Sunday 18th May
Kings Place, London
Alpha-ville returned with another special edition in their LIVE series. Following on from last years show by Ryoichi Kurokawa at the BFI – this time, award winning Montréal-based artist Herman Kolgen was the featured artist. Kolgen has been recognised for his multimedia creations for over twenty years and continues to push boundaries.
Kolgen’s last show in the UK was back in 2005. This new show featured his two most celebrated audio-visual works, the UK Premiere of ‘Dust’ and the London Premiere of ‘Inject’.
Dust is an audio-visual piece based around dust particles and the bits of dirt you often brush away without a second thought. Visually, the piece is stunning. It is the culmination of 5 years of amazing hi-res photography work, super slow motion combined with some digital enhancements on top. The first half began with electronic pulses of sub-bass and crunchy white noises, the visuals super slo-mo of dead flies hitting the ground. Random fibres and particles take shape and re-form and begin compositing into other objects, both beautiful and hypnotic. The second half much more intense, faster and heavier sounds and different style of graphics. Close ups of flies presented with 3D visualisation software. The level of detail throughout was impeccable.
Inject is another audio-visual piece, which received an honorary mention at Prix Art Electronica 2010. In Inject, Kolgen illustrates a sense of loss of touch with reality. The strange disconnection between the physical and emotional states of being.
The piece began, as the first, with just audio whilst the video title remained on the screen. A strange choice of intro, which seemed a little pointless. After a few minutes of crunchy audio noises the visual piece began with close ups of dead goldfish and rain hitting an umbrella. The main focus of the video then shifts to a human body in a water tank, being subjected to all kinds of invisible yet extreme forces. The contortions of the human body reminiscent of ‘Flex’ by Chris Cunningham. The visual imagery is truly stunning. The human subject spent 6 days submerged in the water in total. It’s overall impact is aggressive and extreme. The end sequences for me were the most impressive – a combination of digital effects seeming to interact with the body.
For both pieces, it was very difficult to understand exactly what Kolgen was doing live and how much of it was previously sequenced. One thing was clear, Kolgen is a true artist, very focused and very experimental. The audio-visual world needs more characters like this. The ongoing sound-scapes, sound-sculptures and white noise seem limiting for this type of work. I’d like to see what could be achieved with a little bit more rhythm on the audio side of things.
In a brief Q&A afterwards Herman Kolgen discussed how the content for dust, was literally the contents of his vacuum cleaner. Which was then married so beautifully with sub bass both with photography and digital effects. He also touched on how he was inspired to create Inject after his mother died and he’d split from a long term girlfriend, a clue to his state of mind at the time and possibly why it ended up so extreme… and best just not to ask about the octopus.
The venue itself was incredible. Kings Place’s – newly built in 2008 – the first public concert hall to be built in central London since the Barbican was completed 25 years ago. The main hall itself is built exclusively with the wood from a single tree, the acoustics were second to none. The huge screen above the stage not so good – with plenty of creases rippling through it. In visual terms it’s the equivalent of a dented speaker cone. A real shame to see that as i’m sure everyone worked very hard to put on this event, and that was a small blip on an otherwise solid performance.
MORE INFO:
Flickr Event Photos
http://www.kolgen.net/
https://vimeo.com/user2308701
http://www.alpha-ville.co.uk/
https://www.facebook.com/AlphavilleFestival
