Bedwyr Williams’ Booster

Join artist Bedwyr Williams at KARST for a new reading-performance about encounters with architectural models – a recurrent theme of MILQUETOAST, his current exhibition at KARST.

Timings

5:30pm: Doors

6:15pm: Performance (c.20 mins)

7:30pm: Close

Book for the live performance here.

Tickets are free, but due to limited capacity booking is essential for the performance.

Plymouth Arts Cinema will then be hosting a free screening of three films by Bedwyr Williams at 8.30pm. Book for the screening here.

KARST’s commitment to equality

KARST believes in art’s capacity to bring people from diverse backgrounds together to exchange ideas, create work, share practices and give people a voice to contest the prejudices in our society.

We embrace the values of inclusivity, diversity, accessibility and equality so we support the Black Lives Matter movement and stand in solidarity with those challenging outdated attitudes and systems.

We take our role as an influencer of Plymouth’s cultural identity seriously and will maximise our efforts to ensure the voices of underrepresented members of our society are heard.

Our vision is that we will create the structural changes needed within our sector to be truly diverse, inclusive and welcoming to all people.

To achieve this, we will take an active lead to address systemic and hidden racism and the inequalities underpinning society wherever we find them.

Here’s how we will do it:

  • We will develop a collaborative programme to listen to, learn from and amplify marginalised voices as a way of influencing and creating permanent change;
  • We will review our exhibitions and commissioning process in collaboration with established local and regional organisations to facilitate knowledge exchange, and the sharing of best practice, resources and event programming;
  • We will maintain a space where artists from all backgrounds can develop, collaborate and lead;
  • We will reinforce zero tolerance of harassment and bullying;
  • We will diversify our workforce, resident artists and network.

Covid-19 message

In line with government recommendations to protect the health and wellbeing of our staff and visitors, KARST is temporarily closed to the public until further notice to support efforts to contain the spread of COVID-19 (Coronavirus). Changes to our operating status will be communicated via social media, and our website.

Please email
ku.gro.tsrak@ofni
if you have an enquiry.

OUTLANDS Workshop #6 EXPERIMENTAL VIDEO WORKSHOP

OUTLANDS PRESENTS TOUR#6 . EnsoSone
QUJAKU + IMPATV


Doors open: 6pm / Performance: 7:00pm

Tickets £6

IMPATV host an experimental video workshop prior to the Outlands ENSÕ SONE Tour, revealing some of the techniques used to create their videos and visual work.

MORE INFO

 

OUTLANDS PRESENTS TOUR#6 . EnsoSone QUJAKU + IMPATV

Ensō Sone
Outlands Tour #6


Tuesday 12th November 19
Doors open: 5:30pm / Performance: 6:00pm

Tickets £5

MORE INFO ON THE OUTLANDS WEBSITE

+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

OUTLANDS experimental music touring network present an original audio-visual collaboration between Japanese psych band Qujaku and UK visual artists IMPATV.

Developed during a residency in Japan in June 2019, this new production explores ideas of duality. Sound triggers light that in turn creates form via an amalgam of heavy, rhythmic ambience combined with visual projections, lighting and stage design. The resulting union will unfurl as an expansive spectacle to stimulate the senses.

Special guests group A open each night of the tour with a spectacular new AV set.

Ensō – a circular symbol hand-drawn in one or two uninhibited brushstrokes to express a moment when the mind is free to let the body create.

Sone – a unit of loudness; how loud a sound is perceived.

Ensō Sone expresses a freedom to create loudness, which marks the starting point for this exciting new collaboration. Further ideas from Japanese Zen practice; of oneness, natural opposites and equilibrium, the spirit of harmonious cooperation, the visible and the invisible, absolute fullness in emptiness, simplicity, completeness, and endlessness are explored.

The tour includes special guests electronic, industrial act group A (now the solo project of Tommi Tokyo) who in turn collaborate with Berlin based visual artist DEAD SLOW AHEAD on a new multi-dimensional video universe, opening the gate to the inside-self, mixing slow ethereal abstract sounds with mind-shattering stroboscopic video pulsations, designed to challenge the observers’ expectations of AV work.

As with all OUTLANDS tours, there will be an accompanying workshop to shine a light on the artistic processes behind the production. IMPATV will host an experimental video workshop prior to the ENSÕ SONE shows, exploring some of the techniques they use to create their videos and visual work, using a variety of new and outdated technologies. Participants will have their own experimental video work to take away with them.

