[spectre] AV Festival 08 - 28 Feb - 8 March 08 - programme available

Honor Harger honor at avfestival.co.uk
Fri Jan 25 03:00:07 CET 2008


Dear Spectres,

I hope this email finds you well.

Please find below the programme announcement for 
AV Festival 08: Broadcast in the North East of 
England.

The AV Festival <http://www.avfestival.co.uk/> is 
a biennial international festival of electronic 
art, moving image and music.

The next festival takes place 28 Feb - 8 March 08 
and is on a topic very close to my heart - 
broadcasting!   It features Marko Peljhan 
(Slovenia), Harun Farocki (Germany),  Tetsuo 
Kogawa (Japan), Autechre (UK), Joyce Hinterding 
(Australia), Yuko Mohri (Japan), Jean-Jacques 
Perrey (France), Chris Watson (UK), People Like 
Us (UK) and many many others.

I have included an announcement about the festival below.
The full programme can be downloaded or viewed 
from the AV website: http://www.avfestival.co.uk/

I would be delighted if some of you would 
consider attending the festival.  I would be 
honoured to welcome  you here in the North East 
of England, and would be very happy to help 
design an itinerary for anyone of you who wished 
to attend.  Please do not hesitate to let me know 
if you want more information about the festival.

Sincere apologies for cross-posting!

Very best wishes

Honor Harger
Director, AV Festival 08
http://www.avfestival.co.uk/



AV FESTIVAL 08 - PROGRAMME ANNOUNCEMENT

AV Festival 08
http://www.avfestival.co.uk/
Newcastle, Gateshead, Middlesbrough, Sunderland, UK
28 February - 8 March 2008

The AV Festival <http://www.avfestival.co.uk/> is 
a biennial international festival of electronic 
art, moving image and music. AV Festival 08: 
Broadcast will take place across the three urban 
areas of NewcastleGateshead, Sunderland & 
Middlesbrough, 28 February - 8 March 2008.

The theme of the festival is broadcast. The UK 
has begun to switch off analogue television 
signals, paving the way for television to become 
entirely digital. At the same time the internet 
and mobile networks have created opportunities 
for us to 'broadcast ourselves' in entirely new 
ways.  As the landscape of broadcasting changes 
irrevocably, AV Festival 08 will be a catalyst 
for debate about the future of broadcasting, and 
an event to celebrate a century of on-air and 
online transmission.

AV Festival 08: Broadcast features of over 100 
new commissions, exhibitions, screenings, 
concerts, workshops and events, including:

- a new performance of John Cage's Variations VII 
performed by :zoviet*france: & Atau Tanaka

- a newly commissioned outdoor performance by Marko Peljhan

- a contemporary version of the world's most 
famous radio play, directed by Joanna Read

- performances by Autechre, the BBC Radiophonic 
Workshop, Jean-Jacques Perrey, Broadcast, 
Disinformation, Long Range & many others

- a newly commissioned sound installations by 
Chris Watson, Marcus Coates, People Like Us  and 
others

- exhibitions by Joyce Hinterding, Harun Farocki, 
Staalplaat Soundsystem, Yuko Mohri, Sonia Boyce, 
Ryota Kuwakubo and others

- a major new touring exhibition, Broadcast 
Yourself, featuring Bill Viola, Chris Burden, 
Nina Pope & Karen Guthrie & others

- a conference featuring Atau Tanaka, Douglas 
Kahn, Brandan Labelle, Heidi Grundmann, Tao G. 
Vrhovec Sambolec & others

- workshops lead by Tetsuo Kogawa, Raitis Smits, Caitlin Jones and others

- a screening programme of bold and innovative 
television & encounters with top television 
writers and directors

- 3 FM radio stations, including Resonance FM 
broadcasting from mima in Middlesbrough


___AV Festival 08: theme
http://www.avfestival.co.uk/introductions/honor_harger

We have just entered the second century of 
broadcasting, And it finds us on the apex of 
massive change.  The switch off of analogue 
broadcasting has now started. Information and 
entertainment which has been sent via the 
airwaves since the beginning of the 20th century 
is going digital.

