The second episode of Dean Kavanagh's 'Late Hours of the Night' is now online!
Late Hours of the Night - 2013 (Part 2)
Image: Dean Kavanagh
Sound: Vicky Langan
Created by deankavanagh.com
Presented by experimentalfilmsociety.com
A post on http://ansnagbreac.blogspot.ie/ about the Hunters Moon Festival Score Trail 2013. Caroline and Jennifer Walshe invited a number of artists to visually respond to graphic scores from invited composers and the results were distributed throughout the Dock Arts Centre and the town of Carrick-On-Shannon.
My piece, Wire Music, After Bettystown was a response to Japanese performer/composer/sound poet Tomomi Adachi's graphic score For Piano and 2 Graters.
Here is a link to a pdf of all of the work in the Score Trail. Features Erin Gee, D. Edward Davis, Travis Just, Anthony Kelly, John Godfrey, Joe Kudirka, James Saunders, Tomomi Adachi, Karen Power, Anton Lukoszevieze, Danny McCarthy, Amnon Wolman, Istvan Zelenka, Alvin Curran, Paul McGuire, Jennifer Walshe, Sandra Lulei, Vicky Langan, Natalia Beylis, Felicity Ford, Caroline Walshe, Gavin Prior.
Keep an eye out for my small contribution to the Wire's 2013 Rewind issue.
I give a rundown of some of my favourite releases, reissues and personal highlights of 2013.
The second episode of @DeanKavanagh89's 'Late Hours of the Night' is now online: https://vimeo.com/80790309 Music by myself. RTs appreciated x
A Live Improvised, Experimental, Durational Performance
A collaboration between Red Bird Youth Collective, Dominic Thorpe (Performance Artist) and Vicky Langan (Sound Artist).
Red Bird Youth Collective’s experimental performance ‘Waking Playthings’ will take place from 4.00- 5.30pm on the 7th of December in Nun’s Island Theatre. This performance is the end result of a collaboration between performance artist Dominic Thorpe and sound artist Vicky Langan. This project is kindly supported by The Arts Council under The Youth Ensemble Scheme.
This collaboration began in September 2013 and took the form of weekly workshops in Galway Arts Centre where Thorpe and Langan shared ideas around performance and introduced various approaches to working with live art.The workshops ranged from interaction with materials to vocal improvisation, with a strong emphasis on experimentation and exploration. This project will tour to The GrainStore in 2014. This is Red Bird’s fourth collaborative project, their last project was the creation of an original film entitled ‘Belong’ with Jonathan Sammon and Ruadhrí Brennan. In 2014 they will pursue an architectural project with architect Dominic Stevens and visual artist Ruth Le Gear under the ‘Engaging with Architecture Award’ from The Arts Council.
Dominic Thorpe is a visual artist working primarily through the body in live performance. Through his practice he often engages with subject matter that has significant social importance. He is a co-director of Unit1 performance art and is currently a resident at the Fire Station Artists Studios, Dublin.
Vicky Langan's performance practice operates across several often overlapping fields, chiefly live art, sound, and film. In 2009, Langan founded Black Sun Cork, a platform for world-class underground music and experimental cinema in Ireland. Langan co-organises the Avant, an annual festival for Contemporary Arts in Cork
.
Admission is free and no booking is required for performance. Audience may come and go as they please through out.
Experimental Film Society @ Spectacle Theater, New York NOVEMBER 2013 from EFS Video Archive on Vimeo.
Tangled And Far, the latest collaboration between Max Le Cain and myself, will premiere at Spectacle Theater in New York this Thursday 21st at 10pm.
This screening is part of a whole programme of films Max and I have made. Also showing: Contact, Wölflinge 17/11/'10, Light/Sound,Hereunder, Desk 13 and Dirt.
Our programme is, in turn, part of a six-programme series devoted to New Irish Underground Film, specifically by members of Experimental Film Society, curated by Donal Foreman. Dean Kavanagh's superb feature A Harbour Town is also playing on the 21st. Full details here.
Tangled And Far is the most recent collaboration between Vicky Langan and Maximilian Le Cain. Drawing on footage of Langan’s performances over the past two years, as well as scenes specifically shot for this video, it foregrounds the overlap between intimate domestic detail and its reflection in Langan’s performance work. The private and public projections of her presence and actions collapse into each other in this phantasmagoric continuum of alternate selves and self-images to form a fractured dream portrait.
Cork Film Centre Gallery and The Guesthouse present Seesound 2013, a day of film/sound screenings, performances and installations by Experimental Film Society and friends, in association with IndieCork.
