The Reykjavik Arts Festival has been held since 1970 featuring an international selection of artists. Since 2004, the original bi-annual schedule of the festival was made an annual event held each May. This year it will be held from the 15 May to 5 June.
Composer and filmmaker Thierry De Mey's short film set to Maurice Ravel's "Ma Mère l'Oye"(Mother Goose) was created in 2004 by commission from ARTE. The ballet written in 1908 is inspired by the fairy tales of Charles Perrault. This 28-minute film is a fascinating collage filmed in the woods outside Brussels.
Founded by Édouard Lock in 1980, La La La Human Steps is a Quebec-based contemporary dance group known for their intense expression, speed and bold productions. I find it difficult to put into words the sublime effect of their work but the clips below do give a good indication of their voice.
I will be coming back to La La La Human Steps in more detail later. In the meantime, enjoy these samples.
Living and working in Reykjavik, Gabríela Fríðriksdóttir is yet another Icelandic artist that has caught my attention.
Gabriela graduated from the Icelandic College of Art & Crafts in 1997. She works in a variety of media including sculpture, drawing, media, sound, and music. Creating her own mythology, exploring borders of dream and reality, she has quickly become a prominent figure in the Icelandic art world. In 2005, she was Iceland's representative at the Venice Biennale.
In line with the ethos that SiouxWIRE advocates, Michel Lemieux's creations merge media and span class. Founding Lemieux.Pilon 4D Art in 1983, directors Michel Lemiux and Victor Pilon combine performing arts with new media to create a hybrid show merging performance, scenography, cinema, video, dance, poetry, visual arts, lighting design, music and sound. The results are striking and coherent.
Here is an example from their latest performance. Note that this clip has no post production. The visuals were filmed as they were on stage.
Presenting more than 300 performances since its creation, Lemiux.Pilon 4D Art has worked internationally and in collaboration with Cirque du Soleil. Their latest project, Norman is a tribute to Norman McLaren and the history of art animation.
Michel Lemieux and Victor Pilon are currently working on the opera version of Starmania by Luc Plamondon and Michel Berger that will be presented during the festivities of the 400th anniversary of Quebec City with performances on the 17, 19, 20, 22, 24, and 26 of May 2008.
As well as introducing their work to South America in Bogota, Columbia, Lemieux.Pilon 4D Art will also be taking Norman on tour this year.
Michel very kindly agreed to be interviewed in Fall 2007, but due to some technical difficulties it has taken some time to release this interview. Enjoy.
What was the inspiration and purpose of your establishment of 4d Art in 1983? The inspiration was to merge different forms of expression, such as visual arts, dance, theater, cinema, music, in the context of performing arts. One can say that Opera is doing so for centuries, I think in fact ancient Greek theater was quite multi-disciplinarian. Specialisation came later and confined the different mediums to a highly specialized form. All mediums of representation represent in fact a possible way to approach creativity. In our times, I think we are ready to put things in relation, in interpenetration with each other. And how did your collaboration with Victor Pilon begin? And how do you feel the two of you compliment each other? Victor has been in visual fine arts for a while when we met. I have studied in theater, so our interest and competences were so compatible that we started to work together in a very natural way. We could say that this more than 20 years collaboration is a based on a very strong friendship that helped us to become what we are as humans and artists.
In general, we do all concepts and direction together, Vic would more specialised in space elements such as artistic direction, visual arts, and I would be more focused on «time» elements, such as music , editing, timing but in fact we share all the aspects of the creation in consensual way.
Two new treats for fans of Bjork: the video for Wanderlust, the fourth track from her album Volta and a free remix of her album Post. The video has been created by Encyclopedia Pictura and the remix album is from Stereogum and is titled Enjoyed: A Tribute to Bjork's Post.
The video for Wanderlust has been gestating for the last 9 months with Encyclopedia Pictura who has been responsible for some unique creations in the last few years. Finally born, the video which can be viewed in 3D or 2D is a delicious blend of organic elements and ingenious craft which is fertile with textures, ideas, and feelings.
Below is the full, flash video for Wanderlust. Alternatively, the high resolution Quicktime version is available HERE on the Encyclopedia Pictura site though it is quite slow at the moment due to demand.
Rebecca Horn's works have a consistent thread through them with her creations taking what preceeded it and developing the concepts. Creating installations, performances, films, sculptures, drawings, and photographs, her early explorations between body and space still echo in her latest work.
At 20, Rebecca contracted severe lung poisoning. Living in seclusion at a sanatorium, this isolation was compounded by the death of her parents. Working from her bed, she started working with coloured pencils and developed the first of her body extensions from balsa wood and cloth.
Returning to Hamburg Academy, she further developed the body extensions for which she is most known creating cocoon-like wraps, elongated and supplemental limbs as well as performances built around these creations. And despite her methodical approach, she hasn't been averse to whimsy or humour which adds to weightless, ethereal feel to some of her works.
