomond. Starting with one caravan, the residencies have expanded to incorporate four. Founders Belinda Gilbert Scott and Sarah Kenchington live at the site full time, while co-founder Katy Dove is a regular resident.

Two of the caravans are used for residencies, while modifications to the site include a small sauna, a plunge pool and a compost toilet. In addition to these facilities there are two studio spaces. These consist of a converted pigsty where Kenchington works full time, creating her mechanical orchestra. Next to this is a small cowshed, which Gilbert Scott uses as a painting studio.

The cowshed doubles up as a space to run workshops, hold band practices, host parties and stage the Caravan Club events. Dove’s caravan is also a studio where she works on animations and watercolours. Often artists use their own caravan to work in, but also share the cowshed studio, which gives way to discussion about each other's work. Artists initiate group discussions about creative processes and each evening take turns to cook for each other. The whole experience creates a flow of ideas and activities during the artists’ stay. It is a continually evolving process.

THE CARAVAN CLUB
When visual artist Sophie Macpherson came on her residency in May 2006 she wanted to conclude her stay with some kind of performance. It was this idea that evolved into The Caravan Club. For each club event artists are encouraged to work on a piece outside their usual practice. This creates an experimental edge to the work and because the entire audience is made up of other 'performers', the atmosphere is encouraging and supportive.

There exists a parallel between both the Caravan Club and the residencies; both offer a space for exploration and encourage artists to try out new ideas without fear of failure.

A free programme of events will accompany the exhibition, for details, please look at the links on the left.

Links related to the artists and the exhibition:
www.leighferguson.com

Horse Box Orchestra

22 Nov 2008 00:00:00 GMT

Sarah Kenchington will present a series of mechanical orchestra performances which take place inside a portable horse box.

The performances will include appearances from invited guest performers or will act as live accompaniment to film screenings.

The Horse Box Orchestra will also be performing during other events associated with Open Field

Upgrade! Scotland

26 Nov 2008 00:00:00 GMT

Upgrade! Scotland is privileged to present the première of new work from Rob Kennedy followed by a discussion with the artist. The three video works were born out of a series of collaborative projects working with composers Peter Dowling, Giles Lamb, Martin Parker and Sue Tompkins.

The emphasis in each of the works is the desire to integrate ideas and methods of improvisation into the video and sound production process. This evolving collaboration and dialogue continually shapes, distorts and then reshapes the direction of the work. Steering away from a reliance on a single directive, this project draws on the experience of each of the individual composers who have a background in improvised music ranging from free jazz through to electro-acoustic and vocal performance.

Each work has at its starting point a need to form some kind of dialogue with the norms and conventions of television production in order to understand, adapt and re-define these codes into a grammar that can subsequently be used to suggest other readings, other outcomes, other problems, than those previously prescribed.

This event is free, but places are limited. Please book a place early to avoid disappointment by emailing: rsvp@mediascot.org

Upgrade! Scotland is produced by New Media Scotland and is part of the international network of autonomous Upgrade! nodes. for further details please visit:

www.mediascot.org

and www.theupgrade.net

Horse Box Orchestra

29 Nov 2008 00:00:00 GMT

Senior Duty Manager vacancy

05 Dec 2008 00:00:00 GMT

CCA is a unique experimental art space that supports artists based in Scotland within an internationally renowned programme.

The successful candidate will work closely with the General Manager and take overall responsibility for co-ordinating and monitoring the efficient running of CCA’s Box Office and Front of House staff and operations, ensuring the needs of the programme are efficiently met, communication is effective and the centre runs smoothly. You will be line manager for Duty Managers, Information and Sales Assistants and Front of House staff. Previous experience in a similar role is required.

For further information and an application pack, please e-mail louise@cca-glasgow.com, telephone 0141 352 4900 or download the documents here.

Job Description
Application Form

Closing date for applications – Monday 5 January 2009 at 12 noon.

