Black Sun Cinema: A Day of Experimental Film at Triskel Christchurch

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Presented in association with Triskel Christchurch, Black Sun, Cork’s weirdo/outer limits music/film event, is presenting a day of unsettling experimental film, a host of rare cinematic shadows flickering mysteriously at the darker fringes of the mind. On a Sunday afternoon this August (date will be confirmed next week), adventurous souls seeking haven from the harsh summer light will find sanctuary in Triskel’s Christchurch Cinema as three programmes of hauntingly dreamlike avant-garde visions fall through the church’s muffled darkness to take possession of all present:

- American underground legend James Fotopoulos’ feature The Nest (2003) “offers up a bleak and cryptically funny assault on suburban anomie… Fotopoulos creeps around the edges of character and drama, conjuring moods of paranoia and dread that suggest the carefully ordered routines of daily life are a kind of opiate administered by sinister forces. Shooting in harsh 16mm color, Fotopoulos renders The Nest in a typically Spartan, forbidding style that makes it seem as though he is some extraterrestrial visitor photographing humans for the first time.” (Scott Foundas, Variety) Ideal mind-warping viewing for admirers of David Lynch who think they’ve seen everything...

- Frans Zwartjes is arguably Holland’s preeminent experimental filmmaker. His highly stylised, poetically claustrophobic films achieve a unique level of sensual intimacy in their renditions of sexual and domestic tension, and voyeurism. These wordless works draw on performance art but are equally distinguished by their oneiric visuals, disconcerting editing rhythms and hypnotically minimal sound design. Once Zwartjes has caressed the surface of your eyeballs, you will never see cinema in the same way again. Black Sun will present a mini-retrospective of five of his most accomplished short films from the late ‘60s and early ‘70s.

 - And three of Ireland’s most uncompromising contemporary experimental filmmakers, Rouzbeh Rashidi, Dean Kavanagh and Black Sun film programmer Maximilian Le Cain, will be on hand to present a series of their more disturbing short films. Strange atmospheres, tense self-portraits, troubled meditations on the ghostly power of cinema itself… Filmmaking at its most eerie and obliquely personal.

 Although best known as an experimental music event, Black Sun is also Cork’s only year-round platform for screening experimental film. For over two years, Black Sun’s film programmes have given Cork an all-too-rare taste of the more far-out side of cinema. It has established an impressive track record of world-class film programming, introducing Irish audiences to the work of several major underground filmmakers for the first time. This is the first of what will become regular Black Sun events devoted exclusively to film.

Recordings from First Irish Sacred Harp Convention

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Today on Facebook, I posted a link to an interview that Bill Kouligas did with Eric Isaacson of Mississippi Records. Something Eric said (in response to Bill asking him about the religious or spiritual lean of much of the labels output) sparked off memories of the feeling of pure joy, ecstasy and love I've gotten from singing Sacred Harp music with friends over the years, an otherworldly sensation that lifts you up out of yourself into something very, awake and raw.

"I definitely think a lot of artists, Christian or not, on our label are channeled into a heavy, unexplainable frequency that I yearn to get closer to. I don’t believe in Christianity by any means—I’m a lifelong Buddhist—but I gotta respect the light that comes out of some of that faith’s music. Spiritual music from any culture is always the best music."

I'd been meaning to share the news for a while now that the 2011 Irish Sacred Harp Convention recordings are now available to stream download on the Cork Sacred Harp Bandcamp page. It's quite extraordinary listening back to these recordings. I'm especially grateful to have a way of reliving one of the most profoundly moving musical experiences of my life. In the tradition of the convention, halfway through the day's singing, we break for 'dinner on the grounds', a huge pot-luck feast we all share together. After the break, it's somebody's responsibility (decided well in advance) to lead the call-back, the song that will get everybody back to their seats and back into action again.

For this, our first convention, it was my responsibility to do the call-back, and I was so incredibly nervous of doing something wrong that I could barely eat. In the usual run of things, there is a keyer who chooses the pitch of every song (or most songs), everybody gets their notes together, holds them, and then the song takes off. In this instance, I was bent over with butterflies made of stone inside me, wondering how I was going to start singing in a room of over a hundred people still eating, drinking and in conversation. So, not knowing that I was supposed to call out the number of the song I wanted to lead, (so that everybody could scramble for their books and take their places) I stood in the middle of the hollow square and began to belt it out, not knowing what was going to happen next. Everyone was caught a little off guard but within seconds, the wave of voices that swept over me was like nothing I've ever experienced.