Reserve your space here: bit.ly/KARSTIMPATV

https://karst.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2019/09/EnsōSoneOutlandsPressreleaseBanner.jpg

LIVE PERFORMANCE > DUSTIN ERICKSEN & DAMIAN GRIFFITHS ‘The eye aint heard, the ear aint seen’

A psychedelic musical lecture on the electrodynamic spectrum with apologies to Richard Feynman.


“Working in response to Damian Griffith’s presentation of works in the exhibition Light, observed, Dustin Ericksen will present a public lecture to partially explain the making of some music which will also be going on and there will be photography as well and all those things will be explicitly affecting one another.”

Artist and performer Dustin Ericksen brings Light, observed to a close with his Finissage Event ‘The eye ain’t heard, the ear ain’t seen’. With banjo and synthesiser, Ericksen will create improvisational music. The musical aspect of the performance will be interfered with by two outside elements. First, the photography and light of Damian Griffiths, will trigger changes in the synthesised sound. Simultaneously, Ericksen will attempt to give a didactic explanation of the electromagnetic spectrum, which includes the light we see, and other wavelengths, like x-rays and microwaves.

Dustin Ericksen lives and works in London and is an artist, performer, writer and teacher. More information: dustinericksen.com

LIVE PERFORMANCE > Outlands Tour #5: Fracture Patterns – EARTHEATER & SEMICONDUCTOR

Fracture Patterns is a live collaboration between UK artist duo Semiconductor and New York musician and producer Eartheater. This original commission by the Outlands Network combines large-scale multi-channel video works by Semiconductor with an original live soundtrack and performance by Eartheater, fusing both into a compelling theatrical production.

This tour is an investigation in absorption and the spectrum between empirical research and human emotion, via large-scale, sublime projections, vocals, movement and sound that linger playfully and productively at the blurred edges between dissonance and harmony. Semiconductor and Eartheater invite audiences to join them as they explore the collision and collusion of their respective practices.

LIVE PERFORMANCE > +gamma+

CONTRASTATE / ALICE KEMP / NOCTURNAL EMISSIONS

 

KARST and Electric Knife presents GAMMA, the third in our series of experimental sound performances.

NOCTURNAL EMISSIONS
https://nocturnalemissions.bandcamp.com/

The legendary Nocturnal Emissions, one of the best kept secrets of the industrial genre since the 1970s, set the bar long ago for industrial, dark ambient soundscapes. Founder Nigel Ayers presents a live audio visual show of dazzling organic and chemical animation with a unique sound world of wildlife and machine sounds that feels earthly & mysterious; mechanical yet human.


ALICE KEMP
http://alicekemp.net/

Alice Kemp lives and works in the south west of England, continually developing a practice of experimental music, audio composition, public and private performance, doll-making, drawing and painting. Subtle trance states, dreams, and disturbances inform her personal and cryptic yet coherent body of work, and her live [in]actions suggest a private mythology evolving through stillness, boundaries and aural stimuli. She has delivered these live obfuscations in England, Scotland, Germany, Belgium, France, Austria and Switzerland, and released sonic contemplations through the labels Fragment Factory (DE), Harbinger Sound (UK), and Erratum Musical (FR).


CONTRASTATE
https://www.contrastate.com/

Founded in 1987 by Stephen Meixner and Jonathan Grieve, with Stephen J. Pomeroy joining in 1992, Contrastate boasts one of the richest experience pools among the groups of the post-industrial movement. Initially embedded firmly in the tradition of industrial music and physical confrontation through sound Contrastate did not cease to evolve and slowly moved away from extremes and towards more balanced, subtle compositions. Their current style on the recent releases: A Breeding Ground for Flies (2012 Dirter Promotions) and the live album No Eden Without Annihilation (2016 Tesco Organisation) are situated somewhere in the realm of the avant-garde variety of dark, ritual ambient music combined with elements of experimental noise. Their diverse musical heritage exhibits unique electronic manipulations combined with stentorian vocals embedded in a heavy, surreal industrial background. They have long abandoned any attempt to reproduce studio work live, new material is specifically written for their performances, combining live electronics, acoustic instruments, sound manipulation and performance art. Contrastate is indeed a prime example of experimentation in music. Its artists constantly feel the need to try out different ideas, different ways of recording and different ways to use instruments.


