[spectre] Sound Check at IFFR Rotterdam, 26jan - 6feb 05

[Edwin Carels]

EXPLODING CINEMA AT THE INTERNATIONAL FILMFESTIVAL OF ROTTERDAM

Jan 26th - Feb 6th 2005

Like in previous years, Exploding Cinema zooms in on a particular
phenomenon, representative for our contemporary audio-visual culture. Under
the umbrella term Sound Check the impact is being investigated of sound as a
visual stimulus, and this as much in the domain of cinema, as installations,
presentations and live-moments. Although technological innovations are
following each other rapidly, this program explicitely does not deal with
demonstrations of soon to be commercialised novelties, but rather focusses
on artistic applications of or even reactions to so many recent audio-visual
technologies.

Sound Check presents several radical listening exercices in which sound and
image get equal shares, often autonomously. Like when the soundtrack of one
film is transposed to another film (Up & Out, Christian Marclay), or when a
voice over repeats the same text twice in almost an identical way (Visite au
Louvre, Straub/Huillet).

Radical simplicity is also the motto in the program of Sound Check films
with live music. Coincidence or not, the founding fathers of minimal music
are being rediscovered by the current generation as rolmodels for the
digital creativity, in which seriality and sampling indeed play an important
role. (Terry Riley, Tony Conrad, David Shea)

We also spend attention to the non-commercial, even totally obscure music
DVD's where an alternative form of interaction between sound and image is
still being explored (DVDrome). The world première of a series of
shortfilms, all based on the same soundinput, will also challenge us to
listen as carefully as possible (Sound Bridges).

The festival website will allow people to listen to the dialogues
between artists, guests, follow the live concerts and listen to Tony Cokes'
music selection related to his series of Pop Manifestos via the Audiostream.

A fully detailed program will be available on our website as from Jan 20th.

www.filmfestivalrotterdam.com

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Live Concerts (each time at 23h00 in Lantaarn 1)

- Jan 28th : Text of Light 'plays' Brakhage (line up : Lee Ranaldo / Alan
Licht / Ulrich Krieger / Tim Barnes / DJ Olive)
Free improvisations on a backdrop of double screen projections

- Jan 29th : David Shea : Sound/Sample/Cinema (for Arthur Lipsett)
Live hommage to one of the forgotten pioneers of collage cinema

- Jan 30th : Matt Hulse presents the Audible Picture Show (at 22h45)
A continuingly updated archive of specially commissioned sound tracks

-  Jan 31st: David Shea plays live soundtrack of 'Sound Bridges'
(worldpremieres by Frank Scheffer, Kerry Laitala, Kurt D'Haeseleer ao)
Five films made with the same source material : Memory Lane by Shea

-  Feb 1st : Tony Conrad plays Violin Solo (in D)
Hypnotic sounds, performed  from behind a moving film screen

-  Feb 2nd: Tony Conrad performs/projects old and recent works
The filmmaker revisists early flicker piece,  projects food etc

- Feb 3rd : Juergen Reble & Thomas Koener perform : Quasar
(worldpremière) scratch on multiple black filmleader with soundtrack
compressing input from different filmtheatres

- Feb 4th : Terry Riley and Jem Cohen : Blessings, Omens, Spells
and Mojos : European première of a unique collaboration, a meditation on the
contemporaray war-time US.

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Exhibitions / Installations :

-      murmur : a very silent show with sound installations (incl Valie
Export, Tony Cokes, Imogen Stidworthy, Rosa Barba, Christof Migone ao)
at TENT. Witte de Withstraat 50

-      DVDrome, a selection of alternative music DVD's, selected by Floris
Vanhoof.
At TENT. Witte de Withstraat 50

-      Science Friction : installation by Javier Perez Aranda & Francisco
Lopez.   at V2_, Eendrachtstraat 12

-      Sound Modulated Light : installation by Edwin van der Heide
at RAM, Blekerstraat 10

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Talks and presentations :

-      Chinese Whispers : a five day series of  talks and presentations in
the context of murmur, daily at 15h00  in the auditorium of TENT. (Jan 28th
- Feb 1st) with participating artists and special guests.

-      Larry Sider :  introduces The School of Sound, in the context of the
What is Cinema-debates, on Feb 3rd at 18h00 in de Kleine Zaal of the
Rotterdamse Schouwburg.

-   Terry Riley : talks about his composition ' Blessings, Omens, Spells
and Mojos' and his work for the cinema on Feb 3rd at 15h30 in de Kleine Zaal
of the Rotterdamse Schouwburg.


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Film programmes include works by :

Abbas Kiarostami, Aleksandr Sokurov, Jonas Mekas, Ken Jacobs, Christian
Marclay, Straub/Huillet, Matt Hulse, Stephen Vitiello, Thom Kübli, Gary
Hill, Anouk Declerq, Eric Delayen, Karo Goldt, Judit Kurtag, Pekka Sassi,
Ian Helliwell, Barbara Doser, Cory Arcangel, Pieter-Paul Mortier, Thomas
Köner and many, many more !


Sound Check program curated by Edwin Carels