I love so many things about this recording. I can hear the nervous waver in my voice, I smile at the the uneven pause between verses, and melt into the recognisable timbres of so many friends voices. I remember relaxing into the moment, being carried by so many people who were all singing for their lives during that song. The strength of it was something else. Sacred Harp is a music that makes me feel the total weight of despair, as well as the utter joy of being alive and I hope to stay tuned into the unexplainable frequency for as long as I live.

 

The following is a repost from the http://corksacredharp.com/ website.

Complete First Ireland Convention Recordings Online

Our own 4-track audio recordings of the first Ireland Sacred Harp convention (March 5th & 6th, 2011) have finally been mixed, edited and sent out into world.

The results can be found on our brand-new Bandcamp page. There, virtually every single unique song that was sung over the weekend can be heard. The tracks have been compiled such that each day of the convention is presented in album form, with the songs listed in the same order in which they were called.

Both “albums” can be downloaded in their entirety, for free, and in an array of high-quality file formats. Alternatively, individual songs can be streamed directly from the page itself.


It goes without saying that this first Ireland convention was very special for us and the recordings help rouse some truly fond memories. It means a lot to be able to share them with wider community. All going well, the videos will follow before long.

Now… Go! Listen!

http://corksacredharp.bandcamp.com/

Interview with Charlie McBride of the Galway Advertiser -May 17th

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When I was a kid, my three friends and I split a newspaper round. We delivered the Galway Advertiser, all around St Marys Road, Henry Street, 'the West', Palmyra Avenue, Palmyra Park, The Crescent, all the way up to the very top of Taylors Hill. We'd come home from school on a Thursday and there'd be a big stack of them bound up for us, reeking of newspaper. You'd get a scissors and snap open the ties and *thacckk*, they'd all seem to breathe at once.

We each had our own way of loading them into our bags, our own preference of how to fold them just so, our favourite type of letter box, our favourite gardens on the route and we all had our own house that we dreamed of owning when we grew up.

We won 'deliverers of the month' when I was nine, and I remember being so proud, getting to visit the Galway Advertiser office to get our photo taken. Anyway, today felt a little strange remembering how 'everywhere' the Galway Advertiser is. I've been getting loads of nice messages and hullos from lots of people from my past who've happened upon the piece today in all sorts of places.

Click on the image to be brought to the online version. Thanks to Charlie for the great chat. He had some job editing my blather down I'd say. x

 

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.

 

Record Store Day Celebrations at PLUGD - Triskel, Cork

Plugd Records celebrates the first anniversary of its new home at the Triskel Arts Centre on Record Store Day April 21st 2012.  Be sure you join in the party at the Triskel Arts Centre with The Jimmy Cake, Melodica Deathship and Nanu Nanu!

My little family (cub pictured, ddmurph out of shot) will be in store from 7-8pm on Record Store Day to spin some of our wildest and weirdest black stuff so make a whole day of it and see ye down there over the course of the day!

More details here:

The Jimmy Cake/Melodica Deathship/Nanu Nanu @ Triskel

 

 

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


 

 

Marcin Lewandowski exhibition at the Triskel, Cork.

John Wiese compacting my brain at Black Sun at the Triskel, 2012. Photo by Marcin Lewdandowski

Cork is lucky to have a photographer like Marcin Lewandowski stalking about. His photographs always floor me, and any time he's taken photos at a Black Sun event, I'm always amazed at how he manages to capture intimate moments with such stealth, craft and near-invisibility. It's worth noting then, that as part of their first anniversary celebrations, the Triskel Arts Centre are showing photographs of the many events that Marcin has photographed there over the last 12 months. Go and see for yourself!

www.soundofphotography.com/

facebook.com/soundofphotography

@MLSOP

 

 

Black Sun (John Wiese & special guests) wearenoise.com review

Vicky Langan interview (archived) on Nova, RTÉ Lyric Fm

Back in December 2009 (the day before the Black Sun with Blood Stereo, Fuaimbhac, Gryn Brvs and HereHareHere), I was invited up to RTÉ studios, along with a number of other Cork-based sound artists, to each do an interview with Bernard Clarke, the presenter of Nova, a contemporary music programme on RTÉ Lyric Fm.

