Ptarmigan operated in Tallinn from 2011-2014. We no longer maintain any presence in Tallinn, but this website will continue to serve as an archive of the activities produced at Ptarmigan during these years.
Come join us for the first public listening of Hannah Harkes’s audio play On Losing The Sense Of Urgency (A PLAY) over a delightful continental breakfast .
‘On Losing The Sense Of Urgency (A PLAY)’ follows the savage troglodyte, Mr. George, on his annual hunt for mortal bonfire fuel. Accompanied by a mute moth with urinary incontinence, Mr. George travels far from his forest dwelling to a guarded house wherein he loses sight of his mission, seduces a playful dog cadaver and undergoes a gory dismemberment. As the mammary glands of Artemis sprout from his chest, the transformed traveller adopts the name Arta and takes to the trees, disowning the faithful moth and immersing herself in a sensual and carefree lifestyle. The moth meanwhile finds solace in the friendship and funeral parlour of Herr Hartenboden, a verbose undertaker with a compulsion for brushing his teeth. It takes a despairing trek into the forest for Herr Hartenboden’s lumberjack lover, Oh, to accidentally reunite the original companions and in doing so, condemn the various characters to awkward lovemaking, death by drowning, vocal transmogrification and the spoiling of an immaculate three piece suit. With a cameo appearance from the illustrious German superstar Hans Albers, and featuring the following processed jazz classics: Buddy, Boss Lounger, 44th Street Long, Fifth Avenue Stroll, First Snowfall, Park Bench, Perspectives, Swing City and Starlight. (54min)
Join us for a screening of the Japanese body horror film Tetsuo: The Iron Man. To accompany Tetsuo there will be home-brewed Rejuvelac, a rejuvenating fermented tonic for sale in the Café.
Café Hardcore Metaphor is also open from 11 -> 17 on Saturday and Sunday.
Sebastian Seifert (Microfeel) is digital creative, multimedia designer, musician and independent curator of digital art and electronic music. In the field of media art he has developed several net art projects, offline media, interactive installations and performances. He is content creator, event organizer and curator of media art and electronic music for Fundación “la Caixa” since 2003. Electronic music guest curator at La Noche en Blanco Madrid.Co-curator and director of online electronic music radio Radio PIU from the contemporary art gallery NIU (www.niubcn.com). He has participated as artist in festivals like MUTEK (ES), SONAR, OFFF, FILE SAN PABLO, MOSTRA CONVENT DE SANT AGUSTÍ, VAD FESTIVAL, ARTMEDIA BUENOS AIRES, NETAUDIO FESTIVAL CCCB, BARCELONA VISUAL SOUND, CAMPUS PARTY, REC TARRAGONA, MADINSPAIN, among others.
He will give a talk on his music making and art practice here at Ptarmigan in the afternoon on the 9th September, then later in the evening play a gig as Microfeel at Kodu Baar, Vaimu 1.
http://www.sebastianseifert.net/
Microfeel, after talking about his work will play live at Kodu Baar, Vaimu 1.
Check out his music here:
http://microfeel-sebastianseifert.bandcamp.com/album/microfeel
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ekd1r7s6EnM
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SS33fkOWJHI
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=79DvoMcauDM
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fMdvCZS-pcA
Movement Hour is improvisational, free dance - dance for dance's sake. The focus is on movement, present, centre and finding a balance between turning your attention inside and creating contact with other dancers. There is no instructor but it is faciliated by Pire Sova.
Partcipants can bring fruits or other snacks and their own music with them.
Workshop is free. This will be the last meeting of Movement Hour for a little while.
Ptarmigan starts it's monthy Liminal Images film nights with two selections from the Zanzibar films movement.