LIVE PERFORMANCE > +beta+

UBIQUITUOUS MEH! / NORMAL TEA / FRIEND OF A FRIEND .An experimental music performance – industrial, electronic, DIY and beyond.

beta
DIY / EXPERIMENTAL / SOUNDS

FRIEND OF A FRIEND / NORMAL TEA / UBIQUITOUS MEH!+++

KARST and Electric Knife presents BETA, the second in our series of experimental sound concerts. We want to showcase artists who think about music and performance differently – across industrial, electronic, DIY and beyond.

FRIEND OF A FRIEND is the solo project of Alastair D. Smith. Until recently, Smith was playing in Nottingham outfits Society and Blunt Mountains, and had performed with the likes of Mary Ocher and Antoni Maiovvi. He has since relocated back to the South West and has been left to his own devices. FOAF’s music assembles elements of the organic and the artificial – analogue synth drones meet stringed instruments, found sounds, and digital pulses. These sources coalesce to form an end result that feels like the past and the future bleeding into the present.

https://lcpmusic.bandcamp.com/album/friend-of-a-friend-bir-split-tape-ltd-handstamped-cassette-lc010
https://amicablerecords.bandcamp.com/album/bez-et-esparon

NORMAL TEA is a succulent cesspit of musical experiences and flavours. Performing in various forms for nearly 30 years. With roots in experimental, blues and psychedelic music. NT works with aggressive beats and squawking analogue synth sounds. A heavy lean of improvisation, within structural boundaries. Bluesy bassy vocals dripping with delay… NT has been described as ‘The Canadian Electronic Captain Beefheart.’

UBIQUITOUS MEH! is an organist based in Plymouth, UK. In 2018 he recorded tracks for Baltimore rapper/producer Height, accompanied experimental film artist Katy Richardson with her Super8 loop that ate itself at the 9th SAR International Conference on Artistic Research, and recorded library music for Lo Editions/Universal. 2018 also saw the first public outings for the project, including the self-released debut mini-album of garagey electronica Minimal Wave For My Pals In The Grave and the Christmas tape Season’s Mehtings – the former seeing radio play at WXOX Louisville and the latter earning column inches from Mark Barton (Losing Today and The Sunday Experience) who called it ‘impishly tuneful and ridiculously addictive.’

https://ubiquitousmeh.bandcamp.com/

LIVE PERFORMANCE > Outlands #4 ‘Ecstatic Material’ BEATRICE DILLON / KEITH HARRISON

Ecstatic Material is a newly commissioned dynamic sound sculpture by musician and producer Beatrice Dillon and visual artist Keith Harrison which will expand and contract over back to back performances at venues across England.

This live experiment with sound and substance will be conducted through a modular system made up of malleable plastics, coloured light and multi-channel audio which is constructed, choreographed and diffused by the artists into the performance space.

Tour support comes from DJs Copper Sounds who spin copper dubplates, ceramic pots, and heavy icelandic rocks, using these materials to create a primitive and tactile form of turntablism. They will also lead a daytime workshop at each tour venue, where participants can design and cast their own playable wax 7” and take it home with them.

This tour was commissioned by OUTLANDS,
curated and produced by Jennifer Lucy Allan and Al Cameron and supported by Arts Council England and Esmée Fairbairn Foundation.

LIVE PERFORMANCE > Outlands Tour #3 ‘DRIFT ft. KYOKA / GRISCHA LICHTENBERGER / YTAC’

Fusing heavy electronics, hypno-chaotic grooves and pristine frequency control within a unique, audio-visual environment, DRIFT ft. KYOKA / GRISCHA LICHTENBERGER / YTAC sets forth an intoxicating, hyper-sensory experience.

Part club, part installation, part immersive environment, DRIFT takes shape within a specially constructed space, where motion sensors and microphones monitor the room, the crowd and the performers. The observations are fed to a central ‘brain’, which responds by projecting fevered machine-dreams back onto people and walls – the audience and the performance influence the visuals; feedback ensues, chaos builds. Inside this generated environment, artists Kyoka and Grischa Lichtenberger from acclaimed German electronic music record label Raster will diffuse their visions of experimental dancefloors.

https://www.outlands.network/drift

ABOUT THE ARTISTS
DRIFT
DRIFT is an immersive environment developed in collaboration by feral games developers and digital art technologists wetgenes and Fuse Art Space. Now in its second build version following an original commission by the British Science Festival in 2014, the system is housed within a specially constructed reflective enclosure inside which motion sensors and mics monitor the room, the crowd, the performers, feeding audio and visual observations to an array of processors. The array converts the data to graphics, projecting the output back onto the walls and people. Thus blurring the boundaries between the conventional stage and audience thresholds.

