Fennesz und Lillevan – Yan Duyvendak – Vicki Bennett aka People Like Us – Larytta – Plaid – Junction SM aka Sonja Moonear und Dandy Jack – Frédéric Post – Strotter Inst. und Flo Kaufmann – Philip Jeck – Birdy Nam Nam – DJ Q-Bert – Goldfinger Brothers – Huzi – 8GG

Opening Concert

Thursday, 23.10.2008

FENNESZ UND LILLEVAN (A/SE)

Audiovisual performance

Thu, 23.10.2008, 22.00 h
The Festival opening is simultaneously the Swiss premiere of musician Christian Fennesz and VJ Lillevans’ collaborative project. Fennesz and Lillevan are part of a worldwide network of creative musicians, choreographers and media artists who have left behind them the conventional playing techniques of the 20th century to fathom instead the endless potential of electronic sound production and its multiple interface with visual culture. Born in 1962 in Vienna, Christian Fennesz has personally redefined the sound of guitar magically modified by electronic production methods. His instrument is a spark plug, a catalyst for creations transformed on a laptop and later layered and looped in live performance in a dense weave of sound. Berlin-based media artist and VJ Lillevan (* 1965), probably best known as a co-founder of the a/v duo Rechenzentrum, uses found footage, his own recordings and digitally generated images to create films that engage in multi-faceted interaction with Fennesz’ music.
www.fennesz.com, www.lillevan.com

Listen! Don't you remember?

Friday, 24.10.2008
Playful appropriation, re-mix and transformation of visual and audio fragments from different media archives in Friday evening’s programme of performance and concerts will confront the audience not least with its own store of media and musical memories: for this live artistry is designed to evoke all kinds of images, associations and contexts as well as the immediacy of pure emotion.

Jan Duyvendak (CH)

<Self-service> performance

Fri, 24.10.2008, 20.00 h
Playful appropriation, re-mix and transformation of visual and audio fragments from different media archives in Friday evening’s programme of performance and concerts will confront the audience not least with its own store of media and musical memories: for this live artistry is designed to evoke all kinds of images, associations and contexts as well as the immediacy of pure emotion.

www.duyvendak.com

Vicki Bennett aka People like Us (GB)

Audiovisual performance

Fri, 24.10.2008, 20.30 h
Londoner Vicki Bennett is a virtuoso composer of works based on found material that, under the alias People Like Us she shamelessly digs up from strange TV and radio shows, cinema classics and tacky soaps. Always hot on the scent of the weird and wonderful, Bennett appropriates and re-contextualises her audio-visual snippets to create completely new soundscapes, thereby exchanging the passivity of media consumption for a critical approach to brainless media. Her Dada-like audio-video collages are humorous, entertaining and extremely provocative, all at the same time.
www.peoplelikeus.org

Larytta (CH)

Concert

Fri, 24.10.2008, 22.00 h
Larytta was founded in 2004 by the duo, Christian Pahud and Guy Meldem, whose energetic, creative mix of everyday sounds, guitar loops, rhythmic beats and vocals adds up to a singular, experimental style of electro-pop. Champions of Lausanne’s lively music and arts scene, Pahud and Meldem are also involved in a number of crossover style co-productions and have worked with video artist Emanuelle Antille, among others. Larytta’s graphic design is the domain of artists’ collective Körner Union, of which Guy Meldem is also a member. ‘Difficult Fun’, recently released on Creaked Records, is their first full-length album. The CD offers a characteristically impudent style-mix that reflects their personal understanding of music.
www.myspace.com/larytta, www.creakedrecords.com

Plaid (GB)

Concert

Fri, 24.10.2008, 23.30 h
Musical duo Plaid aka Andy Turner and Ed Handley have roots in the British Electro scene that emerged around the Warp label. Plaid concerts are distinguished by the stress ratio between constant repetition and sudden changes in virtuoso melodies and delicate rhythms; yet another focus during livesets is the process of how music is stored in our minds: snippets of stuff long since lodged in our memory is interwoven with live music to trigger and tease the audience’s associations. In 1993 Plaid released their first album ‘Black Dog Productions’ on Warp, in collaboration with Ken Downie. In 1995 they split up with Downie and went on tour with Björk. The international breakthrough came finally in 2000 with their compilation ‘Trainer’. Their new album ‘Scintilli’ will be out soon.
www.plaid.co.uk

Junction SM aka Sonja Moonear (CH) und Dandy Jack (D)