Matthew Barney has described his motivation for his Drawing Restraint series as a means of exploring the concept that “resistance as a prerequisite for development and a vehicle for creativity.” As the series has progressed, it has become increasingly fascinating, unpredictable and at times frustrating.
On entering Yale University, his original intention was to study medicine but his interests turned toward art and in 1989, he received his B.A.. His work would quickly garner Barney considerable amounts of praise and controversy.
Working with film, video, installations, sculpture, photography, drawing and performance art, his approach is equally diverse and often times incorporates an element of resistance both in terms of physical impediments on himself and more subtle challenges to the viewer.
With Anders Rønnow Klarlund's live action film How to Get Rid of Others due for release this year, I have been looking for something new to post about his previous film Strings which is set in a world of marionettes and created entirely with marionettes. Dek at No Fat Clips! has obliged with a nice post including a poignant scene from the film. See it HERE. Released in 2004, Strings was well received by critics and audiences, and is a compelling work bursting with metaphor.
Klaus Obermaier is a media artist, director, composer, and lecturer. Working in dance, music, theatre, new media and creating interactive installations, video art, web projects, computer music, radio plays, and large scale outdoor performances, his work has innovated, inspired, and has been well received by critics and spectators.
I am extremely grateful to Klaus for sparing some time in the run up to this performance to answer my questions. You have found ways to fuse and extend performers bodies. First, how do the performers themselves approach these fusions and how much control do they maintain in their performance? Second, is it important to you that the result looks natural(organic) and/or is an aesthetic of artifice an important part of the interpretation? Both questions depend on each particular piece, as there is a big difference in the approach of for instance VIVISECTOR, APPARITION or Le Sacre du Printemps.
InLe Sacre du Printemps, I was doing the choreography and therefore was able to create my own kind of balance between real body (natural) and virtual. I was going for an aesthetic, where the human can interact with the realtime generated digital environment in a very natural way. The dance should work by its own, but also seamless fuse and interact with the digital environment. There is plenty of space for improvisation, but also the more strictly choreographed parts don't restrict the dancer regarding her performance, not more than in any conventional piece - Julia Mach keeps control.
The Icelandic Love Corporation are enigmatic and their colourful, life affirming works are transient or anonymous. Because of this and having read numerous other interviews, I knew that this would be a challenge; a bit like catching smoke with a net or a scooping up the same piece of river more than once.
Their work spans a wide range of mediums including performance, sculpture, installations, music, film, television, painting, and literature. While certainly emotive, like their creators, the works are resistant to analysis. Trying to do so is rather pointless; a bit like trying to create a specific blueprint for how to run the rake through a Zen garden.
What I will say is that I find their work honest and refreshing with a seriousness that isn't cumbersome. As a whole, their body of work is like an ornate diary, a window into their own personal journeys with the most incredible, enlightening outlook.
In regards to the name of your group, would you explain the importance of the trio of words from which it is made: Icelandic, love, and corporation? And aside from the name itself, what changed between the group being known as Gjörningaklúbburinn and The Icelandic Love Corporation? Well, we never thought about it as a trio of words, per se. When this name was first used, we were actually a quartet. Dóra Isleifsdóttir was a part of the group from 1996 - 2001. Why we chose those three exact words is both easy and hard to explain. Icelandic, well that's a fact. We are icelandic. Love. we like it. it is a strong idea. It is both a redeeming, creative and destructive element. but most of the time a very good thing. corporation.
"Some people seem to automatically connect the word love to something kitschy or childish. We really don't understand that."
Probably the megalomania in us back then was pretty strong. but also we thought it was funny. to be a corporation of four girls. We did not really sit around contemplating about this name for a very long time. it just seemed right. through the years we have thought about it from time to time and have grown to like it more and more. Some people seem to automatically connect the word love to something kitschy or childish. We really don't understand that. well partly we do, but we think that's unfair to love.
Kyle Ruddick and Cari Ann Shim Sham's video for ambient Ohio band, Low in the Sky's "Are You for Real" is an interesting work. It reminds me of one of my my favourite scenes in cinema--the paper consumption from Terry Gilliam's Brazil. The use of colour(or non-use), minimal dance, and effects pair well with the Low in the Sky's music. The video is presented below in Flash format and can also be downloaded in Quicktime HERE from Eyestorm.
Cari Ann is a choreographer and dance filmmaker, and Kyle Ruddick is the founder of Eyestorm Productions. An earlier video for Low in the Sky for the song "Cool Sanson" as well an interview with its director Tyler James is available in an earlier post HERE.
Stumble it!
The Reykjavik Arts Festival has been held since 1970 featuring an international selection of artists. Since 2004, the original bi-annual schedule of the festival was made an annual event held each May. This year it will be held from the 15 May to 5 June.
Stumble it!
