Phantasmagoria in Two, a multimedia festival dedicated to audiovisual art and new artistic practices
Taking place this coming 15, 16 and 17 September at the Art Centre, in the patio at 3 Jovellanos Street -a space shared with Espacio Líquido, MediaPhoto and El Hervidero- and at the Museo del Ferrocarril
Poster of the Festival
LABoral is hosting a new festival dedicated to experimental audiovisuals and new artistic practices, which will take place between 15 and 17 September in Gijón. Under the title Phantasmagoria in two, the festival stems from the idea of a summer cinema which develops an alternative programme of audiovisual pieces created live, having the common denominator of investigating phantasmagoria and, at the same time, the relationship between image and sound that establishes ways of seeing modernity. The initiative is financially supported by the Gijón city council Municipal Foundation of Culture, Education and Popular University in the call for artistic productions 2011. In addition, it has the collaboration of Two Monkeys, Espacio Líquido, MediaPhoto and El Hervidero.
The programme covers three days of viewing and interactivity with various pieces, activities, interventions and audiovisual motifs, all of which combine listening to the sonorous accompaniments directly related to them.
Phantasmagoria in two will be held at three spaces in the city of Gijón: LABoral Centro de Arte y Creación Industrial, Nº3 Jovellanos Street (the patio shared between the art gallery Espacio Líquido, Mediaphoto and El Hervidero) and, finally, the Museo del Ferrocarril de Asturias [The Railwyay Museum of Asturias]. Also, the three dates will culminate in related parties at the Monkey Club with a special DJ programme.
Unlike other formats, Phantasmagoria in two offers the screening of audiovisual works framed within an expansive context, with live audio and video, meeting spaces, actions and simultaneous projections, aiming to present contemporary culture as something accessible and wide-ranging. Its main goal is to strengthen the relationship between contemporary artistic practice (in particular audiovisual art from a perspective that is closer to cinema and music) and the public space, giving visibility to this medium and providing access to all the public free of charge.
“The spectre or ghost is the main form through which something lost or missing from the present, body less, absent, makes itself known to us”. In this sense, the audiovisual cycle restores the wish to see and think beyond grief, or rather beyond the limits of what´s real, from the unthinkable itself. The very purpose, therefore, behind it is to relive and go through disparate times out of which this group of works, interventions and sound pieces emerge, in which each instant reactivates an intense presence of the past in the present.
Those in charge of curating the festival will be Alfredo Aracil and Abraham Rivera (Madrid, 1980) -the latter, an independent curator, music and film critic of Arte Contexto, editor of the MEIAC bulletin and contributor to Público. He curated the stage proposal Sinestesia (in the digital era) for La Casa Encendida, Madrid, 2007; he was assistant curator in the exhibition ARTe SONoro and programmer of the film cycles Más Allá del Sonido [Beyond Sound] and Leer el tiempo, leer las imágenes [Reading the Times, Reading the Images].
The coordination is run by Alfredo Aracil (A Coruña, 1984) curator and film programmer of cycles which include Leer el tiempo, leer las imágenes [Reading the Times, Reading the Images], at the Reina Sofía in Madrid, and current head of the Mediateca_Archivo at LABoral Centre of Industrial Creation.
THE PROGRAMME
15.09.2011
LABoral Centro de Arte y Creación Industrial, Gijón
8 pm. The first collaboration between the music group Fasenuova and visual artist Cristina Busto.
9pm. Artistic intervention by Espada and Monleón, where snacks will be served setting the scene for the phantasmagoric session, accompanied by a selection of pieces from the exhibition Noches Eléctricas [Electric Nights].
16.09.2011
Patio at the Espacio Líquido and Media Photo gallery
8 pm. You can enjoy a drink while on various screens, Mix Master Ghost produces a visual intervention based on a remix of experimental film pieces and video-art.
9 pm. A work based on Decasia by Bill Morrison will be projected, accompanied by a special sound session by DJ César Estabiel
10 pm. Set dedicated to the phenomenon of hauntology in contemporary music, also accompanied by projections mixed live: still pictures from various films from the silent movie period and some pieces by artists including Martin Arnold, Pat O'Neill, Gustav Deutsch, Edgar Neville and Bruce Baille, among others.
