[spectre] AV Festival 08 - 28 Feb - 8 March 08 - programme available
Honor Harger
honor at va.com.au
Fri Jan 25 03:10:23 CET 2008
Dear Spectres,
I hope this email finds you well.
Please find below the programme announcement for
AV Festival 08: Broadcast in the North East of
England.
The AV Festival <http://www.avfestival.co.uk/> is
a biennial international festival of electronic
art, moving image and music.
The next festival takes place 28 Feb - 8 March 08
and is on a topic very close to my heart -
broadcasting! It features Marko Peljhan
(Slovenia), Harun Farocki (Germany), Tetsuo
Kogawa (Japan), Autechre (UK), Joyce Hinterding
(Australia), Yuko Mohri (Japan), Jean-Jacques
Perrey (France), Chris Watson (UK), People Like
Us (UK) and many many others.
I have included an announcement about the festival below.
The full programme can be downloaded or viewed
from the AV website: http://www.avfestival.co.uk/
I would be delighted if some of you would
consider attending the festival. I would be
honoured to welcome you here in the North East
of England, and would be very happy to help
design an itinerary for anyone of you who wished
to attend. Please do not hesitate to let me know
if you want more information about the festival.
Sincere apologies for cross-posting!
Very best wishes
Honor Harger
Director, AV Festival 08
http://www.avfestival.co.uk/
AV FESTIVAL 08 - PROGRAMME ANNOUNCEMENT
AV Festival 08
http://www.avfestival.co.uk/
Newcastle, Gateshead, Middlesbrough, Sunderland, UK
28 February - 8 March 2008
The AV Festival <http://www.avfestival.co.uk/> is
a biennial international festival of electronic
art, moving image and music. AV Festival 08:
Broadcast will take place across the three urban
areas of NewcastleGateshead, Sunderland &
Middlesbrough, 28 February - 8 March 2008.
The theme of the festival is broadcast. The UK
has begun to switch off analogue television
signals, paving the way for television to become
entirely digital. At the same time the internet
and mobile networks have created opportunities
for us to 'broadcast ourselves' in entirely new
ways. As the landscape of broadcasting changes
irrevocably, AV Festival 08 will be a catalyst
for debate about the future of broadcasting, and
an event to celebrate a century of on-air and
online transmission.
AV Festival 08: Broadcast features of over 100
new commissions, exhibitions, screenings,
concerts, workshops and events, including:
- a new performance of John Cage's Variations VII
performed by :zoviet*france: & Atau Tanaka
- a newly commissioned outdoor performance by Marko Peljhan
- a contemporary version of the famous radio War
of the Worlds radio play, directed by Joanna Read
- performances by Autechre, the BBC Radiophonic
Workshop, Jean-Jacques Perrey, Broadcast,
Disinformation, Long Range & many others
- a newly commissioned sound installations by
Chris Watson, Marcus Coates, People Like Us and
others
- exhibitions by Joyce Hinterding, Harun Farocki,
Staalplaat Soundsystem, Yuko Mohri, Sonia Boyce,
Ryota Kuwakubo and others
- a major new touring exhibition, Broadcast
Yourself, featuring Bill Viola, Chris Burden,
Nina Pope & Karen Guthrie & others
- a conference featuring Atau Tanaka, Douglas
Kahn, Brandan Labelle, Heidi Grundmann, Andreas
Broeckmann, Tao G. Vrhovec Sambolec & others
- workshops lead by Tetsuo Kogawa, Raitis Smits, Caitlin Jones and others
- a screening programme of bold and innovative television
- 3 FM radio stations, including Resonance FM
broadcasting from mima in Middlesbrough
___AV Festival 08: theme
http://www.avfestival.co.uk/introductions/honor_harger
We have just entered the second century of
broadcasting. And it finds us on the apex of
massive change. The switch off of analogue
broadcasting has now started. Information and
entertainment which has been sent via the
airwaves since the beginning of the 20th century
is going digital.
What does this mean for the future of
broadcasting? Does the switch to digital create
greater possibilities for cultural and community
participation in broadcasting? Or will the
switch create more complex regulatory frameworks,
which disempower potential broadcasters? Will the
airwaves fall silent after the switch off? What
is the fate of the part of the spectrum that
radio and television use now? Will this valuable
natural resource be opened up for public use? Or
will these frequencies be sold to mobile
telephone companies or the military?