KYOKA
Berlin-based composer/producer Kyoka grew up in Japan, learning piano, flute and shamisen [a three-stringed traditional Japanese instrument] during her childhood and is known for her direct, chaotic musical approach and heavy-rough sound, resulting in a broken pop-beat with experimental yet danceable rhythms. Whilst recording radio shows to cassette, she became attracted by the possibilities of manipulating tape and soon began to use the tape recorder as her toy, cutting, editing and producing her first rough sounds. In 1999, she started to explore the potential of synths/computers, and in 2008, her first mini-album ‘ufunfunfufu’ was released on the onpa))))) label, followed by ‘2ufunfunfufu’ in 2009 and >3ufunfunfufu< as an exclusively digital release. She joined the raster-noton stable in 2012, and has progressed to become one of the most exciting, individual and original artists on the label.

GRISCHA LICHTENBERGER
Grischa Lichtenberger is an electronic music producer, visual and installation artist living in Berlin. Raised on a remote farm near Bielefeld, Grischa’s aesthetic developed from surveying the landscape – not only as a picturesque recreational facility, but as an interaction between the traces of history and the present surroundings. The aggressive tone in his sound design is countered by an emotional depth of the music which observes the introspective moods on the dancefloor and unsettling contemplations in an intimate listening situation. Tumbling between funky, highly energetic beats and trembling melodies, an almost tactile honesty reaches out to the individual listener.

YTAC
YTAC is the incendiary club electronics project of James Birchall, aka Rough Fields. His first bass-heavy percussion experiments appeared on the Bomb Shop label in 2010; by 2016 YTAC’s rave-centric workouts were being launched at high altitude EIS HAUS parties along the mountainous France/Spain border, and formed the first releases on the EIS HAUS label. The coming months will see the YTAC phenomena explode, as the newest signing to Glasgow’s hyperreal rave imprint, Numbers.

RASTER
Raster is a platform and international network for progressive electronic music that overlaps the border areas of pop, art and science. One half of former German electronic music record label ‘raster-noton’ established in 1999, Raster brings artists Grischa Lichtenberger and Kyoka from their roster to DRIFT.

LIVE PERFORMANCE > Das Hund – For Freedom Tour

Das Hund For Freedom is a new multi-disciplinary artwork by Samuel Levack and Jennifer Lewandowski, presenting a visionary exploration of our contemporary world.

Das Hund For Freedom explores the artists concerns about their place in a late capitalist society which increasingly seeks to commodify creativity. Spanning a four-year period (2015–18) in which the artists travelled across the UK and USA, filming the urban landscapes of London and Los Angeles and the deserts of Colorado and California. The work is a poetic reflection on the current global political turmoil and reimagines radical counterculture ideas that are returning to the popular imagination.

Das Hund For Freedom will tour across the UK between September and November 2018, in collaboration with nine venues partners. Sonic performances and poetic film projections combine to create a sensorial experience, raising questions about the fabric of our future communities.

To accompany the tour, Das Hund release their debut album For Freedom, featuring ten original tracks of spoken word poetry and songs, accompanied by guitars, bass, keyboards, drones and looped drumbeats, remixed to hypnotic effect using analogue tape delays.

For Freedom features extensive contributions from musicians Euan Hinshelwood, Bryan Michael Mills, Nicholas Pankhurst, Fancy Smith and Serafina Steer. Available on 12” vinyl LP and digital download. It is the first release on the new artist-run record label French Riviera Records.

Das Hund For Freedom is supported using public funding by Arts Council England National Lottery Project Grants.

SOCIAL MEDIA: #dashundforfreedom

ARTISTS’ WEBSITE: http://www.levacklewandowski.com

LINK TO WATCH FILM: https://vimeo.com/241174303

FOR FURTHER INFORMATION AND IMAGES: mail@frenchriviera1988.com

 

 

 

WORKSHOP > Transforming Symmetries

A crash course in reactive shaders with wetgenes.

Wetgenes are feral games developers and the creative technologists. Using art and technology to produce interactive works they create technology to drive immersive projects that encourage exploration and creativity.