After party
During the three days of the festival, from midnight on Thursday, Friday and Saturday, following the respective activities and sessions taking place in the three spaces, there will also be related parties at the Monkey Club in Gijón, where the names circulating the festival – in particular Abraham Rivera, Fasenouva, Alfredo Aracil and César Estabiel- will play records, this time, in the context of dance music, to be finished off with a session by Kresy and DJ Psychocandy, resident of Madrid’s Sala Nasti and responsible for the Tower of Meaning blog.
The Participants
15.09.2011
Fasenuova
Roberto Lobo and Ernesto Avelino are Fasenuova. An original combination of free-noise in Spanish and Spanglish, although they always say it is simple and pure rock’n'roll, marking the uniqueness of this Asturian industrial group which is more well-known outside our borders. Their origins go back to precocious experiences such as Étika Makinal, in the mid-80s, or Hegemonía and Goodbye in the 90s. Recordings which include Arabian nights, Hegemonía –which was said to be “an act of vandalism” and “an eccentric axis of Spanish rhythm or the birth of sincro music”- and Goodbye –which will soon be re-edited in the United States- have been referred to all over and are part of the most relevant works in the genre of euphoric, insane, unbridled noise that they cultivate. Their relationship with the American group Angel Dust led to the edition of a complete classic, the joint record Split, by Ozonokids, the label run by the prolific Arnau Sala (Les Aus), who they are preparing a host of projects with.
Cristina Busto
Her work is focused on the evolution in the use of techniques, experimenting with all the possible ways of combining drawing, video and installation. Thematically she tries to replace the message with sensation, moving on from the narrative towards abstraction. Cristina Busto will perform live the creation of a film live using models, shadow play and manipulating objects, sculptures, light and sound.
Espada and Monleón
Artists and gastronomes who have been collaborating on edible projects for more than two years. Their beginnings were modest, organising events for friends and relatives with a special emphasis on finding new ways to socialise and enjoy eating. Since then, in looking for formats and new people to work with, they have participated in various institutions´ projects and public programmes. These include the Picnic Sessions at CA2M (Madrid), the Sala de Arte Joven 2.0 [Youth Art project] in the Sala de Arte Joven of CAM and the presentation of Campo Adentro [Inland] at MNCARS [the Reina Sofía museum, Madrid]. As artists they adhere to the surrealist project of looking for total sensuality and edibility in the world. As gastronomes they confront the insatiability of our appetites. This year they are preparing an Ópera Comestible [Edible Opera], which will be premiered in Madrid and Berlin.
16.09.2011
Bill Morrison, Decasia, 2002, 67'
Bill Morrison didn´t film any of the shots in Decasia. Some heavily decomposed celluloid rolls from the archives of New York’s Modern Art Museum and the University of South Carolina constitute the raw material of a piece which is precisely this: a film on the material used in cinema and its slow and inevitable degradation.
Courtesy of: Gartenberg Media, New York.
Cesar Estabiel
Journalist, regular contributor to Rock de Lux, Vanidad, EP3 and Rolling Stone, César Estabiel, will perform a session of dark wave, post-industrial, dark ambient and noise, with the only self-imposed limit on himself: to smoothly accompany the images of the work by Bill Morrison which will embark on a journey exploring long-lost regions and peoples.
Hauntology DJ
Event with VJ set (Abraham Rivera and Alfredo Aracil in collaboration with Pelardo Gimondi)
This set aims to take a tour of those groups that delve into the past as if it were a living place. A current inhabited by ghosts and which, in these times of retro-futurism, is becoming a common place for a multitude of groups in the experimental spectrum. Slowing down melodies from the past, reconstructing old spaces or mixing up outdated film from the eighties. Its mission will be to give a voice to these phantoms and open up the territory to a spectral reality. The audiovisual set will be performed live using anonymous films from the beginning of the century along with streaming and extracts from diverse films, which will be deconstructed and distorted in the pursuit of a new order without order.