Between 1968 and 1970, Sylvina Boissonnas, a young French heiress and patroness of the arts, financed the production of some fifteen films that would prove highly influential while remaining largely unknown outside of France. Under the banner of “Zanzibar Films” (a name taken from the Maoist island nation in East Africa), a decidely informal collective of about a dozen artists, writers, and students began to make their first films. While the New Wave filmmakers had been in their late twenties and early thirties when they began filmmaking, the Zanzibar directors were younger (Philippe Garrel, one of the key figures, was just twenty) and were inspired by the heady spirit and times of May 1968. These filmmakers quickly became the darlings of Henri Langlois, who often showed their films at the Cinémathèque Française in late-night screenings. Despite their diversity, the Zanzibar films were marked by minimal scripts, the use of nonactors and improvisation, and strong ties to both the art world and the world of fashion. (Several of the Zanzibar participants spent time in Warhol’s Factory in the mid-1960s.) Their films represented the French equivalent of the American underground, and these young cinéastes quickly became the radical dandies of May 1968. -- KG
Tonight we will be screening two films from this movement:
Deux Fois
Directed by Jackie Raynal
France, 1968
75 minutes.
French and Spanish with English subtitles. (imdb)
Deux fois is a 1968 experimental film by Jackie Raynal. Raynal stars in the film, her first as a director; she had previously worked for several years as a film editor, most notably for films in Éric Rohmer's "Six Moral Tales" series (she was, reportedly, the youngest professional editor in France at the time). The film's title, which literally translates as Twice and is sometimes translated into English as Twice Upon a Time, refers to the occasional repetition of scenes or actions.
Deux fois is one of the most notable of the Zanzibar Films, a group of feature-length experimental work made from 1968 to 1970 with the financing of Sylvina Boissonnas. It is also considered a landmark of feminist filmmaking. Raynal shot the film in nine days in Barcelona, Spain, casting a man she had met there, Francisco Viader, as one of the leads.
Regarding the film, the influential French critic Serge Daney wrote: "She put in her film the visionary crazed coldness of major paranoiacs. We also find the murderous, painful madness of Fritz Lang's great films, in which all the fiction is reduced to sketchy outlines, arabesques, leaving almost no trace."
-- Wikipedia
Perhaps the best Zanzibar film, Raynal's DEUX FOIS transcends mere experiment. A fractured fairy tale that begins with Raynal's Pre-Raphaelite self-portrait and ends with a recitation from Calderon's La Vida es Sueño, DEUX FOIS reworks cinematic language into the enigmatic whispers of a dream.
-- Ed Halter, The Village Voice
If I wanted to convey the excitement of France in 1968, this brave, pleasure-driven provocation would undoubtedly carry me part of the way.
-- Jonathan Rosenbaum, Chicago Reader
La Revolution N'est Qu'un Debut: Continuous
Directed by Pierre Clémenti
France, 1968
30 minutes
Silent. (imdb)
Pierre Clémenti is best known for his role as the suave gangster in Luis Buñuel’s Belle de Jour 1967, but his work as a writer, filmmaker and activist is being re-evaluated today as a crucial creative contribution. Clémenti collaborated with members of the Zanzibar group in the 1960s, and he fully embraced the lifestyle revolution ushered in by the ‘underground’: sexual liberation, anarchist agitation, aesthetic experimentation. An early champion of DIY formats such as Super 8, his ‘diary films’ are illuminating.
Half family photo album, half ciné-tract, La Revolution N'est Qu'un Debut: Continuous was shot in Paris during the events of May '68 and in Rome where the actor was featuring in the film Partner by Bertolucci. Rediscovered in a basement in 1999, this silent film appears to be one of Clémenti's most purely beautiful and concentrated works, at times recalling Brakhage and Eisenstein.
-- KG
We welcome you to join us for the launch of the temporary artist-run Café Hardcore Metaphor. It will showcase the very first contributions of artworks, editions and zines donated to the expanding Café Hardcore Metaphor collection. There will be music played by DJ Underbite and an evening of culinary delights.
London, the dynamic interconnected megacity of Europe, is a host to a vast array of esoterica. Tonight's Clip Kino, curated by London-based artist Simon Werner, will look at some contemporary and archival video clips concerning these subcultures of London and their various manifestations.
Clip Kino events are self-organised screening events of short video clips & documentaries found online. It aims to drag aspects of normalised 'private' activity - of viewing downloaded content on one's own computer - into public space for screening, appreciation and debate.