Sun Oct 20th, 12.30 - 6.30pm, Cork Film Centre Gallery, Ballincollig, Co. Cork
Initiated by The Guesthouse, Seesound is a unique artist-led initiative that enables sound artists, musicians and moving image-makers to form new collaborations to explore the effective relationship between sound and image. The 2013 edition, taking place on October 20th as part of the IndieCork Festival, is a collaboration between Experimental Film Society, The Guesthouse and Cork Film Centre, which will take the form of a day of screenings, performances and installations. This year, the venue for Seesound will be Cork Film Centre Gallery in Ballincollig, Co. Cork.
Read MoreDaniel Spicer interviewed me about my solo work for the latest issue of the Wire music magazine (#350). Included in the two-page feature are some great photographs by Aoife Barry, Zoe Valls and Jedrzej Niezgoda.
Jedrzej Niezgoda
MEITHEAL tape sold out: try @lokirecords @wingnutgalway or Into the Void if you missed it. Almost out of some others on.fb.me/13LALVx
— Fort Evil Fruit (@FortEvilFruit) March 9, 2013
And somewhat related to the tape, here's a teeny excerpt from a TUSK review that Rich Hughes did for the Liminal:
Antidotes to the noise came in the form of more rustic and acoustic artists that littered the bill. Meitheal (an Irish word for a work team or gang), a trio of Mike Gangloff, Vicky Langan and David Colohan, played folk songs, tinged with ancient lore. Prior to singing, Langan and Colohan passed between them an old folk songbook which they used for direct inspiration and the set had the feeling of something ritualistic, with each member taking the lead for one piece. The semi-improvised cries slow harmonium drones, while Gangloff’s violin was allowed to sweep and soar.
Photo by Andy Newcombe
Early in the Spring, Late in the Fall by Meitheal
Some news from Fort Evil Fruit over the weekend.
Dominique Monot and Vicky Langan
At an airport on the island of Hai-Wan, a young boy witnesses a failed assassination attempt. The assassin, a young woman called Mei, abducts the boy and brings him to her superior, the Metal Dragon. The Metal Dragon is the last of an old order of immortals living secretly in Hai-Wan. He resides on the top floor of the Gold Hotel, from where, via "all-seeing" security surveillance, he presides over the four dragons of the island's districts. These dragons are mortal men. Despite Mei's objections the Metal Dragon imparts the secret of long life to the boy before banishing him onto the streets of Hai-Wan.
The End Of The Earth Is My Home is a modern fantasy inspired by elements from the traditional Asian Stories of the Monkey King and Bram Stoker's Dracula, combined with the writer/director's travel experience.
The film was made over the winter and spring of 2011 / 2012 with a micro-budget raised by crowdfunding. The film uses very few CG effects, most of the effects being achieved in-camera with back-projections, models and other old studio techniques.
The film has an international cast and an original soundtrack by European Sensoria Band, in collaboration with some of the cast.
Premiered at the Darklight Film Festival 2012 and at the Kerry Film Festival 2012.
Directed by Alan Lambert
Mike Gangloff is best known as a member of drone improvisers Pelt and Spiral Joy Band, as well as Appalachian old-time outfit The Black Twig Pickers. In March of last year he performed at one of Vicky Langan's Black Sun events in Cork, alongside David Colohan's Raising Holy Sparks, and the Cork Sacred Harp Singers, with which Langan is involved. The three musicians played a short piece togethe
r to close the show. The trio, now named
, reconvened to appear at Newcastle's Tusk Festival in October.
The material here is largely culled from the Sacred Harp tradition, with vocals backed by Gangloff and Langan's twin fiddles and
Colohan's harmonium and shruti box drones. On the Tusk recording, each member sings lead in turn (culminating in what may be Colohan's finest recorded vocal to
date). The unadorned, unaffected approach allows the musicians' characters, and the traditions that shaped them, to shine through. In this way the music effortlessly reunites the folk traditions of Ireland and the Southern United States, while being informed by the hillbilly drone of Henry Flynt. Songs that date from as far back as the 19th century are placed in an unusual yet sympathetic context, retaining their directness and emotional power.
This release consists of both the Cork and Newcastle sets, as well as a rehearsal prior to the latter, and so contains Meitheal
's entire recorded work to date.
Early in the Spring, Late in the Fall by Meitheal
Mike Gangloff - voice & fiddle
Vicky Langan - voice & fiddle
David Colohan - voice, harmonium & shruti box
1.1: Recorded by Sam Grant, October 6th 2012 at the Tusk Festival in The Star & Shadow, Newcastle Upon Tyne, England.
2.1: Recorded March 8th 2012 at Black Sun in Plugd, Cork, Ireland during a solar storm.