What does this mean for the future of 
broadcasting?  Does the switch to digital create 
greater possibilities for cultural and community 
participation in broadcasting?  Or will the 
switch create more complex regulatory frameworks, 
which disempower potential broadcasters? Will the 
airwaves fall silent after the switch off?  What 
is the fate of the part of the spectrum that 
radio and television use now?  Will this valuable 
natural resource be opened up for public use?  Or 
will these frequencies be sold to mobile 
telephone companies or the military?

The answers to these questions may define our 
entertainment culture for the next decades, and 
will provide the backdrop for AV Festival 08.

At the same time as traditional broadcasting 
faces transformation, the internet has emerged as 
a key network for the distribution of audiovisual 
material.  It seems that the webcasting 
revolution promised at the end of last millennium 
is just beginning to bear fruit. Then, artists 
such as Van Gogh TV, Active Ingredient and Nina 
Pope & Karen Guthrie (Broadcast Yourself, Hatton 
Gallery Newcastle) used technologies such as 
videophones and streaming media to create 
channels for artistic broadcasting. Now, the 
immense popularity of user-generated audio and 
video online networks, such as MySpace and 
YouTube, are creating a parallel universe of 
radio and television on the internet. We'll show 
how a new generation of student filmmakers are 
inhabiting and shaping these online spaces, in 
AV:IRAL, which will be screened online at our 
YouTube channel, and on site during the festival 
(The Design Centre, 5 March).

Broadcasting is also on the move. Podcasting is 
enabling our favourite internet radio and 
television programmes to become mobile, 
downloaded to our media players. The mobile 
telephone companies who paid so dearly for a 
slice of the high-speed 3G network will soon 
begin to fulfil their promise to deliver audio 
and video services.

Thus the landscape of broadcasting is changing 
irrevocably. Not only is there a clear need to 
debate the form of broadcasting in its second 
century, but also to reflect on the past century 
of radio and television. How did it originate? 
How has it changed our lives?

For AV Festival 08, artists, filmmakers and 
musicians have created works which illuminate all 
aspects of broadcasting.  Policy-makers, 
researchers and activists will discuss the switch 
off and speculate about the future of radio, 
television and the spectrum (The Television will 
Not be Revolutionised, 6-7 March & Community 
Radio Night, 4 March).  Engineers, technologists 
and hobbyists will give hands-on workshops in 
transmission technology (Radio Craft Lab & 
Waygood's Radio Rally).  Concerts and events will 
commemorate broadcasting accomplishments and 
celebrate a century of the airwaves (Variations 
VII, 29 February, Radiophonia, 1 March, and War 
of the Worlds, 5 March).

At AV Festival 08, we will discover that ever 
since the first experiments in wireless 
transmission by Nikola Tesla, broadcasting has 
been a mechanism to enact social change. The 
power of broadcasting to shape public behaviour 
was graphically portrayed in 1938, by dramatist, 
Orson Welles, in his now legendary adaptation of 
War of the Worlds. The broadcast blurred the 
factual format of newscasting, with a fictional 
story of alien invasion and sparked panic amongst 
radio listeners. We celebrate the 70th 
anniversary of this crucial moment in 
broadcasting history, with a new version of the 
radio play staged by acclaimed theatre director 
Joanna Read (Middlesbrough Town Hall, 5 March).

Broadcasting continued to witness and transmit 
social history with images joining sound on the 
airwaves, as television became part of public 
life. AV Festival 08's screening programme TV at 
the Cinema brings television to the big screen, 
showcasing landmark programmes, such as Ken 
Loach's pioneering drama Cathy Come Home 
(Tyneside Cinema, 6 March), a graphic depiction 
of homelessness which inspired real policy change 
in 1960s Britain. Later political satire, such as 
the incendiary Brass Eye (Tyneside Cinema, 8 
March), showed how television had become a 
platform to mock the political establishment. You 
can voice your own opinion about television, by 
voting for your favourite show online at our 
Alternative Top TV poll 
(www.avfestival.co.uk/alternativetoptv).  The 
winning TV show will be shown at a gala screening 
(Tyneside Cinema, 7 March).

As broadcasting became increasingly ubiquitous, 
it became not only a means of observing social 
reality, but also increasingly a mechanism to 
shape it.  Harun Farocki's Videogram of a 
Revolution depicts the so-called television 
revolution in Romania in 1989, where broadcasting 
played a critical role in the fall of Ceau_escu 
regime. And politicians' ruthless manipulation of 
television is vividly brought to life in Brian 
Springer's Spin (both at Star and Shadow Cinema, 
5 March).