Movement Hour is improvisational, free dance. Dance for dance`s sake.
Focus is on movement, present, center and finding balance between turning attention inside and creating cantact with other dancers.
There is no instructor.
Partcipants cant take fruits or other snacks and their own music with them.
Workshop is free
Svamp is a regular workshop for sound and music improvisation. It does not involve money, careers or obligations -- only interpersonal and sound relationships. Svamp sessions may range from collective improvisation to directed exercises or game-playing. You do NOT have to be a professional or trained musician -- just someone with an interest in sound, an open mind, and the ability to listen.
After a summer recess in July, we'll be getting started again with an August meeting, again falling on the last Sunday of the month at 16:00. This will be the third meeting in Tallinn, and again, we encourage anyone with an interest in group interaction to attend! Please bring something to make sound with - an instrument or other object. Amplification will be quite limited so please prepare accordingly (ie: don't bring a laptop). We will explore collective improvisation, possibly breaking into smaller groups depending on attendance, and look at some simple organising structures and methods.
We are very keen for Svamp to be a synthesis of musicians AND non-musicians. Please don't be timid if you don't consider yourself to be a "musician" - the sessions are friendly, open, and most enjoyable when a more diverse group attends.
Svamp was originally started in Helsinki and has been meeting sporadically for several years. The project is intended to be a place for people to develop their improvisation abilities, experiment with different ideas, and feel no pressure to perform publicly or release recordings. Svamp in Helsinki is now curated by Äänen Lumo and Ptarmigan, and we hope to build a community in Tallinn and eventually bring the two groups together.
This months GFYP — Germ Free Youth Passport — brings an evening of various performers, lectures and musicians that have been working in and out of Ptarmigan throughout August.
Impulses The London-based post-post-post-medium artist Simon Werner talks about his non-research based, barely existing practice that is solely driven by his own spontaneous impulses. Savidivas Experimental electronics and noise by two brothers. WHATEVER HAPPENED TO KURT STEINER? by Ola Ståhl & Neil Chapman
Ola Ståhl and Neil Chapman are both artists, researchers and writers interested in text-based artistic practice and in exploring intermedial interfaces between sound, text, visuality and performance. They often work collaboratively, sometimes with one another, at other times with other artists and writers. CLOSE READING is an afternoon session featuring the informal presentation and discussion of some of their individual as well as collaborative work. The collection of texts presented, including both published pieces and work-in-progress, explores the various parameters of intermediality and text-based artistic practice by implementing different strategies and methods which will be explored in discussions following the readings.
Ola Ståhl is a writer and sound- and performance artist based in Malmö, Skåne (Sweden). He also runs the chapbook imprint In Edit Mode Press. With a background in Art History and Cultural Studies, and an MA and a PhD from The University of Leeds, he used to teach on the Fine Art program at Central Saint Martins College of Art and Design in London, UK. Concurrently, he ran the "free school" project C.CRED / Collective CREative Dissent, operating as a platform for various collaborative art-as-research projects across Europe and the USA. Since the demise of C.CRED, he has been involved in several text and sound-based project, most of which are collaborations with other artists and writers. He is particularly interested in text based artistic practices; practices engaging interfaces between sound and text; practices re-using and re-cycling found materials; performative text- and sound practices (practices that "perform" rather than "argue" a theoretical position); performance practices drawing upon the experimental rendition of text- and sound material; and collaborative practices, particularly those that cross between media and disciplines.
During his residency at Ptarmigan Helsinki, Ståhl has performed recent work-in-progress live at several occasions. Work presented include RANT, a reworking of Samuel Beckett's novel Molloy ; FILM (with Cassandra Troyan), a series of edits of a found auto-biographical manuscript ; and Whatever Happened to Kurt Steiner? (with Neil Chapman), a text- and sound performance loosely engaging with concepts extracted from the work of Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari.
