I met Julien at the Piksel Festival last year for the first time: He did a workshop about DIY sinus generators and the at the last evening he did the noisiest and loudest performance i ever attended, no doubt about that. The Installation he did this year is something like a logical consequence for me. Choas, noise, and really loud:
Arougate is an installation that involves the environnement of the space he is invited to hunt in. Arougate is a digital beast who hunts information, tracks it, feeds on it, and generally reacts to it. Arougate behaves like a wolf when he eats his preys ; no one can disturb him without consequence.
After this unusual hot summer in greece – in some areas it had beyond 1000°C – nothing is like before, except the government. A wide area of the countryside is burned, so three curators (Xenia Kalpaktsoglou, Poka-Yio und Augustine Zenakos) decided to finaly destroy athens too and organized athens first biennial “destroy athens“. They choosed the best place for such an event – the Technopolis, in gazi. the place used to be a old factory, a gaswork and has very special athmosphere… not only because i love old factories. It doesn´t have this very nice fucked up style like arsenale in venice anymore, but for the biennial they importet italian style – the area has been transfigured by the italian architect group called Gruppo A 12.
lets start with the entrance !!! ahhh, poli orea !
the venue is seperated in 6 parts/buildings – called days – two german artists start day 1 with destruction ! On seven screens you can see the videoinstallation “Detonation Deutschland” – blasting buildings after 2nd world war in germany. whatelse happens on day 1 – ahh, chaos of course – that´s at least the propagated common sense about graffiti sprayers and left wing groups… sorry, we mixed something up, wasn´t that all before day 1 ?! anyway, it´s not about building something – maybe they wana destroy athens in 6 days ! that´s also why there is no day 7 !? or what happens if u leave the exhibition ?! Ok, so in day 1 there was a chaotic room installation with loads of pictures on 3 screens – 6 hours loop, and psytrance and other partyflyers on the wall – Total Freedom !! is what they want. void network
Outside marc bijl (NL) claims “back to the fundamentals of power vs force” while the sun is still shinning.
On day 2 you find a lot about greek culture. artists and philosophers reflections…. democracy – demos kai kratia – people and power !? aja, what i said in beginning – the government is still the same and even the king is back ! thank god only in an installation of edward lipski (UK), called “the king” The most impressed i was by Stelios Faitakis, a young greek artist, who is master of painting contemporary orthodox icon
check them out together with some more pictures & impressions…
while walking around the areal i saw this huge metal snake lying around there earlier, and couldn’t imagine this massive piece actually moves – well, i was proven wrong. this snake is not only able to move but also to burn like hell.
under the supervision of th charming FLG everybody was able to control either the flames or the head of the beast – nice one!
i then decided to go and check out where this noize came from and found out which kind of playground is provided for the kidz:
their big performance was quite boring, but this little toy was quite impressive: four nozzles pointing in four different directions to direct this thing through space:
i’m still messing around with the *##+*:(##`g codec from the video snippets from their final show, as soon as i’m through with that i will update this post.
this robot from the robocross crew is so new that it doesn’t even have a name yet. it was built within the last four weeks – three weeks to build all the parts, one week to assemble them and programming the movement actually on site – which means that at every show the robot was able to play some more beats… thats what i call a drum machine!
from 19th – 22nd october the robodock festival will be happening in the docks of amsterdam, and we can happily announce to be there! please join the flickr and youtube groups if you have any media to share. come back on friday to check out the first videos..
Socialize