The answers to these questions may define our
entertainment culture for the next decades, and
will provide the backdrop for AV Festival 08.
At the same time as traditional broadcasting
faces transformation, the internet has emerged as
a key network for the distribution of audiovisual
material. It seems that the webcasting
revolution promised at the end of last millennium
is just beginning to bear fruit. Then, artists
such as Van Gogh TV, Active Ingredient and Nina
Pope & Karen Guthrie (Broadcast Yourself, Hatton
Gallery Newcastle) used technologies such as
videophones and streaming media to create
channels for artistic broadcasting. Now, the
immense popularity of user-generated audio and
video online networks, such as MySpace and
YouTube, are creating a parallel universe of
radio and television on the internet. We'll show
how a new generation of student filmmakers are
inhabiting and shaping these online spaces, in
AV:IRAL, which will be screened online at our
YouTube channel, and on site during the festival
(The Design Centre, 5 March).
Broadcasting is also on the move. Podcasting is
enabling our favourite internet radio and
television programmes to become mobile,
downloaded to our media players. The mobile
telephone companies who paid so dearly for a
slice of the high-speed 3G network will soon
begin to fulfill their promise to deliver audio
and video services.
Thus the landscape of broadcasting is changing
irrevocably. Not only is there a clear need to
debate the form of broadcasting in its second
century, but also to reflect on the past century
of radio and television. How did it originate?
How has it changed our lives?
For AV Festival 08, artists, filmmakers and
musicians have created works which illuminate all
aspects of broadcasting. Policy-makers,
researchers and activists will discuss the switch
off and speculate about the future of radio,
television and the spectrum (The Television will
Not be Revolutionised, 6-7 March & Community
Radio Night, 4 March). Engineers, technologists
and hobbyists will give hands-on workshops in
transmission technology (Radio Craft Lab &
Waygood's Radio Rally). Concerts and events will
commemorate broadcasting accomplishments and
celebrate a century of the airwaves (Variations
VII, 29 February, Radiophonia, 1 March, and War
of the Worlds, 5 March).
At AV Festival 08, we will discover that ever
since the first experiments in wireless
transmission by Nikola Tesla, broadcasting has
been a mechanism to enact social change. The
power of broadcasting to shape public behaviour
was graphically portrayed in 1938, by dramatist,
Orson Welles, in his now legendary adaptation of
War of the Worlds. The broadcast blurred the
factual format of newscasting, with a fictional
story of alien invasion and sparked panic amongst
radio listeners. We celebrate the 70th
anniversary of this crucial moment in
broadcasting history, with a new version of the
radio play staged by acclaimed theatre director
Joanna Read (Middlesbrough Town Hall, 5 March).
Broadcasting continued to witness and transmit
social history with images joining sound on the
airwaves, as television became part of public
life. AV Festival 08's screening programme TV at
the Cinema brings television to the big screen,
showcasing landmark programmes, such as Ken
Loach's pioneering drama Cathy Come Home
(Tyneside Cinema, 6 March), a graphic depiction
of homelessness which inspired real policy change
in 1960s Britain. Later political satire, such as
the incendiary Brass Eye (Tyneside Cinema, 8
March), showed how television had become a
platform to mock the political establishment. You
can voice your own opinion about television, by
voting for your favourite show online at our
Alternative Top TV poll
(www.avfestival.co.uk/toptv). The winning TV
show will be shown at a gala screening (Tyneside
Cinema, 7 March).
As broadcasting became increasingly ubiquitous,
it became not only a means of observing social
reality, but also increasingly a mechanism to
shape it. Harun Farocki's Videogram of a
Revolution depicts the so-called television
revolution in Romania in 1989, where broadcasting
played a critical role in the fall of Ceau_escu
regime. And politicians' ruthless manipulation of
television is vividly brought to life in Brian
Springer's Spin (both at Star and Shadow Cinema,
3 March).
AV Festival 08 will also ask what role have
artists played in shaping the trajectory of the
airwaves, showing how they have experimented with
elemental substance of broadcasting -
electromagnetism, radio waves and resonant
energy. These dark materials are evident in Yuko
Mohri's work Bairdcast (Discovery Museum,
Newcastle), which shows how the fabric of early
television can be transformed into contemporary
installation.