Neil Chapman is an artist, writer and researcher. His work explores the materiality of text and textual practices, improvisation in performance and reading, visuality and its different forms, and the politics of collaborative working method. His recent publications include Glossolaris (London: AND Publishing, 2010), in which diverse literary sources are used to create a prototype science-fiction novel; ‘BLOODCRYSTALPOLLENSTAR’, written with Ola Ståhl for Deleuze and Contemporary Art (eds. Simon O'Sullivan & Stephen Zepke, Edinburgh University Press, 2010) implementing collaborative writing strategies to create narratives with implicit philosophical content; and ‘Two Interviews’ for a book entitled Materiality of Theory (ed. Dronsfield, Birmingham: Article Press 2011). Working with David Stent, Neil Chapman is currently producing a series of five pamphlets to be published as These Weak Kindnesses comprising parallel texts based on Max Ernst’s Une semaine de bonté (1929-33), and a book entitled The Müleskinders edited from contributions by invited writers, artists and philosophers. Neil Chapman lives in London where he teaches contemporary art, philosophy of art and critical studies.
Ptarmigan presents duos of experimental and improvised music. Alfredo Costa Monteiro and Topias Tiheäsalo (from Portugal/Finland) will be playing electric guitars and electronic devices, objects etc. Current Ptarmigan Helsinki resident Ola Ståhl and the UK's Neil Chapman will perform the first part of WHATEVER HAPPENED TO KURT STEINER?, a two-part sound and performance work.
Alfredo Costa Monteiro (b. 1964 Porto, Portugal) is an artist/musician based in Barcelona. As an improvising musician he uses both accordions and electric guitars as well as turntables, electro-acoustic devices and resonant objects as his instruments. He studied sculpture/multimedia at the fine art school in Paris with Christian Boltanski. After having moved to Barcelona in 1992 his work has been standing somewhere between visual arts, visual poetry and sound. His installations and sound pieces, all of a low-fi character, have in common an interest for unstable processes, where the manipulation of objects as instruments or instruments as objects has a strong phenomenological aspect. He works together with musicians, video-artists and choreographers. At the moment he collaborates regularly with French improvisers Pascal Battus and Michel Doneda and Canadian electronics musician Tim Olive.
Topias Tiheäsalo (b. 1978 Raisio, Finland) is a guitarist working in the field of improvised music. On some days his music can be fragile, sparse, quiet, acoustic; the next day it might be hectic, dense, loud, electric – or something else. His only concerns are improvising and playing, which some might see as synonymous. In addition to his solo playing, he works in various groups such as Pymathon, Jooklo Quartet, SIR trio, and the Henologists. Recently he's been playing with people like Ilia Belorukov, Virginia Genta, Atte Häkkinen, Jari Kaukua, Tero Kemppainen, Sami Pekkola, Antti Tolvi, Jaakko Tolvi, Janne Tuomi and David Vanzan. Some of this music you could call free jazz, some free improv, some improvised thrash metal...
WHATEVER HAPPENED TO KURT STEINER? by Ola Ståhl & Neil Chapman
Drawing upon a wide array of sources and references ranging from concepts and notions extracted from the work of Deleuze and Guattari, to found photographs and stills from films, to images from sci-fi literature, WHATEVER HAPPENED TO KURT STEINER is a layering of recording and live presentation in two parts doubling and mirroring one another. Through various unlikely combinations of technology, live recording and superimposed playback, a limited set of themes and images are delivered with repetition and variation, exploring in the process a shifting sense of visuality achieved through synthesis of diverse means - text, performance, sound transmission, technology.
Ola Ståhl is a writer and sound- and performance artist based in Malmö, Skåne (Sweden). He also runs the chapbook imprint In Edit Mode Press. With a background in Art History and Cultural Studies, and an MA and a PhD from The University of Leeds, he used to teach on the Fine Art program at Central Saint Martins College of Art and Design in London, UK. Concurrently, he ran the "free school" project C.CRED / Collective CREative Dissent, operating as a platform for various collaborative art-as-research projects across Europe and the USA. Since the demise of C.CRED, he has been involved in several text and sound-based project, most of which are collaborations with other artists and writers. He is particularly interested in text based artistic practices; practices engaging interfaces between sound and text; practices re-using and re-cycling found materials; performative text- and sound practices (practices that "perform" rather than "argue" a theoretical position); performance practices drawing upon the experimental rendition of text- and sound material; and collaborative practices, particularly those that cross between media and disciplines.
