Aura Satz: The Absorbing Wall, 2015. Courtesy the artist
Aura Satz, Hansard Gallery, Southampton
Aura Satz started the year with a sound work installed in a red telephone box. Dial Tone Drone set a conversation between composers Pauline Oliveros and Laurie Spiegel about the role of drones in their music against the insistent beep of a telephone dial tone. Since then the Barcelona-born Royal College of Art tutor has exhibited in Montreal, northern Sweden, and upstate New York all the while carrying on a 12 month residency at the Institute of Sound and Vibration Research at the University of Southampton.
The Trembling Line presents the results of this residency through a series of films and installations with a score by Leo Grant diffused through a unique sound spatialisation system. The show includes works looking at Daphne Oram’s Oramics drawn sound system, anechoic chambers, and the slowed-down notes of a violin. “I suppose my primary source of inspiration,” Satz said in a 2012 interview with Alastair Cameron at the Arnolfini in Bristol, “has mostly been the material forms yielded by certain technologies, the acoustic codes which don’t often get looked at artistically, but seem to suggest all manner of readings which are almost filmic.”
Aura Satz’s The Trembling Line will be at the Hansard Gallery from 3 December to 23 January
Leslie Thornton, Peggy and Fred in Hell: Folding (still), 1985–2015. Digital video (originated on 16mm film), 95 minutes. Courtesy of the artist.
The Inoperative Community, Raven Row, London
“The gravest and most painful testimony of the modern world, the one that possibly involves all other testimonies to which this epoch must answer … is the testimony of the dissolution, the dislocation, or the conflagration of community.” So the philosopher Jean-Luc Nancy began his 1986 text La communauté dédoeuvrée which gives its name to a new group show opening at Raven Row.
Featuring video works by Yvonne Rainer, Stuart Marshall, Jean-Luc Godard, Johan Grimonperez, and Ericka Beckman among others, The Inoperative Community promises over 50 hours of viewing to address “ideas of community and the shifting nature of social relations.”
The Inoperative Community is at Raven Row from 3 December to 14 February
At A Loss for Words by collectif_fact
collectif_fact, Tenderpixel, London
“My job? Well, I guess you could say I simplify the human condition.” In The Fixer, London and Geneva-based duo, Annelore Schneider and Claude Piguet (aka collectif_fact) present a monologue by a Hollywood script doctor talking about his job, in a manner to suggestive more of a contract killer’s confession, complete with trembling minor-key strings and eerily-framed photographs of the interior of the Barbican Centre.
Since winning the Swiss Art Award in 2011, collectif_fact have exhibited at The Crossing, London, the Swiss Cultural Centre in Paris, and the City Museum of Contemporary Art in Hiroshima. Their video works operate within the codes of Hollywood cinema to look at urbanism, architecture and the privatisation of public space.
At Tenderpixel in west London, The Fixer will be shown alongside a new work shot in Dungeness called At a Loss for Words as well as 2010’s Hitchcock Presents in which Le Corbusier’s Maison blanche in Switzerland becomes the protagonist in a suspenseful chiller when juxtaposed with the trailer for Psycho.
collectif_fact’s Suspension of Disbelief will be at Tenderpixel from 8 December to 16 January
Follow by Simon Whybray
Follow, Fact, Liverpool
A little short of a month ago, Transformers star, Shia LaBeouf took a seat at the Angelika Film Center in New York and watched every film he’s ever starred in, back to back, for 72 hours. But this was not just a fond trip down memory lane. Rather, LaBeouf’s movie marathon was staged as a work of performance art conceived by the artist collective of which he is a part, LaBeouf, Rönkkö & Turner. The actor’s face was livestreamed throughout so you could follow his reactions from Man Down to Breakfast with Einstein, and a schedule was published, so you could, if you so chose, watch along with Shia from the comfort of your living room.
The title of the work is #allmymovies and it succeeds LaBeouf, Rönkkö & Turner’s previous collaborations, #followmyheart, #metamarathon, and #iamsorry. In fact, pretty well all of LaBeouf, Rönkkö & Turner’s art works come pre-hashtagged. It is this, perhaps, that make them so suitable for inclusion in Fact’s new group show, Follow, opening on 10 December.
Promising to “ask what impact the internet is really having on our concept of ‘reality’, and how we think about ourselves, our idols and those around us”, Follow brings LaBeouf, Rönkkö & Turner together with new works by Cécile B. Evans, Aram Bartholi, Ant Hamlyn, Joe Orr, Louise Adkins, and Simon Whybray, a London-based graphic designer and club promoter who is also responsible for the show’s “exhibition identity” above.
Follow is at Fact, Liverpool, from 10 December until 21 February
Decoy by SheOne, courtesy Magda Danysz gallery
Cosmic Flush, Gallery Magda Danysz, London
Rammellzee was one of the most distinctive and influential voices in hip hop. Appearing in the films Wild Style, Downtown 81, and Stranger Than Paradise, his graffiti was revered in the New York street art community of the early 80s and his classic track ‘Beat Bop’ was produced by Jean-Michel Basquiat.
Before he died in 2010, Rammellzee produced one final album, Cosmic Flush, the ultimate realisation of his theory of gothic futurism. Unreleased until now, its blend of sci-fi imagery and sonic experimentation sees the hip hop pioneer pushing his already wild style even further into breakcore and speed metal. British label Gamma Proforma has been releasing tracks from the album as a series of seven 12” records with additional remixes by the likes of Edan and PsychoPabs, plus exclusive original artworks. Now, Gallery Magda Danysz is to exhibit album, artwork, and remixes all in a fortnight-long show dedicated to the late medieval mechanist.
Cosmic Flush is at Gallery Magda Danysz from 10 December to 22 December
