Jeff Desom
Inspiring, nostalgic 'n digital
INTERVIEW BY OLGA MINK
Luxembourg filmmaker Jeff Desom graduated from the Bournemouth Arts Institute in 2007. His senior project featured the experimental pianist Volker Bertelmann, a.k.a. Hauskchka. 'Morgenrot' is an animated short film about a composer who’s plagued by writer’s block. Desom uses the image of a burning piano dropping off a building to serve as a recurring dream of the composer. The animation is reconfigured from early twentieth century photographs from the vast collection of the Library of Congress and old postcards of New York purchased at a Parisian flea market. “The grainy, smoky, memory-laden and exquisite short film unveils evocative, slightly ominous imagery of Manhattan. It breathes with an air of poetic déjà vu, like a dream you’ve just been jarred awake from and, even though you know you’ve jus t experienced it, you can’t quite remember the outcome.” (review extracted from www.current.com)
For this edition Jeff Desom developed a unique project together with Hauschka, commissoned by Plazaplus. The Ghost piano show merges old and new techniques like ‘projection mapping’ and projecting on transparent mirrors. Find out more about Jeff and his amazing work here. Be sure to book on time for their unique show during Plazaplus festival...
CultureTV
Exposing contemporary video-art
INTERVIEW BY OLGA MINK
CultureTV is an initiative of the Target Foundation. Marjan van Mourik, former gallery-owner and founder of Target Foundation: “With CULTURETV we are meeting the current needs of the internetuser and creative peoples. The content is available via internet 24/7. At the same time we are creating a platform with interesting possibilities for artists, gallery-owners, art lovers a.o. Collaborating with curators and art institutions around the world, we work to develop on- as well offline projects and exhibitions dealing with contemporary issues.” Culture TV has been invited to curate a screenings-programme for Plazaplus festival 2010...
Ilan Katin
About the world around me
INTERVIEW BY OLGA MINK
"There are a variety of phrases that can be used. When drawing live and if the sound level is appropriate it is important to me that the sound of the pen scratching on the surface of the drawing tablet be audible to the audience. Otherwise the music should dictate what images are displayed or vice versa. Sometimes they can be completely disconnected. In all cases there ought to be a motivation even if the motivation is an accident."
[Read more]
Hans Beekmans
Teaching curiosity and awareness
INTERVIEW BY OLGA MINK
Hans Beekmans’ specialisation is live cinema. During the short period of its existence, live cinema produced legendary performances. Plazaplus invited him to give a lecture and make a screening-programme. Become one of the initiated in the already abundant and very impressive history of a young and contemporary art form: live cinema. In this lecture & screening Hans Beekmans shows the diversity of live cinema, representing works of videoartists Bas van Koolwijk, Martijn van Boven en muzikant Debashis Sinha.
Quayola
Inspiration comes a bit from everywhere
INTERVIEW BY OLGA MINK
"I produce visual art projects simultaneously focusing on multiple forms such as films, video-installation, photography/prints and av performances. I’m interested in exploring the ambiguity of realism in the digital realm, and somehow questioning reality itself. My art projects usually develop across a number of years, developing from embryonic ideas into consistent and extensive collection of pieces. At the current time I’m bringing forward three main projects; Strata is an evolving dialogue between icons of art and architecture and contemporary digital aesthetics. Natures is an exploration of natural structures and behaviors and Partitura is a sound visualization that explores new forms of abstractions. Commercially I also work as a director, and for fun as a DJ."
Quayola presents his video-installation STRATA 2. It is a new multi-screen installation within the ongoing series 'Strata'. Three Gothic windows from Notre Dame Cathedral are projected in real-scale on vertical screens. The positioning of the screens in relation with the space will simulate the real architectural environment of the original windows: east chapel of Notre Dame. The projected images gradually deconstruct and transform into abstract entities, detaching from their original historical and architectural significance. This process of metamorphosis will become a perpetual cycle exploring the passage between real and artificial, and vice versa.
Sophie Clements
Hand-made technology 'n otherworldly dimensions
INTERVIEW BY OLGA MINK
"I feel strongly that technology should follow the idea and not the other way round. It would be naïve of me to say outright that technology is overrated, but I think we have to be careful with how we use technology, – to use it because it is right for the work, not for the sake of it. Whether something is analogue or digital, what is important is the response we can create in the audience – if we can really make them feel something. (...) Of course there is a lot of amazing work being done with technology – I don’t make work by hand because I am anti technology, but I do feel that however a piece is made or performed is it the idea that should make us feel something, that the work should transcend the tools by which it was made."
PlazaPlus
14.15.16 January 2010
International art festival
EXPLORATIONS IN MEDIA, ART AND LIVE PERFORMANCE
PlazaPlus brings you the work of offshoots: artists, dancers, musicians, filmmakers, animators who do not eschew experimentation, who seek to travel new roads, and lead the way. They break new ground, give shape to the new and move on to new, rough terrain. They are challenged in their work by practical limitations, conventional expectations and compartmental thought, not to mention technological barriers or undividable disciplinary seas. The pioneers persevere, often to spectacular results! Impossible to catch in words, hard to explain but instantly felt. It touches your eyes, ears, hands, heart and head. Finally you realize: something is going on here! Brandnew sprouts. PlazaPlus. Times three.
The festival curators are Wiepko Oosterhuis, Gieske Bienert (programmeurs Plaza Futura) and Olga Mink (guest-curator).
Plaza Futura, Leenderweg 65, Eindhoven, +31 (0) 40 - 294 68 48