During his residency at Ptarmigan, Helsinki, Ståhl has performed recent work-in-progress live at several occasions. Work presented include RANT, a reworking of Samuel Beckett's novel Molloy ; FILM (with Cassandra Troyan), a series of edits of a found auto-biographical manuscript ; and Whatever Happened to Kurt Steiner? (with Neil Chapman), a text- and sound performance loosely engaging with concepts extracted from the work of Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari.
Neil Chapman is an artist, writer and researcher. His work explores the materiality of text and textual practices, improvisation in performance and reading, visuality and its different forms, and the politics of collaborative working method. His recent publications include Glossolaris (London: AND Publishing, 2010), in which diverse literary sources are used to create a prototype science-fiction novel; ‘BLOODCRYSTALPOLLENSTAR’, written with Ola Ståhl for Deleuze and Contemporary Art (eds. Simon O'Sullivan & Stephen Zepke, Edinburgh University Press, 2010) implementing collaborative writing strategies to create narratives with implicit philosophical content; and ‘Two Interviews’ for a book entitled Materiality of Theory (ed. Dronsfield, Birmingham: Article Press 2011). Working with David Stent, Neil Chapman is currently producing a series of five pamphlets to be published as These Weak Kindnesses comprising parallel texts based on Max Ernst’s Une semaine de bonté (1929-33), and a book entitled The Müleskinders edited from contributions by invited writers, artists and philosophers. Neil Chapman lives in London where he teaches contemporary art, philosophy of art and critical studies.
This event is supported by the Institut Ramon Llull.
This month's L & R brings together two artists who are both working in Tallinn this month - Rachel de Joode, who has a current exhibition at Tallinna Linnagalerii, and Kimberley Bianca who is resident at Culture Factory Polymer.
Rachel de Joode, born in 1979 in Amersfoort (NL), studied time-based Arts at the Gerrit Rietveld Academie Amsterdam. She currently lives and works in Berlin. She has received a stipendium from the Dutch Foundation for Visual Arts, Design and Architecture and won the 3rd Prize at the 90 Years of Bauhaus Award of the German publisher G+J. Among others, she has exhibited at the W139 in Amsterdam, at CEAC in Xiamen (China), at HBC Gallery in Berlin, at the Herzliya Biennial (Israel), at Giant Bowl in Oslo, at Yautepec Gallery in Mexico City. She has been published in numerous international art and fashion publications, among others several books by Gestalten Verlag, Picnic Magazine, Vorn Magazine, NY Arts Magazine, It's Nice That, VVORK. Recently, she was featured in an extensive portrait on Arte Creative.
Kimberley Bianca was born in Malta on May 11th 1989 of Bavarian descent, and grew up in Phuket, Thailand for 6 years before travelling the world settling in Australia. Kimberley Bianca's practice is deeply expressive and process driven, integrating poetry, performance, visual art, sound and digital media. Working across these areas, she often collaborates on projects for theatre, film, live music, and community events. Kimberley focuses on the future, metaphysical concepts and values of culture. An experimental approach to technical artistic practice enables her to create diverse intermedia works. From July to October, her residency and fellowship at Polymer Culture Factory will be extending these practices with internet streaming and collaboration.
Movement Hour is improvisational, free dance: "Dance for dance's sake."
The focus is on movement, presence, centre and finding balance between turning your attention inside and creating contact with other dancers.
There is no instructor, but the event is organised by Pire Sova.
Partcipants can bring fruits or other snacks and their own music with them.
