Tuesday, June 8, 2010

What's up Vienna! What's Up Montreal! What's Up Winnipeg!


WHAT'S UP VIENNA! WHAT'S UP WINNIPEG!

A two-part, two-city encounter of sound, film and video
Curated by Michaela Grill, Christof Kurzmann and Steve Bates

FRIDAY, JUNE 11, 2010

CKUW 95.9 fm, the West End Cultural Centre and send + receive present :

RADIAN

TIM HECKER with MICHAELA GRILL and BILLY ROISZ

DIDI BRUCKMAYR

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Film and video work by Ernst Schmidt Jr., Albert Sackl, Jan Machacek, VALIE EXPORT, Kurt Kren, Didi Bruckmayr and Michael Strohmann

West End Cultural Centre
586 Ellice Avenue
Doors 7:15 pm Film/video: 7:30 pm, music to follow
Tickets $12 in advance/ $15 at the door available at Ticketmaster, Music Trader and the West End.

SATURDAY, JUNE 12, 2010

CKUW 95.9 fm, and send + receive present :

CHRISTOF KURZMANN and MICHAELA GRILL

NTSC

CHRISTOF KURZMANN and crys cole

dieb 13 and MICHEL GERMAIN and MARTIN BRANDLMAYR (Radian)
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Film and video work by Tina Frank, Martin Arnold, Peter Tscherkassky, Billy Roisz, Michaela Grill and Martin Siewert, [n:ja], Peter Kubelka, Gustav Deutsch
Urban Shaman
203-290 McDermot Avenue
Doors: 7:30 pm Film/video: 8:00 pm, music to follow
Tickets $10 at the door

What’s Up Vienna! What’s Up Montréal!

A two-part, two-city encounter of sound, film and video
Curated by Michaela Grill, Christof Kurzmann and Steve Bates

What’s Up Vienna! What’s Up Montréal! is both a celebratory championing of exciting work emerging from the two cities as well as a challenge to keep innovating. It is a coming together of the experimental music, video, and film communities active in each city played in and off the other. It is a look and listen to the work that exists just under the radar, perhaps happily so, but destined to make reverberations later in the larger culture they come from.

The artists involved in What’s Up Vienna! What’s Up Montréal! come together for two intense periods, once in Montréal (and Winnipeg) and again in Vienna. They will perform their own works and instigate new collaborations through this encounter.

Winnipeg is also included in this first edition as the initial connections between

the curators came about when Steve Bates, (then living in Winnipeg) presented the work of the Viennese quartet, My Kingdom for a Lullaby, at Send + Receive: A Festival of Sound in 2003, of which Michaela Grill and Christof Kurtzmann, co-curators for What’s Up Vienna! What’s Up Montréal! are members.

For the Winnipeg edition of the exhibition, Tim Hecker will be on hand from Montréal while two local artists, long associated with experimental sonic forms, Michel Germain, long –time technical director of Send + Receive, and crys cole, the current Artistic Director of the festival, are included in the line up.

Artists selected for the program cover a wide breadth of technique but all possess a singular approach to their artistic practice.

This program, consisting of live music, film and video art, features Radian, an electroacoustic band that combines microscopic sonic detail into its rock dynamic. Emotional and cerebral in the same song, the group expands the rock palette to new extremes. Didi Bruckmayr has a doctoral degree in economics, is a performance artist, a musician and extreme vocalist. Christof Kurzmann is interested in improvised music and electropop songs. He is an internationally respected improvisor of electroacoustic music, conscientious objector, and concert organizer/label owner. Michaela Grill is a video artist who frequently collaborates with improvising musicians. She was recently the recipient of a major award in Austrian film and video making. dieb 13 renders cassette players, vinyl, cd's and harddisks into instruments. He has composed music for theatre, opera, video productions, and installations. He directs the internet platform klingt.org. Billy Roisz specializes in feedback video and video/sound interaction using monitors, cameras, video mixing desks, a selfbuilt videosynth, computer and turntables for video and sound generating. NTSC is the duo of dieb 13 and Billy Roisz. NTSC is a continously developing project about interactions between sound and video off the well beaten paths of computer analysis and synthesis in a live context. The New York Times has described Tim Hecker’s work as “foreboding, abstract pieces in which static and sub-bass rumbles open up around slow moving notes and chords, like fissures in the earth waiting to swallow them whole”. His Harmony in Ultraviolet received critical acclaim, including being recognized by Pitchfork as a top recording of 2006. Radio Amor was also recognized as a key recording of 2003 by Wire magazine. His latest full-length, An Imaginary Country, was released by Chicago-based kranky records. crys cole has worked and performed extensively as a solo artist and in free improvisation settings across Canada, and has toured Germany, France, Italy and Belgium. She works predominantly with contact microphones, minimal signal processing and no-input mixing board. Mike Germain is a musician, audio artist, and technician whose work explores frequencies in all their forms. His work ranges from using improvised techniques in electronics to sound design for film as well as installation projects. Germain has exhibited at the Winnipeg Art Gallery, whereby he developed custom-built software to sonify brain-wave data. He is the former Technical Coordinator for the send + receive festival of sound and currently a Video Pool Media Arts Centre technician based in Winnipeg.

For more information, see the send+receive website or the What's Up Vienna! What's Up Montreal site.

Of course, all of you overwhelmed by ennui new or old will find this evening full of exquisite delights and even more exquisite sorrows to satisfy even the most jaded of Des Esseintes among you.