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Bernard Clarke on 'Judas Steer' at the Galway Arts Centre -Sat 19th May

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Well, my evening has been made tonight! Some strong words here from Bernard Clarke of Nova - RTÉ lyric fm recommending my upcoming show at the Galway Arts Centre on Sat May 19th. Thanks so much to Bernard for his support.

" There are some musicians who entertain us, fine; some who stimulate us, better; and then some who immerse us in something so powerful that, almost, primal emotions surface instantly; making us ultra-defensive, or, finally open to illumination. One of the latter is Vicky Langan. So if you're in the West this coming Saturday evening and you feel like really stirring up a storm in yourself, check her out at the Galway Arts Centre at 8pm. You may love her, hate her, be astonished, be repelled-but you will not be unmoved. Promise. In a world of bland s**te we need to treasure artists like this -even if they burn... "

 

Bernard Clarke reading "Themes and Variations" as part of Child of Tree: A Celebration Of John Cage, Triskel Christchurch, Cork, 28 January 2012. Photograph by Robin Parmar.

 

'Judas Steer' -Vicky Langan (Wölflinge) at the Galway Arts Centre, May 19th.

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Photo by softblackstar

Judas Steer

Vicky Langan (Wölflinge) at the Galway Arts Centre, May 19th.

€5 / BYOB / 8PM

http://www.galwayartscentre.ie/events/view-event/192.html


Vicky Langan is a Galway-born, Cork-based performer and curator whose “vulnerable, emotionally charged performances” (The Wire) have marked her out as one of the most challenging and unsettling presences on the Irish scene today. Her work is multifaceted, embracing not only various types of performance but also filmmaking and organising experimental music events.  In this event, she will be bringing these three strands of her practice back home, giving Galway audiences a rare, concentrated one-night blast of the intensity that has made her a force to be reckoned with in Cork.

Judas Steer will feature Langan as performer, filmmaker and curator. Her solo performance project, Wölflinge, uses flesh, fluid and self-built instruments to envelop audiences in an aura of dark intimacy. In opening herself emotionally, she creates warm yet discomforting rituals that at once embrace the viewers and remain resolutely private. Not only will Langan be performing, but she will also present an exhibition of recreations, relics and leavings of past performances.   In partnership with experimental filmmaker Maximilian Le Cain, Langan has created a series of films that expand the scope of her performance activities. Le Cain’s distinctively jarring, disruptive visual rhythms have proved a strikingly fitting match to her troubling sensibility. Four Langan/Le Cain films will be screened, including the premiere of a brand new work.  

No account of Langan’s accomplishments is complete without mention of Black Sun, Cork’s legendary weirdo/outer limits music event which she founded in 2009 and has curated ever since.  Her DJ set, which closes the evening, will give a powerful taste of the sort of strange sounds that have earned Black Sun its international reputation.

 

Review - Lydia Lunch / Wölflinge - Triskel Christchurch -wearenoise.com

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Photo by Bríd O' Donovan

To help mark the celebrations for the fifth anniversary of The Black Mariah gallery here in Cork, I was invited to open for Lydia Lunch with a short performance. The space was very different to any other place that I've worked in before and I felt very alone in the piece, apart from hearing some cameras clicking halfway through.

Kieran O' Keeffe was there to review the show for wearenoise.com:

When I hear that tonight’s Lydia Lunch spoken word event will be opened by Wölflinge, it makes perfect sense. Once – and possibly still – an adjunct of the extended United Bible Studies collective, for many years a creative force in her own right, and renowned for pushing the boundaries here in our back yard with Black Sun and multiple collaborations, Vicky Langan aka Wölflinge is about the only local act who could effectively complement the show tonight, or with the kahunas to do so. Plus as tonight’s event is hosted by The Black Mariah gallery, both performers typically stretch across the grey area between music show and performance art. It should make for an interesting evening.

Wölflinge appears unannounced from the darkness at the back of the stage, unassuming as ever; readies an array of pedals, and preps for the performance by partially disrobing. Bare breasted, and contact mic in mouth, the crowd are soon pulled into a kind of uncomfortable intimacy with the performer, as every gulp of saliva and flutter of breath from inside her mouth is amplified to the level that you would normally only hear if the sound was coming from your own head.

Small jars are produced and held at ear level, upturned, allowing the contents – a thick, viscous, inky black liquid, to pour slowly out and cover the naked skin. Breathing, shallow and deep, is accompanied by various clicks and pops from the mic. This performance seems to follow on from recent collaborations with First Blood Pt II where the two are locked in close quarters and at times almost primal screaming into each other’s mouths. Tonight’s solo performance is more vulnerable, and is like an assault on the senses which culminates suddenly when the bodily sounds are thoroughly distorted into a fierce howl, before dissipating, and Wolflinge, now an exhausted figure streaked with black on her skin leaves the stained surroundings of the stage and steps back into the darkness from whence she came. I glance at my watch: the entire performace took no more than fifteen minutes. Impressive for the levels of intensity reached so quickly, most of the audience don’t seem to know what to make of it. Its wordless evocation of female agression and physical vulnerability is a fitting counterpart to the vocal diatribe we are about to experience. “The body is an experimental canvas, full of puss and cum”, we’ll hear later, and that take is foreshadowed here.

 

Read the rest of the review here: 

Lydia Lunch / Wölflinge – Triskel Christchurch, 12.04.12


 

 

National Sculpture Factory -Dispatches 2011

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Dispatches 2011 (outlining projects at the National Sculpture Factory from 2011)

http://nationalsculpturefactory.com/?page_id=2269

"Wölflinge created a vunerable, visceral & physically charged sound-performance where Langan's body was tested to its limits, lying in a pool of manure while performing on a piano harp all the while labouring under its weight. Langan's discomforting and troubling rituals bring an intensity to the shared performance and a shared physical experience."