Décalé presents their first event Décalé #1 at London’s DIY Space on February 2.
Organised by Chooc Ly Tan and A—Z (Anne Duffau), Décalé is a new platform that puts on evenings of “experimental, collapsing and flawless sounds/visuals” and means: ‘Being displaced in space and time.’
Andrew Sunderland presented Infinite Diegesis at London’s Gossamer Fog which opened October 27 and is running to December 10.
The installation presents a mix of sound works played through a sculpture described as an ‘evolving wormhole’ and includes contributions by over 30 artists and musicians including Carl Gent, Brood Ma, Choc Ly Tan, Endgame, Sarah Duffy, Joey Holder, Pacific Drift and Sophie Hoyle among many others (see below for full track-listing). The circular structure has undergone a process of layering, stretching and melting together of various materials including fabrics and plastic.
Stretched and layered to “reveal syncopated rhythms and melodies,” the sound is removed from its original context and morphed into one that is hybrid. The press release is a text by Sunderland; a poetic manifesto or sorts on how to attain Infinite Diegesis: “I have this strange feeling that I can’t put into words. The feeling of rhythm, or lack of. My body feels strange; out of sync…”
‘Infinite Diegesis’ refers to the ‘motion of narration’ and how it relates to sound in narrative cinema, exploring the potential of a “fluid, infinitely evolving narrative, one that can never be fully experienced in its entirety.”**
TRACK LISTING:
Chooc Ly Tan – intergalactic Positioning System Joey Holder – Hippocampus Eloise Bonneviot – Shades Katharine Fry – d.a.n.c.e. f.o.r. y.o.u.r. d.a.d.d.y Justin Fitzpatrick – Giraffes Endgame – Shadow Riddim Joey Holder – SELACHIMORPHA Carl Gent – Sky Burial Symposium (audio) Edward Herring – Content 2 Joey Holder – Lament of Ur Tex Royale – DEMON TOKOLOSHE Ben Jeans Houghton – Individuation AJA – Rattles Brood Ma – CreoT3 Endgame – Shadow Riddim Sophie Hoyle – Circular Recsund – Chickens Fish Jim Woodall – Scrunched Rock Dylan Spencer-Davidson – Mood Joey Holder – Ophiuchus Perple Celotape – Skull Inside Matthew De Kersaint Giraudeau – Freedom Brood Ma – CreoT6 Abri de Swardt– Ridder Thirst Katharine Fry – I would tell you everything but there’s no room Sarah Duffy – Song to the Siren Brood Ma – CreoT6 Dane Sutherland – A Momentary Lapse of Drudgery Pacific Drift – SEC SLOW Endgame – Shadow Riddim Anastasia Vikhornova / Carlos Monleon Gendal / Patchfinder – Body is a Circuit Derzu Campos – La Caverna Maria Gorodeckaya – Drumming Piece Justin Fitzpatrick – White Noise Sophie Hoyle – We Cannot Unsee Ian Law – unknown Brood Ma – CreoT3 Nicholas Cheveldave – Frankie Chef Endgame – Shadow Riddim Alexis Milne – EVTV9_SCRAB Emily Rosamund – What is a Mess Tex Royale – DEMON TOKOLOSHE DEMO 18 vox set 02 Brood Ma – CreoT6/T3 Pacific Drift – Johnny Jungle MBJ Wetware – Intelligent Assistance Poetry Iain Ball – Prasodymium intracrine signal [[[cloaked]] Brood Ma – CreoT3 Bass Pacific Drift – Medieval Ha! Anastasia Vikhornova / Carlos Monleon Gendal – Cruise Life Anastasia Vikhornova / Carlos Monleon Gendal / Patchfinder– Body is circuit Neurowork Alison Ballance– Audio from “This Mess” performance Brood Ma – CreoT3 Bass Edward Herring – Content 1 Seth Guy ft NX Panther – Phat Cat Raw Mix Saemundur Thor Helgason – 1d20170922153826p 3544421000 Anne De Boar – Rustic_Monolith__Let_There_Be_Self_Defence Tex Royale – DEMON TOKOLOSHE DEMO 18 vox set 02 Paul Good & Kirsty Wood – Shadows Brood Ma – CreoT3
London-based curator Anne Duffau introduces us to her platform A- – -Z as well as StudioRCA Riverlight. Working on the programme for this coming year, the series will be looking at the notion of the ‘other’, bodies and public spaces, cybernetic/women and technology, exploring the possible changes to questioning and rethinking our future as well as our past.
Chooc Ly Tan, ‘Disobey to the Dance of Time Dusk #5’ (2016). Courtesy StudioRCA Riverlight + A—Z, London.
“Embrace diversity.
Unite—
Or be divided,
robbed,
ruled,
killed
By those who see you as prey.
Embrace diversity
Or be destroyed.”
