[spectre] PDArts Press Release

[Thomas Bloom]

Free-fall
Exhibition - 13th April to 12th June '03
Performances - 12th April


Peterborough Digital Arts www.pdarts.org.uk <http://www.pdarts.org.uk>  a 
new lottery funded centre for digital arts in the eastern region of England 
opens with Free-fall

Free-fall takes its title from the projection by Pernille Spence, in which 
we see a person in the sky free falling. Spence investigates notions of 
flying, falling and the human desire to escape gravitational pull. Similarly 
digital technologies have seemed to offer an escape from physical 
boundaries, whilst at the same time predicting a fall to earth. Empty 
promises of a networked real-time society have brought a culture apparently 
without boundaries. Yet boundaries remain in place for many people.

The exhibition, curated by Mike Stubbs, shows work by a range of artists
including Richard Brown, Heath Bunting, Gina Czarnecki, Bill Drummond,
Ronald Fraser-Munroe, Zoe Irvine, Bob Levene, Michael Pinsky, Simon Poulter, 
Rtmark, Ahbin Shim, Pernille Spence, Thompson & Craighead, Simon Yuill, Dane 
Watkins, Ben Woodeson- with contributions from Hull Time Based Arts and New 
Media Scotland.


Opening night performances by: Bill Drummond, Roney Fraser Munro, Dreams of 
Tall Buildings, Bob Levine.

While many of us are addicted to consuming the latest technology, artists 
are pushing at what these technologies can be, subverting them and what can 
be done with them.  Free-fall explores some of the issues, technologies and 
themes artists have been wrestling with since the 1990's.

The show includes Bill Drummond's first media work, The Silent Protest, a 
protest against war: 'the one in your family, the one at work or the one in 
a far-flung land'. Zoe Irvine's' sound installation MMM uses material from 
her recording and collection trip to the Pas de Calais, France, the ferry 
and Eurotunnel terminal and site of the former camp at Sangatte for asylum 
seekers.

As part of Free-fall Peterborough Digital Arts has commissioned Simon
Poulter to work amongst shoppers in Peterborough's central Queensgate
shopping centre (the largest in Europe when it was opened in the early 80's) 
making a physical and virtual miniature shopping centre. The sculpture, 
titled Rome Shopping Centre, made from card and mini LCD screens, will take 
sharp but humorous look at the way we live and shop in 2003. Simon Poulter 
will be working in Queensgate on the 8th, 9th, 10th, 11th, 12th, and 15th, 
16th, 17th of April 2003.

Peterborough Digital Arts and Free-fall have been Lottery Funded by Arts
Council England.

For more information please contact     Maggie Warren, Arts Project Officer
maggie.warren at peterborough.gov.uk <mailto:maggie.warren at peterborough.gov.uk>






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