 
Concert 1: Organ Solo
Jean-Luc Guionnet
Each organ is unique. The project is to find out what makes it unique.
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Each organ is unique. The project is to find out what makes it unique.
 
A changing pool of people (40 or so at a time – artists, audiences, etc) talk for 90 minutes in a simultaneous series of open-ended round-table discussions, structured like speed dating, and mixed live as both a concert and for radio broadcast.
 
These simple, one-take videos, relate personal experiences to the current conflicts in the Middle East via the most basic of means (a hotel room, a camcorder, John’s personal thoughts, concerns and convictions).
Our Zooms are unmuted, our mics are open, and our hearts and bodyminds are receptive. We give the floor online and in person to you…
 
The mutability of the body and the mobility of identity: queered pop culture, drag, lip-sync and performance.
 
Out of a dark haze, shafts of lights are picked out from the surface of film. Out of the black silence, noise, audible scratches bloom into a bright drone of broken and cracked objects.
 
Conceived of as a dual publication, video cassette and booklet, to be presented as an installation. The content of the videotape is the artist watching television.
 
Part old-fashioned Renaissance man, part hardcore avant-gardist, the Canadian painter-photographer-filmmaker-musician gives full vent to his genius in the exhilarating perceptual vaudeville, named after the ‘central region’ of tissue that acts as a conduit between the brain’s two hemispheres.
 
Three workshops lead up to an open invitation to improvise with the festival as concert. The last four hours of the Sunday 14 at Instal 10 were devoted to presentations devised during the three workshops. The material conditions (time, space, facilities…) were the instruments. From there anything could happen.
 
A recently reanimated Ascension, with mighty Leeds drum hero Paul Hession bringing a dense polyrhythmic torrent into play with Jaworzyn’s reinvigorated piercing guitar.
 
One of the great experimental films. A 60 minute, three part riddle that maybe approximates our intellectual development by moving from imageless words to the recognition of silent images and the learning of simple tasks and finally a serenity and acceptance of death.
 
Jandek performing at the Scottish Rite Theatre in Austin, Texas with Juan Garcia, Nick Hennies and Chris Cogburn.