2.2: Recorded October 6th 2012 during rehearsals for the Tusk set.
Artwork by David Colohan.
Pan illustration from 1920 songbook of "The Quaker Singer", David Bispham.
Thanks to Lee Etherington (Tusk), Sam Grant and Carapace.
Numbered edition of 100. Includes download code.
This programme of contemporary experimental film features new work by Irish-based members of Experimental Film Society.
It is presented as part of
, Creative Arts and Industries Platform
- a new collaborative initiative between UCC, Corcadorca Theatre Development Centre and Plugd Records.
Read MoreLight / Sound (7 mins, 2010), the first video I made with Max Le Cain, acclaimed by critic Fergus Daly as one of the top ten films of 2010 in the Senses of Cinema magazine end of year poll, was chosen for distribution by Paris-based experimental film cooperative Collectif Jeune Cinéma.
Read More
Rudolf Eb.er & Joke Lanz : Akustische Aktion (Essen)
Next week (30 November - 2 December), I'll be heading over to Bristol to take part in
Extreme Rituals: A Schimpfluch Carnival
,
a three-day series of performances, talks and more devoted to the legacy of the Swiss performance group Schimpfluch.
The event takes place in the
and is presented by
in partnership with Arnolfini,
,
,
and
The Live Art Development Agency
.
The Extreme Rituals carnival is a long-overdue retrospective and a celebration of Schimpfluch. Through an extensive programme will highlight the influence Schimpfluch has had since the late 80s, with audiences treated to a selection of performances, sound-installations, films, photographs and contextualising panel discussions. Alongside core Schimpfluch acts such as Runzelstirn & Gurgelstøck, Sudden Infant, G*Park and Dave Phillips this carnival weekender features rare UK appearances by international guest artists such as Hijokaidan's Junko Hiroshige, GX Jupitter-Larsen, Phurpa and Vagina Dentata Organ.
Rejecting any given norm and genre, tearing down mental barriers, unlocking all gates to the nether regions of the human psyche, their celebrated work aims to unlock an awareness of existence and encourages the audience to 'get off the plane of miseducated adulthood'.
Founded in Zürich in 1987, Rudolf Eb.er created Schimpfluch, a platform for extreme and outsider artists and the generation of highly disturbing and irritating audio/visual works. Gradually expanding to the Schimpfluch-Gruppe art-collective, Eb.er and Joke Lanz have since channelled grotesque humour into an ongoing series of confrontational radio broadcasts, physically demanding performances, ‘abreaction plays’ and ‘psycho-physical tests and trainings’.
On Friday, I'm landing and jumping straight into a panel discussion entitled Sound/Music/Noise in Performance Art. Chaired by Thomas John Bacon,other panelists include Ron Athey, Leif Elggren and Holly Ingleton.
Friday will also be disrupted with a number of guest performances from myself, Junko, Doreen Kutzke and Ute Waldhausen!
I'll also be performing solo on the Saturday, alongside a bill of Trevor Wishart, Vagina Dentata Organ, Joachim Montessuis, Sudden Infant and Runzelstirn and Gurgelstøck.
There are too many interesting things to list here so be sure to check out thefull programme over at soundandmusic.org. Apart from a full weekend of Schimpfluch artists and friends, Doreen will be giving a workshop in 'extreme yodeling', Chris Sienko leads a discussion on the history of Schimpfluch as well as a panel discussion on 'Confrontational and Transgressive Strategies Within Noise Music', feat. GX Jupitter-Larsen, Dave Phillips and Mike Dando! Rare Schimp. films, installations, performances from Alice Kemp & a fully stocked Second Layer on site!
I really can't wait.
Embedded below is a great Soundart Radio show recently put together bySteve 'MuhMur' Cammack. (http://www.muhmur.blogspot.ie/)
MuhMur SoundArt Broadcast. 15/11/2012 by Steve Cammack on Mixcloud
Anseo, Dublin. May 2009
Myself, the cub and Ronan Leonard at Triskel Arts Centre, Cork. Photo: Jed Niezgoda
Just about recovered after this year's Corona Cork Film Festival and enjoying some time off before getting ready for next year's festival! Met some lovely people and worked alongside an amazing team of volunteers and annual staff. I didn't get to see as much stuff as I'd like to have seen but it was a real joy to be caught up in the whirlwind of it.
One thing that really caught me by surprise was Paul Duane's excellent documentary Very Extremely Dangerous. Recommended!
Very Extremely Dangerous - Promo from screenworksfilmandtv on Vimeo.
