Alva Noto: Concert (video)

Fenwick: What I know about stem cells

Back online after a few days spent at the AV.06 festival in lovely Newcastle, where the architecture is baroque industrial (except for Norman Foster’s very sci-fi Sage Gateshead) and the local females brave the sub-zero conditions in flimsy tops. This is only the second time the AV festival has been organized. The last (2003) version was a VJ- and film-oriented event. This year director Honor Harger and her team has created an ambitious event around the theme “Lifelike”.

Spanning three cities (Newcastle, Middlesbrough and Sunderland), it features commissioned performances and installations by artists like Ryoji Ikeda, Carsten Nicolai (aka Alva Noto, see live video) Michael Nyman, Critical Art Ensemble, Ken Rinaldo and many more. Concerts and VJ culture are still important to the programme, as is film (the Tyneside Cinema is one of the organizing partners). The festival includes not one but two premieres of new work by experimental filmmaker Richard Fenwick, including an excellent deadpan edutainment piece on stem cell research.

All in all, a very strong showing of varied events, successfully mixing film and VJ culture with classical music and media art. The festival is on for another week, if you’re in the neighbourhood be sure to drop by.

Disclosure: I participated in the festival with a new projection piece commissioned for the Sage Gateshead and with System C in the Animated Drawing programme organized by the Middlesbrough Institute of Modern Art. My thanks to Honor, Fiona, Dan, Mark, Adam, Beckie etc. for assistance and hospitality. I’ve uploaded a Flickr set from AV.06.