In our conference Music & Machines VIII (Culture
Lab, 29 February - 1 March), we will explore the
origins of artistic experimentation with the
airwaves showing how artists insisted on the
radio spectrum as a new landscape.
John Cage's philosophy of the radio spectrum as a
part of the physical environment is borne out in
his 1966 work Radio Happenings I-V, in which he
remarked, "all [radio] is making audible
something which you're already in. You are bathed
in radio waves". Cage furthered his
experimentation with radio and broadcast media in
his major 1966 performance for the 9 Evening
Theatre & technology series, Variations VII. We
will stage the first major UK performance of
Variations VII (AV Festival 08 opening gala,
Baltic, 29 February), and
The idea of radio as a pervasive medium, which
surrounds us and moves through us, is made
tangible in Joyce Hinterding's large-scale
antenna work (Aeriology, Reg Vardy Gallery,
Sunderland), which makes audible the very low
radio frequencies which resonate continuously
throughout space.
Slovenian artist Marko Peljhan has been creating
works that make the radio landscape perceptible
for many years. The latest of these is Scatter!,
a large-scale outdoor durational performance (AV
Festival closing gala, Baltic Square, 8 March)
which will audio-visually map the radio sky in
real time.
José Luis de Vicente & Irma Vilà's Atlas of
Electromagnetic Space (Institute for Digital
Innovation, Middlesbrough) also maps the
inscrutable topography that is the
electromagnetic spectrum, in this case through an
interactive data visualisation.
These and other artists at AV Festival 08, such
as Tetsuo Kogawa the founder of miniFM in Japan
(who will speak at Music & Machines and lead a
workshop at the Radio Craft Lab), Resonance FM
(who are in residence at mima, Middlesbrough),
and German radio artist Knut Aufermann (who will
lead AV Festival programming on NE1FM), all
survey the broadcasting landscape, and indeed
alter its topology with their projects.
These artists - and your presence - will ensure
AV Festival 08 becomes a catalyst for debate
about the future state of broadcasting, and also
a celebration of a century of on air and online
transmission.
Honor Harger
Director, AV Festival 08
___ AV Festival 08: programme
The programme can be downloaded or viewed online:
http://www.avfestival.co.uk/programme
New commissions & premieres include
- A Marriage of Shadows - by Michael Edgerton (concert, world premiere)
- Aeriology - by Joyce Hinterding (exhibition, UK Premiere)
- Atlas of Electromagnetic Space - (installation, co-commission)
- AV Festival on NE1FM - (radio station, commission)
- Bairdcast: A History of Machine Translation -
Yuko Mohri (exhibition, commission)
- Broadcast Yourself - Various artists (exhibition, co-commission)
- Deep Play - Harun Farocki (exhibition, UK Premiere)
- Now Hear This - Marcus Coates, Zoe Irvine &
People Like Us (outdoor sound works, commissions)
- War of the Worlds - directed by Joanna Read
(theatrical performance, commission)
- Radiophonia - by Broadcast, Dick Mills,
Jean-Jacques Perrey et al (concert, world
Premiere)
- Resonance FM at mima - (radio station, commission)
- Scatter! - by Marko Peljhan (performance, commission)
- Soundscape FM - (radio station, commission)
- Variations VII - :zoviet*france, Atau Tanaka (performance, commission)
- Waygood's Amateur Radio Rally - (event, co-commission)
- Whispering in the Leaves - Chris Watson
(installation & performance, co-commission)
Performances by:
- :zoviet*france: & Atau Tanaka - in Variations VII - 29 February
- Ars Nova Ensemble - in A Marriage of Shadows by Michael Edgerton - 3 March