This, 3 hour, workshop is a short immersion into the tattooing world. The class begins with a brief discussion on the route tattooing has traveled across cultures, through history and how that relates to the practices we know today. All tattooing during the workshop will be done on fruit; however the prevention of diseases transmitted by blood, health risks, and aftercare will be covered. During the practical portion of workshop, participants will begin by learning ‘stick & poke’. As prisons have played a large part in the imagery and development of tattooing, we will follow up 'stick & poke' with all of the workshop participants learning how to make their own "prison style" rotary tattoo machines (which they will be able to take home). For the finale of the workshop, all individuals will get to practice using a professional tattoo machine on their fruit. Participants should leave the workshop with a historical context for the practice of tattooing, basic knowledge of how to accomplish tattooing (by a variety of methods) in a safe and sterile environment, their own “prison style” rotary tattoo machine and a tattooed piece of fruit.
Justin Tyler Tate was born in Halifax, Nova Scotia and grew up in Florida USA. He relocated back to Halifax to attend the Nova Scotia College of Art and Design and has since migrated to Tallinn. Graduating with a Bachelor of Fine Arts his solo practice incorporates a variety of media; primarily sculpture, installation and performance. Over the past few years, he has exhibited his work across Canada and internationally. Tate's work investigates the relationship between the viewer and the object questioning the weight of viewership and creation alike.
A FREE electronica, dubstep and IDM party for everyone left in the city over the weekend! Artists include, but are not limited to, Malkovitch — http://soundcloud.com/malkov — with the full line up to be announced over the coming days!
Marshall McLuhan (1911-1980) was the internationally renowned Canadian academic and commentator on communications technology, and is currently being celebrated by many events on the 100th anniversary year of his birth. He developed theories about the role of the electronic media in mass popular culture, before the microchip & computers developed, which have proved to be very relevant for the Internet age. McLuhan's basic ideas,emphasis upon process rather than product, form over content ("the medium is the message"), have not lost their importance..
"All media work us over completely. They are so pervasive in their personal, political, economic, aesthetic, psychological, moral, ethical, and social consequences that they leave no part of us untouched, unaffected, unaltered. The medium is the massage. Any understanding of social and cultural change is impossible without a knowledge of the way media work as environments."
(The Medium is the Massage, Marshall McLuhan & Quentin Fiore, 1967)
This Clip Kino event celebrates Marshal McLuhan and the related media-clips which can be found about or inspired by him online. The initial selection are from those found under a search "medium is the message". The event takes place just a little after his anniversary birthday (it's July 21th, bring your belated greetings!), and coincidently takes place under the Canadian Embassy in Tallinn, Estonia. McLuhan newbies, enthusiasts and scholars most welcome!
The event and initial selection is hosted by Andrew Gryf Paterson, artist-organiser based in Helsinki, Finland, and is initiator of Clip Kino format (see: http://clipkino.info/). The 'medium is the message" clip-search selection was first shown to teenagers at Nuorten toimintakeskus Happi & Helsinge Skola och Gymnasium, Helsinki, in the beginning of 2010.
A pdf of the references and links mentioned by Andrew in his talk can be found here.
By popular demand -- second sesssion!
This 3 hour, intensive workshop is a short immersion into the world of tattooing from DIY, through prison, and into professional tattooing. All ‘tattooing’ during the workshop will be done on grapefruits but safety and prevention of diseases transmitted by blood will be covered as well as aftercare. As an introduction to tattoo culture we will begin the workshop by learning ‘stick & poke’, to create small images. As prisons have played a large part in the imagery and development of tattooing we will follow up stick and poke with a how to make your own "prison style" rotary electric tattoo needles. To finish the workshop all individuals will get to use a professional tattoo machine for line work, coloring and shading. Participants should leave the workshop with a basic knowledge of how to accomplish tattooing, by a variety of methods, in a safe and sterile environment.
Justin Tyler Tate was born in Halifax, Nova Scotia and grew up in Florida USA. He relocated back to Halifax to attend the Nova Scotia College of Art and Design and has since migrated to Tallinn. Graduating with a Bachelor of Fine Arts his solo practice incorporates a variety of media; primarily sculpture, installation and performance. Over the past few years, he has exhibited his work across Canada and internationally. Tate's work investigates the relationship between the viewer and the object questioning the weight of viewership and creation alike.
Ptarmigan's first Germ Free Youth Party is Saturday 16 July. It's a variety night of strange performances, sounds, and other intrusions.