Semi-Live-Set

Fri, 24.10.2008, 00.30 h
Junction SM is a perfect combination of Sonja Moonear’s fine selection of vinyl and the elegant rhythms and melodies of Dandy Jack’s live set. Sonja Moonear uses Dandy Jack’s sound material as an additional source that she integrates in her DJ sets. Modified by filters and effects, inventiveness and originality, the music of Junction SM manages increasingly to erase the borders between found material and its own inherent sound. Sonja Moonear is without any doubt one of the most sought after Swiss DJs in the field of advanced Techno. She has been regularly booked in recent years by the world’s major festivals and clubs. She releases her own tracks and re-mixes on internationally renowned labels such as Karat and Perlon. German-Chile Dandy Jack is a musician and producer. Among the cornerstones of his career to date rank the projects ‘Sieg über die Sonne’ (‘Victory Over the Sun’), with Pete Namlock and Pink Ellen and ‘Ric y Martin’ (with Ricardo Villalobos). In 2006 Junction SM released her first EP on Kalk Pets.
http://ruta5.org





Visuals:

Videokultur (CH)

Under the common alias Videokultur, 5 VJ-Crews from Switzerland (Bildstörung, Kim & Jim, Pixelpunx, Projektil and Suffix) joined forces in order to share know-how and strategies, to network more closely and to launch collaborative projects. With aspirations also to raise their profile and the quality of Vj-ing, the collective will be showing its stuff not only during concerts but also as part of the exhibition, in the special VJ-Laboratory. There, and at the two presentations scheduled for Shift Talks, the VJs’ will demonstrate their working methods in a fun way designed to increase public access to the VJ experience. The collective’s own archive material, images generated during the festival and the musicians’ in-put add up to the source code for tailor-made live performances.
www.videokultur.ch

 

Turntablism

Saturday, 25.10.2008
The record player as an instrument and the vinyl record as an inexhaustible storage medium for music and culture take centre stage in Saturday evening’s programme of concerts. The record player serves artists from Switzerland, France, the UK and the USA as a creative interface with the aid of which they create new sounds from found sounds. Playing with turntables opens up potentially endless variations. However different an approach Frédéric Post, Strotter Inst. & Flo Kaufmann, Philip Jeck, Birdy Nam Nam and the Goldfinger Brothers may take, all these artists demonstrate the enduring significance both of this seemingly, rather anachronistic playback equipment aka instrument, as well as the fascination of repeating, stuttering and re-mixing the content of collective and subjective archives.

Frederic Post (CH)

<DISQUES EN COLLE MIRACOL (1998-2008)> DJ-Performance

Sat, 25.10.2008, 20.00 h
Miracol is the name both of Geneva based Frédéric Post’s (*1975), mini-label and of the process for the manufacture of low-budget records. He uses a white PVC glue to create negative casts of vinyl originals that he either discovered in his piratical wanderings or developed especially for Miracol in collaborative projects. Post’s performances transport his audience into a topsy-turvy world of reversed playback enhanced by the mistakes and crackle inherent in a household production. He exploits to the full the ambiguous delights of this frail and fetishistic object. The Miracol Showcase offers releases based on pieces by eRikm, Pierre Belouin & Cécile Babiole, Daft Punk, Alejandro Vidal, Romainville, Kraftwerk and Studio 1 (to name but a few) – a genuine postclubbing experience is guaranteed.

<DURCHDREHEN> with STROTTER INST. UND FLO KAUFMANN (CH)

Concert

Sat, 25.10.2008, 20.30 h
Strotter Inst. (*1968) and Flo Kaufmann (*1973) are champions of a lively Swiss scene at the interface of art, music, performance, and the simple joys of tinkering about in an unerringly dedicated DIY style. They use playback equipment, recording devices and anything else of that ilk (apparently) left behind sometime between the invention of the first phonograph in 1877 and today’s digital techniques. ‘Durchdrehen’ (to spin, to go berserk) begins with improvisation on this type of gear. The sounds produced are cut by Flo Kaufmann on beercans that are then re-played by Strotter Inst. on his customised record players. The result is an open system in which music increasingly structures itself, and the creative procedure of recording, storing and processing attains an expressive immediacy.
www.strotter.org, www.floka.com

PHILIP JECK (GB)

Concert

Sat, 25.10.2008, 22.00 h
Renowned British sound artist and performer Philip Jeck’s preferred media since the early 1980s have been rare and mostly unknown vinyl, and old record players that he can have rotate at 16, 33, 45 or 78 rpm, at will. Fascinated by work with these witnesses to earlier musical eras, the pioneer of ‘turntablism’ conjures many a surprising sound by ingeniously manipulating vinyl. Yet it is not only the musical pieces captured for all eternity on vinyl that interest him but also the medial specificities of his musical archive: the fragility and ephemeral nature of its materiality. The unmistakeable character and the history of every single vinyl disc flow into the genesis of his music; and playing vinyl – or with vinyl – becomes a way of playing with the audience’s associations.
www.philipjeck.com

DJ Q-BERT (USA)