- Autechre, with SND & Rob Hall - 2 March
- AV:ISIONs Club & lounge nights - various dates
- Broadcast, Brian Duffy, Dick Mills,
Jean-Jacques Perrey & Dana Countryman - in
Radiophonia - 1 March
- Chris Watson - 6 March
- Disinformation & Strange Attractor - in National Grid - 5 March
- Long Range (Phil Hartnoll & Nick Smith) - - 29 February
- Mx (Marko Peljhan), Brian Springer, Nullo
(Aljo_a Abrahamsberg) & Delray (Matthew
Biederman) - in Scatter! - 8 March
- Staalplaat Soundsystem - 29 February
- Tao G. Vrhovec Sambolec - 1 March
Exhibitions include:
- Aeriology - Joyce Hinterding
- Atlas of Electromagnetic Space - José Luis de Vicente, Irma Vilà & Bestiario
- Bairdcast: A History of Machine Translation - Yuko Mohri
- Broadcast Yourself - Various artists
- Deep Play - Harun Farocki
- For You, Only You - Sonia Boyce
- Now Hear This - Marcus Coates, Zoe Irvine & People Like Us
- Prepared Radios - Ryota Kuwakubo
- Slow TV - Various artists
- Variations VII documentation - John Cage & Experiments in Art & Technology
- Whispering in the Leaves - Chris Watson
- Yokomono - Staalplaat Soundsystem
Conferences, talks & seminars include:
- Artists' Talks by José Luis de Vicente & Irma
Vilà, Chris Watson, Jean-Jacques-Perrey, Yuko
Mohri & others - various dates
- At the Top of the Game: Jimmy McGovern - a talk
by the celebrated television writer - 4 March
- BBC Radiophonic Workshop - a talk at Radiophonia by Dick Mills - 1 March
- Broadcast Yourself in person & on-screen - a
seminar & screening event featuring Sarah Cook,
Kathy Rae Huffman, Shaina Anand, Karel Dudasek,
Active Ingredient & Maria Pallier - 2 March
- Desert Island TV - a very special event
featuring a leading light of British Broadcasting
- 2 March
- Music & Machines VIII - AV Festival 08
conference on broadcasting & art featuring Atau
Tanaka, Douglas Kahn, Brandan Labelle, Heidi
Grundmann and others - 29 February - 1 March
- Northern Screenwriters Conference 2008 - a
conference for screenwriters - 4 - 5 March
- The Television Will Not Be Revolutionised - a
2-day debate on broadcasting featuring Bill
Thompson and others - 6 - 7 March
Screening include:
- Works for Television, short films curated by
Gary Thomas including works by Matt Hulse, Clio
Barnard, Andrew Kotting, Patrick Keiller, Paul
Bush, Thomson & Craighead, Judith Goddard, Stuart
Hilton, Semiconductor, Mike Stubbs & others)
- AV:IRAL, the AV Festival 08 student short film programme
- TV at the Cinema - a retrospective screening
programme of television, including Abigail's
Party (Mike Leigh, BBC, UK, 1977, 120 mins), Boys
from the Blackstuff (Alan Bleasedale, BBC, UK,
1980-82, 50mins), Brass Eye (Chris Morris,
Channel 4, UK, 1997-2001, 25mins), Cathy Come
Home (Ken Loach, BBC, UK, 1966, 100 mins), Death
of a President (Gabriel Range, Channel 4, UK,
2006, 93 mins), Digital Stadium (Japanese TV
show, NHK) , Dr Who & The Daleks (Gordon Flemyng,
UK, 1965, 82 mins), Dr Who Special (BBC, UK,
2005-7, 45 mins), Fawlty Towers (BBC, UK,
1975-79, 30 mins), Life on Mars (BBC, UK, 2006-7,
60 mins), Not the Nine O'Clock News (John Lloyd,
BBC, UK, 1979-1982, 25mins), Radio Favela
(Helvecio Ratton, Brazil, 2002, 92 mins),
Scattered Frequencies (Micz Flor & Philip
Scheffner, Germany, 2002, 31 mins), Spin (Brian
Springer, USA, 1995, 57 mins), Shooting the Past
(Stephen Poliakoff, BBC, UK, 1999, 182 min), The
Life of Birds (David Attenborough, BBC, UK, 1998,
50 mins), The Prisoner (Patrick McGoohan & George
Markstei, ITV, UK, 1967-8, 50mins), The Sweeney
(Ian Kennedy Martin, ITV, UK, 1975-78, 60 mins),
The War Game (Peter Watkins, BBC, UK, 1965, 48
mins) and Videogramme einer Revolution (Harun
Farocki & Andrei Ujica, 1992, 106 mins).