Narrative

05 Dec 2008 00:00:00 GMT

If you miss Hitherto, do not despair... just in time for the festive season, Hitherto, now named Narrative, will be popping up at the CCA for a few weeks in the run up to Christmas with all things merry.

Join us for the opening evening on Friday 5 December, from 7-9pm and thereafter, Tuesday to Saturday, 11am - 7pm.

During the opening weekend, Narrative will also be open on Sunday 7th December, 12 - 7pm.

www.narratively.eu

Kill Your Timid Notion

06 Dec 2008 00:00:00 GMT

A step across the border between sound & vision...

Kill Your Timid Notion is one of Europe's leading festivals of sound and image hosted in Dundee since 2003. This year we tour the festival to venues across the UK. Come and be inspired, enriched and confounded.

Featuring performances, screenings and events from Ken Jacobs, Keith Rowe, Bruce McClure, Paul Sharits…

Your eyes see what, 10 or 15 images a second? That’s 10Hz. Your ears can hear 15,000 Hz. Surely there must be something interesting in this incongruity?

KYTN is all about exploring the many different ways we navigate the borders, disparities and similarities between what we hear and what we see. It involves some of the great experimental artists, musicians and filmmakers of our time, and some of the not too distant future. It features film being developed as it’s projected, visual harmonics, jerry rigged 16mm projectors, movement without motion, and much more besides...

For full details of the programme, visit www.arika.org.uk

FILM PROGRAMME
Our film programmes navigate the multiple ways in which filmmakers and artists have addressed the dilemmas and possibilities of sound and image, from optical printing and syneasthesia, to complex discontinuities between what we see and what we hear. It’s not all just fancy theory: mostly it’s just incredible films, new ways of looking…

Location, Location, Location
Experience a sense of being in the world, in a specific space and time. Including Jeanne Liotta’s recordings of the ionosphere and Walter Ruttman’s radical 35mm precursor to musique concrète.

Word Associations
Discontinuity between narration, text and image. Including Manual Saiz’s employment of John Malkovich’s Spanish dubbing double and Peter Rose’s absurdly hilarious concrete poetry subtitling chaos.

About Face
Human subjects are the focus for sound and image construction. Including masterpieces of experimental film: Paul Sharits’ deeply empathetic interpretation of epilepsy and Peter Kubelka’s Webern inspired abstract portrait of Arnulf Rainer.

Sight and Synch
Sound and image slipping out of synch and into discord, including a very special version of Hollis Frampton’s masterful (nostalgia), with a live narration by Michael Snow at the London screening.

PERFORMANCE PROGRAMME
Here’s the programme, we hope it’s unlike much you’ve seen before. Above all it’s an experience, especially for those who want to explore film beyond narrative cinema, sound beyond tunes and who want to be inspired, enriched or confounded by a night out...

Ken Jacobs & Eric La Casa
Ken Jacobs is the father of film-as-performance and one of the USA’s leading visual artists. His pulsing and intensely detailed Nervous Magic Lantern performances create flickering and abstract 3D tricks of the eye, which he calls ‘movement without motion’. It’s a celestial spectacle grounded by sound artist Eric La Casa’s manipulated recordings of everyday locations: lift shafts, ventilation ducts, car parks.

Andrew Lampert’s quasi-theatrical multiple-projector pieces deliver a kind of maverick dose of controlled chaos and play with the relationship between performers, art and audiences. Prepare to have your expectations confounded, to feel a little uneasy maybe, to laugh.

Bruce McClure turns projectors into instruments; he doesn’t project film, he misuses it. His bastardised 16mm projectors transform B&W loops into a thrumming riot of perceptual phenomenon in colour, motion and sound. Noise music for the eyes.

Paul Sharits’ incredible Shutter Interface is an expanded cinema piece which creates a series of machinegun bursts of chromatic relationships and visual harmonics in an overwhelming montage, intended as "a 3D metaphor of the space of the brain in an epileptic state, brought under control and harmonized."