DJ-Set

Sat, 25.10.2008, 24.00 h
San Francisco-based DJ Q-Bert is a major champion and pioneer of turntablism and can in fact be described as the ambassador of all DJs who perceive their record player as an instrument. His special discipline is scratching, which he developed as a fine art in various styles that are now copied all over the globe by any number of DJs. Yet, there’s till no one like Q-Bert, who scratches hundreds of new variations from any single sound. DJ Q-Bert has been active since the early days of hip-hop culture in the 1980s. He was a member of FM 20 and the legendary Rock Steady Crew with Mixmaster Mike and DJ Apollo. It was as Rock Steady DJs that they first won the DMC championships in 1992. Q-Bert released the first album based exclusively on scratching, ‘Wavetwisters’, in 1998.
www.djqbert.com

BIRDY NAM  NAM (FR)

DJ-Performance

Sat, 25.10.2008, 01.30 h
Birdy Nam Nam rank among today’s most mega-major turntable-crews. The combo comprises Crazy-B, DJ Pone, DJ Need and Little Mike, each of whom along with his record player represents an ‘instrument’. Their pieces don’t simply reflect the cream of DJ methods and styles; the four musicians also make their own enticing music with their turntable line-up. Their store of samples reaches way back into the Golden Age of Funk and Soul yet Birdy Nam Nam also draw on contemporary electro music or get their own material cut on vinyl specially for their concerts. Artistic independence, creativity and totally dedicated sets characterise the Birdy Nam Nam style. Their hotly awaited new album was produced in collaboration with Yuksek and Justice, two leading producers on France’s cutting-edge music scene.
www.birdynamnam.com

 

GOLDFINGER BROTHERS (CH)

DJ-Set

Sat, 25.10.2008, 23.00-00.00 h, 01.00-01.30 h, 02.30-04.00 h
We’ve been running into this Baslebased fraternal duo, DJ La Febbre and DJ Montes for a good ten years now, at home and abroad, at DJ battles, club nights, open-airs and parades, as well as catching them over the airwaves. Whizz-kids in a word, they launched several successful party series and have their own show on Radio Virus to boot. Their musical range runs from hip-hop through Electro-boogie to Funk and Reggae. In more recent times they’ve also made a name for themselves in Bastard-Pop under their ‘Boogiepilots’ alias, whose pièce de résistance is socalled mash-ups, homemade collages of found sounds gleaned from other recording artists. Indefatigably, they hunt down the latest new releases and plummet the depths of dusty record stores for black gold long believed lost.
goldfingerbrothers.ch





Visuals:

Videokultur (CH)

Under the common alias Videokultur, 5 VJ-Crews from Switzerland (Bildstörung, Kim & Jim, Pixelpunx, Projektil and Suffix) joined forces in order to share know-how and strategies, to network more closely and to launch collaborative projects. With aspirations also to raise their profile and the quality of Vj-ing, the collective will be showing its stuff not only during concerts but also as part of the exhibition, in the special VJ-Laboratory. There, and at the two presentations scheduled for Shift Talks, the VJs’ will demonstrate their working methods in a fun way designed to increase public access to the VJ experience. The collective’s own archive material, images generated during the festival and the musicians’ in-put add up to the source code for tailor-made live performances.
www.videokultur.ch

Expanded Networks: China

Sunday, 26.10.2008

Supported by: Pro Helvetia / Swiss Arts Council

In December 2008 Swiss and Chinese artists from the fields of electronic music and audio-visual performance will meet in Peking and Shanghai for a series of joint concerts and performances as part of the ‘Switch on’ project. Swiss arts council, Pro Helvetia invited Michael Vonplon (Miro China) and Shift to conceive and organise ‘Switch on’ for its comprehensive cultural programme ‘China 2008–2010’. Now, in a move to broaden the network, Miro China and Shift present two acts from China at this year’s festival.

Huzi (Cn)

Concert

Sun, 26.10.2008, 16.00 h
Born in 1978 in Henan and resident today in Peking, Huzi’s roots lie in traditional Chinese music yet his long-standing interest in experimentation and different musical styles quickly established his reputation in China as a pioneer of electronic music. Ambient sets in which he mixes contemporary electronic with classical Chinese music have already put him in the international limelight too. Nor is it rare to encounter in his music the immediacy of urban realities, for example when he integrates and manipulates the hum, clash and crash of the city. Huzi releases his music on Modern Sky Records, a Chinese independent label for electronica, indie, rock and pop.
www.huzimusic.cn, wwwcn.myspace.cn/huziband

 

8GG (CN)

<Net soundscape>
Audiovisual Performance

Sun, 26.10.2008, 17.00 h
Jiang Haiqing and Fu Yu from Peking are the internationally renowned multimedial duo 8gg, whose audio-visual art performances and interactive installations have already taken centre stage at major institutions and festivals throughout Asia and Europe. For their ‘Net soundscape’ performance, 8gg draw on sounds culled from the Internet. Collecting sounds when surfing the net has kept the duo busy since 2000, and they later work them into totally new contexts as part of their performance. 8gg has also over the years, collated an equally impressive store of images from a variety of sources, which lends itself to a highly individual live video mix in time with the music.
www.8gg.com