Photo: Marcin Lewandowski
Pictured at our recent programme of experimental Lithuanian cinema at Triskel Arts Centre, 20th October:
(L-R) Alan Lambert, Vicky Langan, Ambassador of Lithuania Vidmantas Purlys, Max Le Cain, Julius Ziz.
Originally posted on wearenoise.com
Full photoset on here
It was great to come in out of the cold. Almost immediately, I struck up some conversation with an older woman who was also hovering next to the radiator by the front door. Asking her if she was aware that the seating arrangement for tonight was going to be a little unusual, she replied enthusiastically about a play she had seen in the Granary Theatre years ago where “we were all in it together”.
“How did that make you feel?” I asked her, “Were you self conscious or did it feel electric?”
“Oh no, I didn’t mind at all. It was fun. I was well able for any surprises.”
The back bar was full of excited faces and plastic pints. We downed our drinks and headed up the stairs to the stage where we entered an all-black rectangle, walled on one side and cordoned off with sheer black material on the other. In each of the four corners of the space were four medium-sized plinths, a spotlit chair on each of them. In the dead centre of the room sat a spotlit chair and a small desk (on which lay Cage’s score to Roaratorio, open on the second section of the piece).
The lightest of purplish mists hung in the air which added to the feeling of having collectively lost our bearings. I couldn’t tell where I was in relation to the main stage or the Half Moon Theatre. Where was backstage? What was behind the wall? There wasn’t time to figure it out. People quickly took up the seating along the edges of the space, others sat on the floor. A man sat in a meditative posture and bowed his head, quietly preparing for the performance. The four musicians emerged and took their seats. The tape recordings began. I looked up and noticed the rig above us, the speakers spread out and pointing downwards, with one suspended squarely above the empty chair in the middle of the space.
The room swelled with Cage’s sprechstimme, himself softly lilting the text, stretching out consonants, burring and enunciating syllables like soothing incantations. Recordings of water, women, men, carillon, birds, singing, laughing, dancing music, babies crying, gulls, wailing, rattles, explosions, shouts, cries, banging, barking, bleating, purrs, mewing, children singing, and motor engines lapped and curled through the haze.
People seemed a little too shy to be the first to break through the empty space and experience the fuller sound by walking around the room, but it didn’t take long before the space was filled with tranced listeners, brushing sleeves with strangers and winding their own path around the black box, occasionally stopping, with a bowed head or the opposite, shoulders back, head up, positively *receiving* the sound from above. At one point, an almost full circle had formed around Cage’s chair and desk, where the sound of the text was at its strongest.
Paddy Glackin’s warmth cut through the clamour like a hot knife through a lump of Kerrygold. Seamus Tansey on flute, his hornpipe tonguing bending around the corners of Liam O’Flynn’s slow air notes. Mel Mercier’s rhythms stopping everybody in their slow tracks… I was experiencing that manic feeling of being taken away when things were really pounding. There were moments of such intensity that it felt on par with some of the most affecting noise shows I’ve experienced. My skin crackled, I felt sound rush past me as though I were on the street. At times I was nowhere but my own head. A young couple lay on a bed of coats at Liam O’ Flynn’s feet. Life was all around us. Emotionally, I found it to beyond moving and joyous, other times completely ordinary, maybe surreal. I was fighting tears, trying to hold it together for a lot of the performance, especially when Peadar Mercier’s drumming or Joe Heaney’s voice would surface. We were all in it together, we were in a hundred different places.
Here's something myself and Max made back in April 2011. It was filmed in Galway and in Tuam, my hometown. A good portion of this was shot in the middle of the night in my Grandfather's shed. As an only child living with my grandparents, I spent a huge part of my childhood fooling around in there on my own.
I have a sad memory of spending a whole day trying to catch a Bánóg Bheag. Finally I had one clasped between my hands and it, fluttering wildly. I brought it to the shed to transfer it to a jar I had half-filled with india ink, naïvely hoping to help it get patterns on its wings. I forgot about the butterfly and found it drowned the following day. The shed was where I did my best exploring. Tools, rust, strange cans and tins, making up mixtures, climbing up the mountain of turf and sliding down again, finding dead birds, hammering nails into things. For me, so much of my head is tied up in that place.
So far, Hereunder has been screened at the Just Listen sound art festival in Limerick,
Hilltown New Music Festival, Westmeath, Cinekinosis in Bristol, the CineB Festival in Chile and at the Galway Arts Centre.
Hereunder from Vicky Langan on Vimeo.
Collaboration with Maximilian Le Cain 12 mins, HDV
Black Sun Cinema presents A Programme of Lithuanian Experimental Film j.mp/UR30JC
— Film Ireland (@FilmIreland) October 10, 2012