AV Festival 08 will also ask what role have 
artists played in shaping the trajectory of the 
airwaves, showing how they have experimented with 
elemental substance of broadcasting - 
electromagnetism, radio waves and resonant 
energy.  These dark materials are evident in Yuko 
Mohri's work Bairdcast (Discovery Museum, 
Newcastle), which shows how the fabric of early 
television can be transformed into contemporary 
installation.

In our conference Music & Machines VIII (Culture 
Lab, 29 February - 1 March), we will explore the 
origins of artistic experimentation with the 
airwaves showing how artists insisted on the 
spectrum as a new landscape.

John Cage's philosophy of the radio spectrum as a 
part of the physical environment is borne out in 
his 1966 works, Variations VII (AV Festival 
opening gala, Baltic, 29 February), and Radio 
Happenings I-V, in which Cage remarked, "all 
[radio] is making audible something which you're 
already in. You are bathed in radio waves"

The notion of radio as a pervasive medium, which 
surrounds us and moves through us, is made 
tangible in Joyce Hinterding's large-scale 
antenna work (Aeriology, Reg Vardy Gallery, 
Sunderland), which makes audible the very low 
radio frequencies which resonate continuously 
throughout space.

Slovenian artist Marko Peljhan has been creating 
works that make the radio landscape perceptible 
since 1998. The latest of these is Scatter!, a 
large-scale outdoor durational performance (AV 
Festival closing gala, Baltic Square, 8 March) 
which will audio-visually map the radio sky in 
real time.

José Luis de Vicente & Irma Vilà's Atlas of 
Electromagnetic Space (Institute for Digital 
Innovation, Middlesbrough) also maps the 
inscrutable topography that is the 
electromagnetic spectrum, in this case through an 
interactive data visualisation.

These and other artists at AV Festival 08, such 
as Tetsuo Kogawa the founder of miniFM in Japan 
(who will speak at Music & Machines and lead a 
workshop at the Radio Craft Lab), Resonance FM 
(who are in residence at mima, Middlesbrough), 
and German radio artist Knut Aufermann (who will 
lead AV Festival programming on NE1FM), all 
survey the broadcasting landscape, and indeed 
alter its topology with their projects.

These artists - and your presence - will ensure 
AV Festival 08 becomes a catalyst for debate 
about the future state of broadcasting, and also 
a celebration of a century of on air and online 
transmission.

Honor Harger
Director, AV Festival 08



___ AV Festival 08: programme

The programme can be downloaded or viewed online: 
http://www.avfestival.co.uk/programme

New commissions & premieres include
- A Marriage of Shadows - by Michael Edgerton (concert, world premiere)
- Aeriology - by Joyce Hinterding (exhibition, UK Premiere)
- Atlas of Electromagnetic Space - (installation, co-commission)
- AV Festival on NE1FM - (radio station, commission)
- Bairdcast: A History of Machine Translation - 
Yuko Mohri (exhibition, commission)
- Broadcast Yourself - Various artists (exhibition, co-commission)
- Deep Play - Harun Farocki (exhibition, UK Premiere)
- Now Hear This - Marcus Coates, Zoe Irvine & 
People Like Us (outdoor sound works, commissions)
- War of the Worlds - directed by Joanna Read 
(theatrical performance, commission)
- Radiophonia - by Broadcast, Dick Mills, 
Jean-Jacques Perrey et al (concert, world 
Premiere)
- Resonance FM at mima - (radio station, commission)
- Scatter! - by Marko Peljhan (performance, commission)
- Soundscape FM - (radio station, commission)
- Variations VII - :zoviet*france, Atau Tanaka (performance, commission)
- Waygood's Amateur Radio Rally - (event, co-commission)
- Whispering in the Leaves - Chris Watson 
(installation & performance, co-commission)