As much as I was looking forward to visiting RTÉ and having a look around the studios, part of me felt like I really had no business being interviewed for such a highly-esteemed show on national radio. It was my first time being interviewed as 'an artist' or 'composer', both terms I shrugged off uncomfortably anytime they were mentioned.

I haven't listened back to the recording in a while but looking at the playlist, I'm reminded of what ground we covered. At the time, I was ferociously private about the work I created. I wasn't interested in documenting performances and had little interest in ever recording something that wasn't for a live audience. All we had to go on was recordings of a number of collaborations I had done with various friends over the years, along with one solo recording where I taped myself screaming into a tube in my bedroom for the Rediscovering Locality A Sonology Of Cork Sound Art cd curated by Danny McCarthy.

Bernard was a very sharp interviewer and I loved our time spent together. Our conversation tumbled out so naturally that it ended up becoming an hour long feature on his two hour programme. My mother was burstin' with pride, and I'm delighted to have been able to pay a small tribute to her and the influence she's had on me over the years. When it was broadcast that summer night the following year, I lay on my bed and held a pillow over my face, shouting into it anytime I heard my voice. It was tough going, but I eventually relaxed and began to enjoy listening to the chat unfold.

So, here's the interview from 4th December 2009, which was eventually broadcast August 1st 2010.

http://www.rte.ie/lyricfm/nova/1375893.html

 

Playlist: 

Voltos Bolt - Vainio/Vaisanen - Pan Sonic - Gravitoni - Blastfirstpetite - PTYT 045 - 03:39

Early Morning Fog - Reto Mader - RM74 - Reflex - Utech Records - 05:45

Monk - Denseland - Denseland - Chunk - Mosz - MOSZ-022 - 05:11

Frozen Chunk - Denseland - Denseland - Chunk - Mosz - MOSZ-022 - 03:16

Thinking You Are Here And I Am There - Female Orphan Asylum - Vicky Langan and Brian Conniffe - 06:07

Transitory Life - Laurie Anderson - Laurie Anderson - Homeland - Nonesuch - 524055-2 - 06:51

Time Lapse - Arve Henriksen - Arve Henriksen - Chiaroscuro - Rune Grammofon - RCD 2037 - 05:07

Ending Image - Arve Henriksen - Arve Henriksen - Chiaroscuro - Rune Grammofon - RCD 2037 - 02:26

.Your Heart Stops.You Continue Writing - Michal Nejtek - Prague Modern/Michel Swierczewski - European Broadcasting Union Recording - 12:36

After Pieces 1 - Raymond Deane - Raymond Deane - Contemporary Music From Ireland Volume 1 - CMC - CMC CD 01 - 04:09

The Ninth Set Sector 1 - Roger Doyle - Roger Doyle - The Ninth Set - Die Stadt - DS103 - 09:51

Pathworking - Female Orphan Asylum - Vicky Langan and Brian Conniffe - 03:35

She Belongs To Me - Bob Dylan - Bob Dylan - Bringing It All Back Home - CBS - CD32344 - 01:35

I'M Going Home - Traditional American - Ervin Webb & Prisoners - Presenting The Alan Lomax Collection - Rounder Records - CRSCD 810 - 02:30

Lamp-Lit Wood - Agitated Radio Pilot - David Colohan and Vicky Langan - David Colohan and Vicky Langan - 03:35

For Alice Coltrane - United Bible Studies - United Bible Studies - 05:45

Howlaround - Vicky Langan - Wolflinge - Rediscovering Locality A Sonology Of Cork Sound Art - Farpoint - FARPOINT031 - 00:45

Rentre Bourre - Jean-Louis Costes - Jean-Louis Costes - 04:01

Voce - Vicky Langan and Damien Donovan - Vicky Langan and Damien Donovan - 05:06-