Sunday 22 April 2007

QUASAR

Went to a sound and film performance called QUASAR by Thomas Köner and Jürgen Reble last week that was part of the Images Festival. I know Thomas Köner's work fairly well and he has done some amazing perspective altering installations as well as creating some incredible music. I wasn't familiar with Jürgen Reble beforehand but I would like to see more of his work now. Almost didn't get in as they somehow oversold tickets past capacity. Got a seat right at the corner to the right of the screen, little too close but better than nothing.

Pretty amazing set up, five 16mm film projectors, two at the back pointed at the screen and three in front of the screen projecting to the back center, right and left. The film was chemically altered and was manipulated with the projectors controls during the screening. The three projectors at the front were all rigged to loop (check out photos below) The other half of the performance was done with a quadraphonic sound system set up around the room. Thomas Köner used the projectors as sound sources, there were mics set up by the projectors, manipulated it and played back along with his music.

The film was very abstract, at times things would come into focus and I would make out shapes or faces or certain images but they weren't really there, or perhaps they were what remained of any images that were on the film before being altered. I think the only point there was actually a definable image was there was what looked like the eye of a storm, felt like I was in it or traveling away from it. Thomas Köner's music/sound was very restrained, one speaker producing very, very low frequencies another the sounds from the projectors, sounds would suddenly come from the back of the room. Near the end it started to build much more but in a very drawn out, spacial way.

Hard to put into words the effect that these type of things have on me, better to go see it yourself if you get the chance.

LINKS:
Thomas Köner
Jürgen Reble
Images Festival

Here are links to some interesting writing about Thomas Köner's other work.
Banlieue du Vide
Nuuk
Nuuk - review
Nuuk - review
Nuuk samples