Performances by:
- :zoviet*france: & Atau Tanaka - in Variations VII - 29 February
- Ars Nova Ensemble - in A Marriage of Shadows by Michael Edgerton - 3 March
- Autechre, with SND & Rob Hall - 2 March
- AV:ISIONs Club & lounge nights - various dates
- Broadcast, Brian Duffy, Dick Mills, 
Jean-Jacques Perrey & Dana Countryman - in 
Radiophonia - 1 March
- Chris Watson - 6 March
- Disinformation & Strange Attractor - in National Grid - 5 March
- Long Range (Phil Hartnoll & Nick Smith) - - 29 February
- Mx (Marko Peljhan), Brian Springer, Nullo 
(Aljo_a Abrahamsberg) & Delray (Matthew 
Biederman) - in Scatter! - 8 March
- Staalplaat Soundsystem - 29 February
- Tao G. Vrhovec Sambolec - 1 March

Exhibitions include:
- Aeriology - Joyce Hinterding
- Atlas of Electromagnetic Space - José Luis de Vicente, Irma Vilà & Bestiario
- Bairdcast: A History of Machine Translation - Yuko Mohri
- Broadcast Yourself - Various artists
- Deep Play - Harun Farocki
- For You, Only You - Sonia Boyce
- Now Hear This - Marcus Coates, Zoe Irvine & People Like Us
- Prepared Radios - Ryota Kuwakubo
- Slow TV - Various artists
- Variations VII documentation - John Cage & Experiments in Art & Technology
- Whispering in the Leaves - Chris Watson
- Yokomono - Staalplaat Soundsystem

Conferences, talks & seminars include:
- Artists' Talks by José Luis de Vicente & Irma 
Vilà, Chris Watson, Jean-Jacques-Perrey, Yuko 
Mohri & others - various dates
- At the Top of the Game: Jimmy McGovern - a talk 
by the celebrated television writer - 4 March
- BBC Radiophonic Workshop - a talk at Radiophonia by Dick Mills - 1 March
- Broadcast Yourself in person & on-screen - a 
seminar & screening event featuring Sarah Cook, 
Kathy Rae Huffman, Shaina Anand, Karel Dudasek, 
Active Ingredient & Maria Pallier - 2 March
- Desert Island TV - a very special event 
featuring a leading light of British Broadcasting 
- 2 March
- Music & Machines VIII  - AV Festival 08 
conference on broadcasting & art featuring Atau 
Tanaka, Douglas Kahn, Brandan Labelle, Heidi 
Grundmann and others - 29 February - 1 March
- Northern Screenwriters Conference 2008  - a 
conference for screenwriters - 4 - 5 March
- The Television Will Not Be Revolutionised - a 
2-day debate on broadcasting featuring Bill 
Thompson and others - 6 - 7 March

Screening include:
- Works for Television, short films curated by 
Gary Thomas including works by Matt Hulse, Clio 
Barnard, Andrew Kotting, Patrick Keiller, Paul 
Bush, Thomson & Craighead, Judith Goddard, Stuart 
Hilton, Semiconductor, Mike Stubbs & others)
- AV:IRAL, the AV Festival 08 student short film programme
- TV at the Cinema - a retrospective screening 
programme of television, including  Abigail's 
Party (Mike Leigh, BBC, UK, 1977, 120 mins), Boys 
from the Blackstuff (Alan Bleasedale, BBC, UK, 
1980-82, 50mins), Brass Eye (Chris Morris, 
Channel 4, UK, 1997-2001, 25mins), Cathy Come 
Home (Ken Loach, BBC, UK, 1966, 100 mins), Death 
of a President (Gabriel Range, Channel 4, UK, 
2006, 93 mins), Digital Stadium (Japanese TV 
show, NHK) , Dr Who & The Daleks (Gordon Flemyng, 
UK, 1965, 82 mins), Dr Who Special (BBC, UK, 
2005-7, 45 mins), Fawlty Towers (BBC, UK, 
1975-79, 30 mins), Life on Mars (BBC, UK, 2006-7, 
60 mins), Not the Nine O'Clock News (John Lloyd, 
BBC, UK, 1979-1982, 25mins), Radio Favela 
(Helvecio Ratton, Brazil, 2002, 92 mins), 
Scattered Frequencies (Micz Flor & Philip 
Scheffner, Germany, 2002, 31 mins), Spin (Brian 
Springer, USA, 1995, 57 mins), Shooting the Past 
(Stephen Poliakoff, BBC, UK, 1999, 182 min), The 
Life of Birds (David Attenborough, BBC, UK, 1998, 
50 mins), The Prisoner (Patrick McGoohan & George 
Markstei, ITV, UK, 1967-8, 50mins), The Sweeney 
(Ian Kennedy Martin, ITV, UK, 1975-78, 60 mins), 
The War Game (Peter Watkins, BBC, UK, 1965, 48 
mins) and Videogramme einer Revolution (Harun 
Farocki & Andrei Ujica, 1992, 106 mins).