David Rothenberg and UmruX5
David Rothenberg is a composer and jazz clarinetist who has written and performed on the relationship between humanity and nature for many years. He is the author of several books and has released recordings on ECM records. Tonight at Germ Free Youth Party pairs him with his son, aka UmruX5, exploring the basic question at the core of all musical exploration: can parents and teenagers coexist?
The Motel Sisters
Paris and Tacky Motel, are a performance duo that parody popular culture, suburbia and contemporary art. The characters are loosely based on over-media-saturated socialites such as Paris Hilton. Mixed with this pink-clad celebrity stereotype are the qualities of the aspiring suburban teen, including the influence of consumer fashion trends, identity angst and the superficial unrequited desire to be famous. The Motel Sisters have undertaken guerilla television appearances on Australian daytime tv shows, and also utilise aspects of interactive websites in their art-making. For instance, they present video art online on YouTube and cheekily experiment with Chatroulette. The Sisters endlessly self-promote using the ultimate self-promotion tool, the internet - in order to push the boundaries of performance art in a digital age. In July 2011 The Motel Sisters will be in Estonia presenting their 'European and Australian Contemporary Art and Performance’ presentation. http://www.motelsisters.com/s
Carlo Cubero will be speaking or performing or doing something.
Steve Vanoni is an artist from California whose work extends across a mega range of arenas. His performances often involve collaboration, even the focus of his solo performance work is (in his words) "to involve the audience in the performance.... The audience members can be living contributors in performance works, can move and share their thoughts and feelings… if the performer is interested in opening the door to them…. For me an audience that is sitting still, quiet and static might as well be dead bags of flesh non-actively stuck to a spot…. That perhaps is an extreme viewpoint, but I like to remind them that we are alive!!!!! We are able to move and think and create something living together given the opportunity." For more info check out: www.artslant.com/global/artists/show/46697-steve-vanoni & http://www.horsecow.com/
July's Labyrinths and Rings brings us Patrick Farmer, a sound artist based in Oxford. Patrick will talk about his projects, present some of his work, and answer questions. As always we will have music and food. Please join us!
Patrick Farmer is an artist currently living in Oxford. Often highlighting discarded means Farmer attempts to make audible a supposed nothing of performance with prepared drums, acoustic turntable, electronics, or natural objects. Surrounding his practise is the image of field recording and the notion of how one reacts to be surrounded. He has performed at the National Galleriet in Stockholm, The Red Room in Baltimore, and the I.C.A. in London, performing with, amongst others, Ryu Hankil, Will Guthrie, Robert Curgenven, and Dominic Lash. Farmer has published recordings through such labels as Cathnor, Another Timbre, and Psykick Dancehall. He co-runs the Compost and Height label.
The workshop ‘framework radio – documentation and production’ has two goals:
The production of a retrospective hour-long radio show to air as part of the framework:afield series of guest curated editions, and the production of a series of short on-the-spot creative documentary pieces to be presented to audiences at the beginning of each day of activities during the Tuned City Festival. Participation includes a daily gathering of recordings and/or interviews from the Tuned City events, and the editing of them into an audio highlight sequence to be presented the following day.
For more information about framework, check out the website.
The goal of this workshop is to produce a series of ad hoc sound installations through investigating, experimenting, learning and performing with the acoustic possibilities of a city. As this workshop will occur throughout various locations in Tallinn, it will only meet at Ptarmigan at 12:00 on 5 July 2011, the first date, before becoming mobile.
The method is basically to experiment with what Mads Bech Paluszewski calls the Tactile-Acoustic Interventionist approach. This means, to use the physical and tactile aspects of acoustics to adapt the everyday objects and structures in our urban surroundings. From day to day, the participants will locate different sites of interest in Tallin and intervene with these locations by testing their acoustic nature and adding acoustic energy to the objects and structures of the given location.
Essential to performing this workshop is an especially developed Tactile Acoustic Interventionist System, that relies on the principles of transduction, ie. the conversion of energy from one form to another. At the core of the Tactile Acoustic Interventionist System are certain speaker driver units called audio transducers. Their function can be described as a speaker magnet seperated from its cone and cabinet – especially designed for flexible attachment and optimal transmission of vibrational energy to any given material attached upon.