LIVE PERFORMANCE > alpha

Live Performance Event

DIETER MUH

(STEVE CAMMACK) – Steve lives by the sea in East Devon. Steve is a non musician, a noise musician, a nonsician. Steve started making noises back in 1979, experiments on cassettes, Short-Wave Radios, Interferences, synthesiser noises encouraged and influenced by the UK DIY scene and Industrial Music of that period. Most of the 1980’s was spent in the independent cassette culture releasing a variety of tapes with many collaborators. Steve works with manipulated acoustic sounds. Percussion, metals, glass as well as the spoken word. Operating ‘beneath the radar’ (as he prefers to call it) Steve has built a heavy arsenal of releases over the past 39 years under various pseudonyms and with a variety of collaborations. He is most recognised for his involvement in the sound project DIETER MUH and his radio broadcasts as MUHMUR RADIO on Soundart Radio (Dartington). DIETER MUH. have released sounds on labels as diverse as Harbinger Sound, Hanson Records, Tesco Org, EE Tapes, The Epicurean, Xerxes and Sound Holes as well as Steve’s own label Haemoccult Recordings.

https://soundcloud.com/hansonrecords/dieter-muh-stubborn-excerpt-from-hanging-the-blind-dog

KOSTIS KILYMIS 

Kostis Kilymis is a Bristol based artist working with feedback systems and the notion of representation – in musical contexts or otherwise. Sounds based on noise, electronics, voice & field recording. He is involved in the Organized Music from Thessaloniki & Rekem labels, publishing experimental or less known music and sound art. He has worked with the likes of Phil Julian, Sarah Hughes, Leif Elggren, Lucio Capece, Nikos Veliotis, Jin Sangtae, Stephen Cornford and others. Work of his has been published on Rekem, I Dischi del Barone, Strange Rules and Coherent States.

https://soundcloud.com/kostiskilymis

ABOUT: ‘alpha’ is the first in a new series of live performance events in Plymouth co-organised by KARST and Electric Knife. All profits and proceedings go to supporting artists and the future development of a new curated programme of live events.

LIVE PERFORMANCE > The Infinite Guide Closing Party

This night of celebration will include an immersive audio-visual performance The Voice of the Sea by Núria Bonet and Coral Manon, followed by DJ sets from Jon Tye and Graham Guy-Robinson – and your last chance to meet and interact with The Infinite Guide [www.theinfinite.guide] developed by i-DAT Collective.

WORKSHOP > Women Reclaiming AI

Workshop primarily for women and people who do not identify as male who are interested in exploring the medium of chatbots and voice assistants for creative / playful speculations.

This project is in response to lack of gender diversity in the development of AI systems.

LIVE PERFORMANCE > Outlands Tour #2 ‘Yunohana Variations’

Yunohana Variations is the second tour in a series of live shows commissioned by OUTLANDS, the new national experimental touring network. This tour is produced by Supersonic Festival Birmingham, and will be arriving in Plymouth at KARST on 4th July.

Improvisational luminaries YoshimiO and Robert Aiki Aubrey Lowe will be performing together across the United Kingdom for the first time. Yunohana Variations will be supported by local collective Bizarre Rituals.

Though Yunohana Variations have never performed live in the UK together before, they have collaborated to record an album, Flowers Of Sulphur, which was released on Thrill Jockey in February this year.

YoshimiO is a drummer and member of the revolutionary group Boredoms who also plays guitar, keyboard and trumpet. She is the leader of the experimental band OOIOO, a member of Free Kitten with Kim Gordon (ex. Sonic Youth), and most recently the vocalist in SAICOBAB – a quartet who blend ancient Indian musical traditions and instruments with electronics and modern sounds. Known for her ability to improvise in a variety of contexts, YoshimiO has previously performed and recorded improvisational music with saxophonist Mats Gustafsson, Jim O’Rourke, and recently with Lowe, and then Susie Ibarra during a series of collaborative performances in New York City, late in 2015.

Robert Aiki Aubrey Lowe is a multidisciplinary artist whose practice is strongly rooted in exploration of moments and the hypnagogic state. Movement and gesture play key factors within this process, and in the performance realm are focused on by voice and modular synthesizer. A fixture of Chicago’s experimental community throughout the 90s and early 2000s, Robert has also performed under the name Lichens, is a member of the legendary band Om, and has an impressive portfolio of collaborations, which extends to the film world with his score for pseudo-documentary A Spell To Ward Off The Darkness, directed by Ben Russell and Ben Rivers (which Robert also appears in).

Bizarre Rituals are a collective of artists, musicians, DJs and VJs who are based within or around Devon. Together they throw parties; create EPs, albums, film soundtracks and mixtapes, and do shows on local FM arts and community radio station Soundart Radio, which is transmitted out of an oak tree.

This performance is commissioned by OUTLANDS; the new national experimental music touring network and is supported by Arts Council England and Esmee Fairbairn Foundation.