Using eight projectors, Metamkine manipulate and combine beams of multiple images, glimpses of old films, abstract images, often developed, solarised and burnt as they pass through the projector, in the midst of an electro-acoustic sound field of tape loops, analogue synthesizers and amplified objects. What’s not to love?

Kjell Bjørgeengen, Keith Rowe & Philipp Waschmann create an immersive environment in which sound is looped through oscillators, violin, a radio, guitar pick-ups and specially constructed video amps to create dense flickering images and colours that strobe and confuse the eye. Not for the faint-hearted.

In Greg Pope’s Light Trap film loops are abraded with sandpaper and manhandled by gem polishing drills as they pass through projectors in each corner of the room. Out of a dark haze, shafts of lights emerge, as the emulsion is scratched from the surface of the film. Simultaneously, out of the black silence, noise and audible scratches bloom into a bright drone. It’s not really an installation, or like a normal performance, it’s just an experience of real beauty.

Credits:
We are Arika. We create some of the leading experimental music and film events in the UK. We’re touring KYTN because the people who put the most interesting stuff on in your city told us it’d go down real well there. Don’t let them down now!

A Contemporary Music Network tour produced by Arika and Dundee Contemporary Arts.

Media Partner: The Wire

For more info, clips, sound and images take a look at www.arika.org.uk

Horse Box Orchestra

06 Dec 2008 00:00:00 GMT

Autoconstruccion - the album

08 Dec 2008 00:00:00 GMT

Now available for download, Abraham Cruzvillegas' Autoconstruccion album will be online here for a month and will then be available from the archive section.

"In order to make an exhibition at the Centre for Contemporary Arts in Glasgow, I spent the summer of 2008 in residency at Cove Park, Kilcreggan, making improvised sculptures with materials found in that context: wool, sheep shit, chicken wire, discarded furniture, cardboard, stones, grass and my own hair... They are unplanned assemblages, made to test new dialogues between odd and contradictory objects and prime matter. All those works are inspired by my parents' house in Mexico City, as it is an improvised and almost useless place made without budget, plans or even ideas: chaotic, ugly and definitely unfinished.

"During the same period, I wrote some lyrics about that house. They were written after a hybrid combination of inspiring sources, such as romantic popular music, folk music, boleros, dub, rock and roll, salsa, reggae, Brazilian music, corridos, punk, ska, cumbia, trova Yucateca, funk, protest music, nortenas, hip-hop, commercial pop from everywhere, etc. I invited musicians from Glasgow to create the music for the lyrics; which we recorded at the CCA with 18 eclectic bands; electronic, post punk, pop, noise, a choir...

"I played the music in the streets and squares of Glasgow with a sound system constructed as a mobile sculpture, in collaboration with John O'Hara, in a bike-recycling workshop in Bridgeton, which is part of The Common Wheel Project. This cart was made with parts from used, discarded or old bikes and diverse furniture pieces; pipes, sticks, carpets, wood, ropes and wires. The sound system refers directly to those riding the streets of Kingston in Jamaica during the seventies and eighties, the Sonidero tradition of Mexico City or New York, but also to the DJ and MC practices around the world. For all of them, the amplification (which means loud and deep) element is central and common in their many different manners of playing and sharing music in public places or spaces.

"Along with the sculptures made at Cove Park, the sound system - playing the music - was on display at the CCA from 26 September to 7 November 2008." Abraham Cruzvillegas

Track List

Mr Xitle: The Parsonage
I love my hole: Phantom Band
The girl next door: Heath Patrol
Walking and walking: Molly and Me
Succulent: Gummy Stumps
Tortillas: Foxface
Rock: Eilidh MacAskil
Sniffing glue: Triple School
Razzia: Cheer
Love song: Skeleton Bob
Aprons: Big Heat
Ramps: Remember Remember
With or without you: Fox Gut Daata
Meche Carreno: Administrative Assistants
Concrete Mix (For an Acid House): Yoko, Oh No!
The Route of Enmity: vaRs of Eitchi
Heart of Glass: Nalle
La cama de piedras: Tattie Toes