In this workshop participants will use transduction to set in vibration any object or structures of choice in order to produce sounding units. For exercises Paluszewski will provide a library of prepared sound material, but participants are also invited to bring in their own material.
Due to the experimental and discovering nature of the workshop, the sessions will have an open structure. The results rely on the findings and the ideas developed throughout the workshop. The finishing goal is the demonstration of the workshop results at end of day 6 (july 10th).
Mads Bech Paluszewski (b. 1977) is a Danish artist and independent cultural producer living in Copenhagen, Denmark. Educated MA in Geography and Performance Design from Roskilde University, his interests are within the realms of urban space interventionism, sound-installation and performing with sound, circuit bending, experimental music and DJing. Since the early 2000’s he has worked as artist, musician, composer, sound technician, cultural producer, workshopfacilitator and government consultant.
This workshop held by Magnus Torstensson and Eric Sandelin (Unsworn Industries) is about testing and location finding for the Metaphones project – a service that allows people to conduct phone calls through the air of a third location.
A Metaphone is a service that allows people to conduct phone calls through the air of a third location. The world’s first Metaphone will be installed in Tallinn in July 2011.
Each Metaphone installation consists of two stainless steel speakerphones facing each other a couple of feet apart, each equipped with a directed microphone and a speaker. After you have called a Metaphone’s phone number you input the phone number to the person you would like to talk to. The Metaphone calls up the other person and when he or she answers, your conversation is carried out through the air in between the speakerphones.
In this process the acoustic ambience of this third intermediate location is added to the conversation and the conversation seeps out into the local soundscape. Metaphones literally breathes fresh air into ordinarily wire bound phone calls.
Metaphone Tallinn is part of Unsworn Telecom – a series of products and services for beautiful and surprising telecommunications. They are sculptural landmarks as well as interfaces to practical and poetic functionality that caters to unexpected and idiosyncratic telecommunication needs.
This workshop proposes fieldwork and interventions with the 12-tone filter – a multifunctional sonic filter for transforming unpleasent everyday sounds as street traffic and city noise into a new experience of hearing. As this workshop will be mobile in nature, it will only meet at Ptarmigan for the initial gathering, at 12:00 on 4 July 2011.
12-tone filter is a mobile sonic object that transforms urban noises into tuned sounds. The object is made of 12 PVC drain pipes connected by elastic adhesive agent. Each pipe has a diameter of 100 mm. The resonance of a tube of air is related to the length of the tube. Pipes of twelve different lengths convert the incoming noises by resonance to different harmonic tonalities. The scale reaches from ´E to ES and includes odd and even number harmonics. Therewith the listener receives a new quality of hearing street traffic, aircraft noises and other strong everyday sounds. In addition one can play the object like an instrument, fading several tubes in and out. 12-tone filter is an effective transformer of ‘bad noise’ into ‘good noise’. Thanks to its reduced weight the object is mobile. One person can handle it focusing on interesting sources. It has the metaphoric appearance of a big anti-noise weapon, a kind of sounding bazooka. Jürgen Lehmeier, architect, designer, born in Dillingen (Germany), lives and works in Nuremberg. He studied interior design and architecture at the Postgraduate Program for Architecture and Urban Research akademie c/o of the Akademie der Bildenden Künste Nuremberg. In 2006 he founded the office Eyland 07 with René Rissland. René Rissland, architect, designer, born in Borna (Germany), lives and works in Nuremberg. He studied architecture at the Postgraduate Program for Architecture and Urban Research akademie c/o of the Akademie der Bildenden Künste Nuremberg. In 2006 he founded the office Eyland 07 with Jürgen Lehmeier. Florian Tuercke (b. 1977) is a sound-artist from Nürnberg, Germany. He graduated from the Nürnberg Academy of fine Arts with a postgraduate degree in “arts and public space”. His basic field of interest is the sound of urban spaces and its musical and copositional output.