Cinesonic performance by French collective Superflux

Thursday, October 7, 2010
7:30pm until 9:30pm

Philip Carter Family Auditorium, Christchurch Art Gallery, ,

The Borderline Ballroom, in association with Christchurch Art Gallery Te Puna O Waiwhetu, is pleased to announce a cinesonic performance by French collective Superflux on October 7 at the Christchurch Art Gallery, 7:30, $10.

http://www.lionelpalun.com/superflux/indexE.html

For the last 15 years, Superflux have been engaged in exploring the relationship between performance art and the screen image. Joining forces in different ways, the members of the collective employ digital technology in concert with treated analogue sound and film, and present this through equally customized equipment. Through performing sound and film, Superflux efface boundaries between performance art and art documentation, questioning the idea that aural and visual art media function only as frames – either subservient to performance or invisibly conditioning performance.

The members of Superflux are Richarles Bronson, Lionel Palun, Gaëlle Rouard and Etienne Caire (aka Riojim). On the night, they will join forces to perform as Filmbase (Riojim, Lionel Palun), Lafoxe (Gaëlle Rouard, Riojim) and Metalking (Richarles Bronson, Riojim).

Filmbase

Riojim: 16mm film, customized projectors
Lionel Palun: video

Riojim presents montages that employ variations in speed and optics, and which often involve the expressive, physical deterioration of film. Palun captures these images live, re-processing them through a variety of digital effects. Sound is treated in a similar fashion: the optical track of the film and digital video signals being mixed into automatist music. In this way, Filmbase presents an interactive gestalt of film and video media, blurring distinctions between analogue and digital domains.

Lafoxe

Gaëlle Rouard: 16mm film, customized projectors
Riojim: 16mm film, customized projectors

Lafoxe re-use and re-make found 16mm footage – often from Hollywood’s ‘golden age.’ The source films are re-edited, re-processed, re-printed, treated and coloured, then re-presented as cinematic play. In a process of reiteration that inescapably fragments and reconstructs the past, Lafoxe subverts the status of film as a record of objective truth; a reassurance that time passes in a predictable, linear sequence. This playing with cinematic convention generates drama and suspense as spectators strive to make coherent Lafoxe’s improvised ‘narration for the eyes with its… apocalyptic skids in hyperscope.’

Metalking

Richarles Bronson: bass, toys
Riojim: 16mm film, customized projectors

Metalking combine thrilling, bass-heavy, improvised audio with equally startling and expressive visuals. Bronson characterizes his practice as eliminating narratives and questioning of linearity in order to ‘sculpt a sonic, compact and sensual mass, which not only appeals to the ear but also questions the place of the body in hearing.’ A similar sense of de-centering and displacement is evident in Riojim’s 16mm films where a
continuous stream of images blister and burn – first on the emulsion, then onto the retina and psyche. Can images be noisy? Can noise spark visions? The evidence of Metalking’s audiovisual synaesthesia would appear to be: of course!