We're excited to announce a new evening of experimental sound and image that we've organised together with the South London Gallery. Taking place at the SLG on Thursday 29 November 2012, the event will include a solo live performance by Russell Haswell featuring large-scale phase scope projections, a premiere presentation of new music from Jim O'Rourke commissioned especially for the occasion and a rare screening on 16mm of Marc Hurtado's (Étant Donnés) film Bleu.

NB: O'Rourke will not be appearing at this event in person. However, at his request we will be installing a motorised mirrorball - a recurring motif in the artwork of his LPs including on the covers of Bad Timing and The Visitor (both on Drag City) - for the presentation of the piece.

South London Gallery
65-67 Peckham Road, London SE5 8UH

JIM O'ROURKE

A true musical polymath, Jim O'Rourke (born 1969, Chicago) works as a musician, engineer, producer, composer and improviser, ignoring any divides between pop music and the so-called avant-garde. With a high profile stint as a member of Sonic Youth, credits behind the mixing board for Joanna Newsom's majestic Ys and hundreds of other classic records, a long association with American Primitive guitarist John Fahey and the deconstructed song forms of Gastr Del Sol (his duo with David Grubbs) it is sometimes easy to look past the fact that he is also - alongside originators such as Bernard Parmegiani and Francois Bayle - one of the greatest living composers of electronic music. Since his time at Chicago's De Paul University in the early 90s, O'Rourke has been steadily amassing a body of expansive compositions for tape and exploratory synthesiser works - long before they became the instrument de jour in the US underground. Many of these are now seeing the light of day via his 'Old News' series on Editions Mego and this event hopes to add a further chapter with the premiere of a new electronic piece commissioned especially for the evening and composed and recorded by Jim at his Steam Room studio in Tokyo where he has lived in a happy, self-imposed ' exile' since 2005.

Jim O'Rourke photo above by Kahimi Karie

RUSSELL HASWELL

Russell Haswell (born 1970, Coventry) is a cult noise artist who has been operating at the margins of the UK's electronic music scene since 1997. Documented in part via his 'live salvage' series for Editions Mego, Haswell's solo free improvisations for electronics are a heady, immersive experience made even more powerful by the relatively recent addition of phase scope projections that render his sounds as images especially at this event where they will be projected through three high powered projectors onto the walls of the South London Gallery's main space.

"Noise with purpose. Lean, economical and tremendously exciting" - The WIRE

In addition to solo performances Haswell also has a long running duo with Florian Hecker including works with Iannis Xenakis' graphic-input 'UPIC Music Composing System'.

Russell Haswell (photo by James Pearson-Howes)

Russell Haswell website

MARC HURTADO (Étant Donnés)

"Intensify the perception of reality in order to elevate it to the density of magic" - Marc Hurtado

Born in Rabat, Morocco in 1962, Marc Hurtado is a poet, musician, painter, performer, film-maker and co-founder, with his brother Eric, of the cult experimental multimedia group Étant Donnés. He has collaborated with the likes of Lydia Lunch, Michael Gira (Swans), Gabi Delgado (DAF), Genesis P Orridge (Throbbing Gristle), Alan Vega (Suicide) and most recently the Master Musicians of Jajouka.

Étant Donnés (named in tribute to Marcel Duchamp’s masterwork) were formed in Grenoble in 1977, their sound-works constructed through the manipulation of natural sounds, using the variation of velocity and intensity of the recordings, the cutting and splicing of tape. The early works were characterised by a focus on a “symphonic cacophony of disorganised found sounds, using magical rhythms only directed by cosmic rules.”

The trilogy of albums by Étant Donnés entitled Aurore, Royaume and Bleu, released on Touch Music and Staalplaat between 1990 and 1994, utilised sounds sourced from a series of field recordings, conducted as part of a performance ritual by the brothers. Great attention to detail was given to the context within which the sounds originated; amplified natural sounds, reduced to their essence. Films with the same title were made by Marc Hurtado to accompany the discs. When introducing the film Bleu at the Cinémathèque française, Marc Hurtado insistently placed the emphasis on the notion of love, which is at the root of his artistic stance. In Aurore, Royaume and Bleu, the effect is processed as matter and light, always related to sensation. To achieve pure sensation, image itself must be made tactile. As Marc Hurtado states: “I am not interested in the idea of expression, but rather in the one of impression, through a disintegration of my self into light, nature, breath, wind…”

Bleu by Marc Hurtado, 8mm film transferred to 16mm film, France, 1994, colour, 36 minutes.


A Still from Bleu by Marc Hurtado

THE SOUTH LONDON GALLERY

NB: This event is at The South London Gallery which is located near just next to Camberwell College of Arts on Peckham Road.


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The South London Gallery has an international reputation for its programme of contemporary art exhibitions and live art events, with integrated education projects for children, young people and adults. Five exhibitions each year profile the work of established international figures such as Tom Friedman, Mark Dion, Rivane Neuenschwander, Alfredo Jaar and Superflex; as well as that by younger and mid-career British artists such as Eva Rothschild, Alice Channer and Ryan Gander. Group shows bring together works by established and lesser known British and international artists. The gallery's live art and film programme has included presentations by Gisele Vienne, Chris Watson and Z'ev, Nathaniel Mellors, Manon de Boer, Ulla von Brandenburg, and occasional large scale off-site projects have included those by On Kawara in Trafalgar Square in 2004, and Chris Burden at Chelsea College of Art Parade Ground in 2006.

South London Gallery website