Workshops include:
- Anatomy of a Television Programme - TV workshop for students & adults
- Documenting New Media Art- workshop for professionals, lead by Caitlin Jones
- Introduction to Writing for Television - a 10 
week course lead by Julie Blackey
- Media Routes workshops in animation & radio - 
workshops for 13 - 19 years olds
- Radiophonia workshop - electronic music workshop lead by Brian Duffy
- Radio Craft Lab - a 5 day workshop for artists 
lead by Tetsuo Kogawa, Raitis Smits, Joyce 
Hinterding & others
- Thinking Outside the Goggle Box - a 10 week course lead by Ben Dickenson
- Write Your Own Radio Play - an intensive 2 day 
workshop for 13 - 19 years olds

Radio stations:
- AV Festival on NE1FM - Knut Aufermann & friends 
broadcast on Tyneside on 102.5FM
- Resonance FM at mima - the UK's only art radio 
station broadcasts from Middlesbrough
- Soundscape FM - Sunderland's audio art gallery of the air
- Waygood's Amateur Radio Rally - ham radio 
enthusiasts meet at Grainger Market in Newcastle

Download the full programme online: http://www.avfestival.co.uk/programme


___AV Festival 08: tickets
http://www.avfestival.co.uk/tickets

Tickets to all AV Festival events are on sale 
from the AV Festival Box Office at the Tyneside 
Cinema.
Phone:  +44 191 232 8289
Email:  bookings at avfestival.co.uk

** Tickets are already selling out for major 
events such as Variations VII, so book now if you 
wish to attend **


___AV Festival 08: organisation
http://www.avfestival.co.uk/about

AV Festival 08 is organised by Audio Visual Arts 
North East and forms part of NewcastleGateshead's 
world-class festivals and events programme 
managed by culture10, based at NewcastleGateshead 
Initiative.


___AV Festival 08: supporters
http://www.avfestival.co.uk/supporters

Arts Council England, North East, Newcastle City 
Council, Gateshead Council, ONE NorthEast, 
Middlesbrough Council, Sunderland City Council, 
Tyneside Cinema, Northern Film & Media, UK Film 
Council, European Regional Development Fund, V.

Event Supporters: Anime projects, Castle Keep, 
Digista, The Leverhulme Trust, MAP, Media Routes, 
Ormiston Wires, PRS Foundation, Triple Echo.

AV has developed close working relationships with 
some of the region's key cultural organisations. 
Our partners include alt.gallery, BALTIC, Centre 
for LIFE, Centre for Excellence In Teaching and 
Learning Music and Inclusivity (Newcastle 
University), Cineworld, Cornerhouse, CRUMB, 
CultureLab (Newcastle University), Design Centre 
(University of Sunderland), Discovery Museum, 
forma, IDI (University of Teesside), ISIS, 
Locus+, mima, Media Centre (University of 
Sunderland), Mobile Cinema, National Glass 
Centre, Northern Gallery for Contemporary Art, 
NE1 FM, No-Fi, NOVAK, Northern Screenwriters 
Conference, Reg Vardy Gallery, Resonance FM, 
/slab, Star & Shadow Cinema, Sunderland Museum & 
Winter Gardens, The Hatton Gallery, The Sage 
Gateshead, Tyne & Wear Museums, Waygood, 
Multistorey, White Hot Communications, 
Velcrobelly & Evolve.


___AV Festival 08: contacts

For more information contact:

AV Festival
c/o Tyneside Cinema at Gateshead Old Town Hall
West Street
Gateshead
NE8 1HE
UK
Tel: +44 (0)191 2328289, ext 112
Email: info at avfestival.co.uk
http://www.avfestival.co.uk/

The AV Festival is run by Audio Visual Arts North 
East. A Company Limited by Guarantee. Registered 
in England No 06141603. Registered Charity Number 
1120368.  Registered Office: c/- Tyneside Cinema 
at the Old Town Hall, Gateshead, West Street, 
Gateshead, NE8 1HE, UK




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