Workshops include:
- Anatomy of a Television Programme - TV workshop for students & adults
- Documenting New Media Art- workshop for professionals, lead by Caitlin Jones
- Introduction to Writing for Television - a 10
week course lead by Julie Blackey
- Media Routes workshops in animation & radio -
workshops for 13 - 19 years olds
- Radiophonia workshop - electronic music workshop lead by Brian Duffy
- Radio Craft Lab - a 5 day workshop for artists
lead by Tetsuo Kogawa, Raitis Smits, Joyce
Hinterding & others
- Thinking Outside the Goggle Box - a 10 week course lead by Ben Dickenson
- Write Your Own Radio Play - an intensive 2 day
workshop for 13 - 19 years olds
Radio stations:
- AV Festival on NE1FM - Knut Aufermann & friends
broadcast on Tyneside on 102.5FM
- Resonance FM at mima - the UK's only art radio
station broadcasts from Middlesbrough
- Soundscape FM - Sunderland's audio art gallery of the air
- Waygood's Amateur Radio Rally - ham radio
enthusiasts meet at Grainger Market in Newcastle
Download the full programme online: http://www.avfestival.co.uk/programme
___AV Festival 08: tickets
http://www.avfestival.co.uk/tickets
Tickets to all AV Festival events are on sale
from the AV Festival Box Office at the Tyneside
Cinema.
Phone: +44 191 232 8289
Email: bookings at avfestival.co.uk
** Tickets are already selling out for major
events such as Variations VII, so book now if you
wish to attend **
___AV Festival 08: organisation
http://www.avfestival.co.uk/about
AV Festival 08 is organised by Audio Visual Arts
North East and forms part of NewcastleGateshead's
world-class festivals and events programme
managed by culture10, based at NewcastleGateshead
Initiative.
___AV Festival 08: supporters
http://www.avfestival.co.uk/supporters
Arts Council England, North East, Newcastle City
Council, Gateshead Council, ONE NorthEast,
Middlesbrough Council, Sunderland City Council,
Tyneside Cinema, Northern Film & Media, UK Film
Council, European Regional Development Fund, V.
Event Supporters: Anime projects, Castle Keep,
Digista, The Leverhulme Trust, MAP, Media Routes,
Ormiston Wires, PRS Foundation, Triple Echo.
AV has developed close working relationships with
some of the region's key cultural organisations.
Our partners include alt.gallery, BALTIC, Centre
for LIFE, Centre for Excellence In Teaching and
Learning Music and Inclusivity (Newcastle
University), Cineworld, Cornerhouse, CRUMB,
CultureLab (Newcastle University), Design Centre
(University of Sunderland), Discovery Museum,
forma, IDI (University of Teesside), ISIS,
Locus+, mima, Media Centre (University of
Sunderland), Mobile Cinema, National Glass
Centre, Northern Gallery for Contemporary Art,
NE1 FM, No-Fi, NOVAK, Northern Screenwriters
Conference, Reg Vardy Gallery, Resonance FM,
/slab, Star & Shadow Cinema, Sunderland Museum &
Winter Gardens, The Hatton Gallery, The Sage
Gateshead, Tyne & Wear Museums, Waygood,
Multistorey, White Hot Communications,
Velcrobelly & Evolve.
___AV Festival 08: contacts
For more information contact:
AV Festival
c/o Tyneside Cinema at Gateshead Old Town Hall
West Street
Gateshead
NE8 1HE
UK
Tel: +44 (0)191 2328289, ext 112
Email: info at avfestival.co.uk
http://www.avfestival.co.uk/
The AV Festival is run by Audio Visual Arts North
East. A Company Limited by Guarantee. Registered
in England No 06141603. Registered Charity Number
1120368. Registered Office: c/- Tyneside Cinema
at the Old Town Hall, Gateshead, West Street,
Gateshead, NE8 1HE, UK
More information about the SPECTRE
mailing list