Dundee Contemporary Arts, September 19-October 12 2008
It’s not their fault. Arts bureaucrats, after all, are frequently behind the times, as all the recent fuss about amalgamating funding Quangos previously separated by genre has proved. Because, in terms of combining forward-thinking performers with a film-based practice to occupy one of the major gallery spaces in Europe, Kill Your Timid Notion is way ahead of the game.
Since its first outing in 2003, KYTN’s four editions thus far have mixed and matched sound and vision in a way that has utilised the DCA’s gallery space to the maximum. This year KYTN goes even further, with a large-scale exhibition running for three weeks before the festival to give gallery-goers an opportunity to dip their toe in what may be uncharted Sensurround waters.
In different ways, Kjell Bjorgeengen and Paul Sharits work with flicker - cinematically-based installations which aim to transform the galleries into intense and demanding theatres of light – ushers in a music programme which looks to do likewise without any commercial concessions.
“I hate it when people walk into art galleries and it’s so easy to go from work to work,” Bjorgeengen mourns from his Oslo base, “and they can see one thing and comment on it, then move on to the next thing. There’s no real physical input with it. With flicker-based work, you have to go through some kind of thresh-hold, and that can produce negative results, but I want to go beyond a passive way of viewing things.”
Bjorgeengen has been working with flicker for six years, developing an increasingly sophisticated approach partly led by the technology available, and primarily at the Experimental Television Centre in New York
“You have to go into some kind of dialogue with it to make it do what you want,” Bjorgeengen says. “Through that my work has become more complex and more layered.”
KYTN has explored similar landscapes in previous line-ups particularly via the presence of American minimalist and former collaborator with Velvet Underground members in Theatre Of Eternal Music, Tony Conrad. His 1966 film, The Flicker, shown alongside the straight cinema version of Sharits’ ‘Epileptic Seizure Comparison’ in 2006, may have been similarly provocative, but Bjorgeengen is reluctant to make any comparison.
Sharits’ piece is an emotionally charged work dating from 1976 which aims to provoke even more extreme physical reactions in the viewer. In its recently restored version seen at KYTN as an installation as Sharits intended, it can now be regarded as one of the most provocative pieces of underground cinema of its era.
As well as being one of Norway’s leading contemporary artists, Bjorgeengen is a musician and long-time collaborator with the likes of guitarist Marc Ribot, bassist Joelle Leandre and regular visitor to these parts, Keith Rowe. During the KYTN weekend itself, Bjorgeengen and Rowe will perform with another improv veteran, violinist Phillip Waschmann. Whatever the result, viewers senses look set to be bombarded on every level.
“Some people hate it,” Bjorgeengen laughs, “and some people love it. It’s hard not to make a stand. People sometimes see things in works like this that they haven’t seen before, and a lot of this kind of work has lots of meta-narrative. This is a lot more basic.”
The List, September 2008
ends
It’s not their fault. Arts bureaucrats, after all, are frequently behind the times, as all the recent fuss about amalgamating funding Quangos previously separated by genre has proved. Because, in terms of combining forward-thinking performers with a film-based practice to occupy one of the major gallery spaces in Europe, Kill Your Timid Notion is way ahead of the game.
Since its first outing in 2003, KYTN’s four editions thus far have mixed and matched sound and vision in a way that has utilised the DCA’s gallery space to the maximum. This year KYTN goes even further, with a large-scale exhibition running for three weeks before the festival to give gallery-goers an opportunity to dip their toe in what may be uncharted Sensurround waters.
In different ways, Kjell Bjorgeengen and Paul Sharits work with flicker - cinematically-based installations which aim to transform the galleries into intense and demanding theatres of light – ushers in a music programme which looks to do likewise without any commercial concessions.
“I hate it when people walk into art galleries and it’s so easy to go from work to work,” Bjorgeengen mourns from his Oslo base, “and they can see one thing and comment on it, then move on to the next thing. There’s no real physical input with it. With flicker-based work, you have to go through some kind of thresh-hold, and that can produce negative results, but I want to go beyond a passive way of viewing things.”
Bjorgeengen has been working with flicker for six years, developing an increasingly sophisticated approach partly led by the technology available, and primarily at the Experimental Television Centre in New York
“You have to go into some kind of dialogue with it to make it do what you want,” Bjorgeengen says. “Through that my work has become more complex and more layered.”
KYTN has explored similar landscapes in previous line-ups particularly via the presence of American minimalist and former collaborator with Velvet Underground members in Theatre Of Eternal Music, Tony Conrad. His 1966 film, The Flicker, shown alongside the straight cinema version of Sharits’ ‘Epileptic Seizure Comparison’ in 2006, may have been similarly provocative, but Bjorgeengen is reluctant to make any comparison.
Sharits’ piece is an emotionally charged work dating from 1976 which aims to provoke even more extreme physical reactions in the viewer. In its recently restored version seen at KYTN as an installation as Sharits intended, it can now be regarded as one of the most provocative pieces of underground cinema of its era.
As well as being one of Norway’s leading contemporary artists, Bjorgeengen is a musician and long-time collaborator with the likes of guitarist Marc Ribot, bassist Joelle Leandre and regular visitor to these parts, Keith Rowe. During the KYTN weekend itself, Bjorgeengen and Rowe will perform with another improv veteran, violinist Phillip Waschmann. Whatever the result, viewers senses look set to be bombarded on every level.
“Some people hate it,” Bjorgeengen laughs, “and some people love it. It’s hard not to make a stand. People sometimes see things in works like this that they haven’t seen before, and a lot of this kind of work has lots of meta-narrative. This is a lot more basic.”
The List, September 2008
ends
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