― Octavia E. Butler, Parable of the Sower, 1993
I have been running an exploratory curatorial platform named A- – -Z for the past five years. One of the main aims is to push boundaries in what an exhibition could be, as well as what curating means – (I sometimes prefer the word cultural producer). Playing on language and words, A- – -Z is a morphic entity, it infiltrates unusual spheres, a bit like a virus. Flexible in its format, it offers a platform for practitioners to trigger experiments – looking at what’s happening in art, speculative design, music, ecology and more.
This first event set the tone for an interest in sci-fi and fiction in order to address current issues. A- – -Z disseminates works through printed matter to create alternative distribution streams, using formats such as postcards, B—Beyond with Jon Rafman or a calendar Days of the Nones with 12 artists including Emma Hart, Markus Water, Alix Marie, Tai Shani and Doggerland, or a newspaper with the fashion designer Dinu Bodiciu and Kabukimono.
The platform also operates online with projects such as Status Quo – where I commissioned artists to make gifs in relation to their current concerns or moods, including Evan Ifekoya, Martha Rosler, Mark Leckey, Matt Calderwood, Keep it complex – make it clear, Patrick Staff and Erica Scourti.
For the past year, A- – -Z has been based in Nine Elms in a space called StudioRCA Riverlight, at the bottom of apartment towers close to Vauxhall. Exhibitions, discussions, and performances including DJ-ing, large-format video projections and dance have been taking place throughout. From May 2016 to September 2017, A- – -Z presented the Dusk Exhibition Series with Ifekoya, Daniel Shanken, Rehana Zaman, Chooc Ly Tan, Heather McCalden, Imran Perretta, Johann Arens, Karolina Lebek and Susannah Stark. The invited artists showed newly commissioned videos and installations for a month each, to be experienced from outside the gallery space – fully visible only during the dark hours, and shown for the first time in London. A performance and/or talk introduced the project and focused on themes including transgender, sci-fi and the post-human.
Imran Perretta, ‘DESH’ (HD video still), 2016.
Another series I’m working on is an ongoing curatorial collaboration with the artist Tai Shani called Dark Water. So far we made two large-scale events at CGP Gallery/Dilston Grove named ‘Dark Water’ and ‘Dark Water: The Dead of Night’ – these were designed to present evenings of performances and screenings around Sci-Fi, gender, the contemporary gothic and extending our ongoing research into the notions of amorphous body through technology and inner space.
A- – -Z has made a special selection for AQNB of what it’s been currently listening to and interested in – a mood board of the instant / picks of the present:
Victoria Sin is doing something unique and they explain their aims so poetically and clearly that this video should be played on public transports and in pubs: “The labour of femininity isn’t only the performance, it’s perseverance in the face of our ascribed and inscribed precarity. It’s the struggle to be respected and have our agencies recognized. When I decide to take up space it is often seen as rude to those who are used to be making myself small.”
This talk with Angela Davis and Judith Butler on inequality moderated by Ramona Naddaff is very current and urgent – it also shows how much work is to be done in terms of including people with impairments and disabilities to public events.
DJ Rachel is part of the East African collective called Santuri – I love the fact that they include a page called ‘femme electronic’ on their website.**
Chooc Ly Tan is presenting a new video installation ‘Disobey to the Dance of Time’ at London’s StudioRCA Riverlight, opening September 14 and running to November 1.
The London-based, French-born artist and DJ’s video work features an Akira Phase music visualizer moving to a 148 bpm-trance track, Terbium Energy Catalyst by Goch, “a 3D representation of Africa hovering in space-time, and the artist dancing to a hidden track coming from deep space”.
The installation —that carries on Tan’s practice which seeks to understand and subvert the logic of the world through its systems and tools in an effort to realise alternative realities— opens with an evening of performance at Battersea Barge next to Studio RCA. Live acts include Alexis Milne, back to back DJ set by Tan’s Spacer Woman project and Evan Ifekoya, who also features as part of the Dusk programme with ‘Okun Song‘ in May, along with Rehana Zaman, Daniel Shanken and Benjamin Orlow.
The archive of video art collector and curator, Kathy Rae Huffman will be coming to London’s Res. this summer, opening June 28 and running by appointment through to August 6.
Selected from the Goldsmiths University Kathy Rae Huffman Media Library and installed in the Reading Room at Res. will be books, videos, documentation of shows and her work at Long Beach Museum of Art set up by Huffman in the 70s, and collections of artists names that make up, for example, ‘Face Settings’ an all-female mailing list of media specialists.
DIY Culture 2015 kicks off this week with a screening and talk titled Zines, Comics and Alternatives and taking place at London’s Rich Mix on May 24.
This year’s themes include women & technology, video art & science, DIY experiments, hacking and coding, biology and theoretical physics, and the democraticising of lab science. Chaired by Helena Wee (the co-curator of DIY Cultures), the event will bring in a handful of speakers, including London Biohackspace, a UK community biolab based around open-source principles and community access.
Other speakers include Blackgirltech discussing teaching computer coding to ethnic minority women, multi-disciplinary artist Chooc Ly Tan screening her art and science videos, and Breaking the Frame / Gail Chester on Ludditism and Gender and Technology.