17.09.2011
Adrián Cuervo
Audiovisual artist and researcher. Graduated in Fine Arts from the University of Granada, speciailised in audiovisuals and new technologies. A member of LitiumLab, Laboratorio de Arte Interactivo [the Interactive Art Laboratory at the University of Granada] and co-founder of Mademotion in Madrid. His audiovisual work deals with capitalist consumerist society, perceptions of reality and philosophy from the aesthetics of plastic poetry. In 2010 he won the LAB_joven Experimenta award held by LABoral Centro de Arte with the project Dédalo España. Some of the projects in which he has participated over the last year are Unstable Society (live Cinema), Yoctobit audience-played theatre and Vapor de Sueño, (dance and new technologies), with LitiumLab. For Phantasmagoria in Two he will produce a live cinema session.
Witch House DJ
Session with VJ Set (Abraham Rivera in collaboration with Pelardo Gimondi)
Witch House –also reformulated as Ghost Drone, Gothic Chillwave and Haunted Disco– is a ghostly mixture of deconstructed electronic bases with an industrial feel and hip hop, involving the dramatic slowing down of the voices producing a completely unreal gothic effect, which is in turn created by its connection with shoegaze. The dream of all these genres produces monsters and leaves a sad and rather comforting feeling. The audiovisual set will be put together live by using anonymous films from the beginning of the century taken in part from the Asturian Railway Museum in Gijón as well as by streaming and the use of extracts from various films -(un)constructed, distorted, in pursuit of a new order without order.
Fernando Gutiérrez (Oviedo, 1973)
Fernando Gutiérrez has developed the most part of his artistic activity on pictorial budgets. In recent year his production has revolved around drawing, experimenting with different processes and techniques that ultimately incorporate collage as a working process and animation as a visual support.
At present the structure of his proposals has a marked provisional character, working in different site-specific projects, altering spaces and transforming them temporarily into mental landscapes by means of enfolding graphic interventions that organize emotional, sensual and at times playful atmospheres.
.Tape. (Daniel Romero)
In 1999, Daniel Romero created .tape. in Avilés (Asturias), trying to turn his bedroom into a shrine of magic sounds, mixing folk guitars with bleeps, 8-bit sounds with instruments for kids and cheap keyboards. Following his first CD itself, Flying over Bañugues (Optical Sound & Aspic), his music has not gone unnoticed by the most rigourous ears, spilling into collaborations with record labels all over the world (from the Japanese tar100mg to the German Mira Records and the Mexican Soundsister) and into remixes in other media (Phasmid, Rainier Lericolais, Fibla, Lusan, Strand and mou-lips!), even releasing his first record in spa.
Kresy
Around 2002, he started mixing music wherever they let him (bars including the Xyx and Café Dam – small venues but drawing a crowd hungry for new sounds). In time he started programming his own beats with his first computer before even knowing how to create a folder on the desktop, let alone format it. In no time, he was editing various tracks on vinyl compilations for the UK record label Multi Vitamins, specialised in micro-house, a wide label basically bringing together rare house, which is created using unusual sounds. During that time his pool increased as a DJ and he was invited to do sessions in Barcelona. In 2006, more or less, he changed work. His new tastes, in line with new trends, influenced his work, steering it towards a more classic sound -more melodic and less experimental. In 2011 he signed up with the record label Hivern, and is preparing an EP which will be released after the summer. On this occasion Kresy offers us a set articulated by Witch House sounds.
Dj Psychocandy
Psychocandy sees himself as a normal bloke, who is at ease with where he’s at, doing what almost no-one does: mixing music well. And the Nasti people (Madrid, for the time being) know it, who count on him to close their wildest party nights; the festival organisers who have hired him also know it (and in an attempt not to reel off a catalogue, they won´t be mentioned here); the Apolo people in Barcelona know it where he often plays too. Anyone who has seen him mixing knows it. A kind of invisible man, always bent over his records, not speaking more than is necessary as the music speaks for itself. Someone outside of the show and removed from morbid interest. A shy, no-fuss, polite, restrained DJ, with exquisite taste and not boring in the slightest. A DJ you can trust because he knows how to mix music that makes you blush, although you don´t recognize what you are hearing; music for you to think without going overboard and for you to dance without doing yourself damage.
