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Oberhausen International Short Film Festival 2001, Germany
Preparation for essay 'Seeing the Beat: Retinal Intensities in Electronic
Music Videos.' Simon Reynolds. 2000 The Videos. A Response. The effects
resemble solarisation, video equivalents of audio production FX like flanging,
phasing, ghosting, filtering etc -- where there's source material like stock footage or
your own shooting, it's extremely degraded and distorted -- also there's all these
abstract, abject-looking pulses and filaments and oozings of color-texture - and
there's kaleidoscopic effects combined with abstract symbols and patterns -- also
seems to be a lot of flicker and strobe, and an effect that's kind of trembling or
wavering of the image. Generally it looks like you're trying to do visually what you
did with language in the OD book in the pieces evoking the disorientation and
uncanny qualities of techno trance rave etc -- Seeing the Beat: Retinal Intensities
in Electronic Music Videos is about how the visual lags behind the sonic, it can't
have the same power to penetrate, subsume, enfold, irradiate etc our bodies that
sound has, that terrible intimacy and proximity of the sonic whereas the visual has
an inbuilt detachment and perspectival mastery of the field of vision -- this lag
between the two senses, and their corresponding artistic mediums, is something
you're trying to close with your video work. EXCERTS FROM "Seeing the Beat:
Retinal Intensities in Techno and Electronic Dance Videos" by Simon Reynolds,
2000 Published in Festival Catalogue -Oberhausen International Short Film
Festival, Mai 200 (Internationale Kurtzfilmtage Oberhausen) (In conjunction with
the screening of 'Spiderman' video) "o[rphan]d[rift<], whose video work has
featured in promos for songs, as back projected video-decor in clubs, and in
multimedia gallery installations, also represent "the spirit of rave" in terms of formdissolving, ego-melting, boundary-hemorrhaging femininity. They consciously
articulate their work as an attempt to close the gap between the visual(traditionally
regarded as the masculine sense) and the aural(traditionally regarded as
female).....The overall effect simulates a sort of retinal trembling, as though vision
itself was wavering, the mindscreen buckling and crinkling. The eye is restored to
its materiality as a jelly-like orb, a muscle capable of being stressed, strained,even
injured, as opposed to a disincarnate, invulnerable perceptual apparatus." "The urtechnique underlying o[rphan] d[rift<]'s work is the liberation of texture from its
environment, of energy-flux from contoured form;the goal is to recreate "the
intensity of being kind of lost." "The O[rphan]d[rift<], cyberpositive, book describes
the rave experience in terms of masochistic mortification of the flesh ("deep hurting
techno", "the violence of the sounds.its like you are being turned inside
out,smeared,penetrated"), shamanic possession and voodoo oblivion("white
darkness","the fog of absolute proximity") and "beautiful fear".
Carrier 2000 Prosjektrom Kunstnernes Hus, Oslo
Review 'Billedkunst', nr.3, 2000, by Christian Refsum, 'Carrier' by 0rphan
drift. THE UNDERWORLD AT KUNSTNERNES HUS. The installation 'Carrier' is
an intimate experiment in space and the sensation of space. One can recognize a
lot of effects from the last 20 years of installation art; dark rooms, steel rods that
trigger associations of a decaying industrial society. There are flashing video
screens, uncomfortable sound effects that seem unpleasantly close or as if they
come from a different place. All the rooms seem relatively independent but all
block out light and give a confined feeling. And they all trigger electronic tensions.
One can think of separate zones in a coal-mine or underworld, a place where there
is no organic life or form, only matt planes, stone, metal, electronic flashing signals
and sound fragments, either static or in a mechanic loop. This kind of installation
art got shaped in the changes from the industrial to post-industrial society.
Contemporary art exists as a row of parallel genres and ways of expressions,
that in a given period represent something new, but after a while will develop its
own codes that have a relatively independent dynamic. 'Carrier' shows that this is
also the case with the 80's a bit more 'rock-n-roll' and more 'technofied'
installation art. 'Carrier' makes this medium of expression readable again, but it
works also as aesthetisized contemporary art. It is an immediate experience of the
atomspheric and meditative potential of the space.
SYZYGY 2000 Beaconsfield, London
SYZYGY- 26/02/99-28/03/99 at Beaconsfield Arts, London Project developed
and curated by 0rphandrift with CCRU ŒCybernetic Culture Research unit¹ resulting in an installation animated by audio visual works presented in a series of
events over five weeks. Each week was devoted to a different Œfictional numeric
character¹ whose principles were embodied in installed static art, video, sound, live
performance and discussion. 0rphan drift produced the main installation- (see
collage images); the video work (production and live mixing-see clips) ; and
directed commissioned collaborators for events; Traxis (performers), Ocosi,
Apache 61, Dmitri Nakov (sound). CCRU events also included sound by Kodwo
Eshun and Kode9.
Excerpt from Review by Jim Flint, Mute Magazine, issue 13 "While the CCRU
was more interested in the theoretical underpinning of the show , the 0rphan¹s side
concerned itself with the dynamic reconstruction of various numerically based
cultural machines, and to this extent there was a fictional element.- 0D used the
notion of the demon in its various forms( though they prefered the term ¹avatar) to
code the various elements they were trying to make coherent within the
contemporary mediasphere. Thus we were shown the avatar as a unit of sorcery;
as a figure historically used to provide an Œinformational outside¹ with physics, a
link between logic and noise, as in Maxwell¹s demon; as a software agent, as
semi-intelligent and semi-autonomous code-bot; and as a disruptive figure of
darkness. For 0D, all of these have in common the casting of the demon as a
multiple and individious unit of ontological disintegration, but one that is implicit in
any act of communication- something which the angelogies of Michel Serres have
already taught us. By recasting each node/operation on the CCRU numagram as
an avatar or demon- the art on display- the collages, dancers and audiovisual
events- -expressed each avatars realisation as a tendency in cultural production.
Thus one avatar, KATAK, grew out of the conflict between electricity and sunlight
and linked to belief systems and sacrifice, to the concentrations of power typical of
fanatacism, while another, XES, was born of the reality of total surface presented
by the camera. One creative conflict, one source of power, for all five of the avatars
was the duality that exists between tools and weapons, each able to perform the
function of either depending upon the circumstance."
Ariadne's Gone Virtual 1995 Underwood st
Beat Regeneration. Jim McClellan sees echoes of Kerouac in techno
subcultists 0rphan drift. The Observer Life Magazine. July 1995. 'Ariadne's
Gone Virtual' attempted to investigate the disorientating nature of computersimulated worlds by trying to construct a video game space in a gallery. Time Out.
July 1995. 0rphan drift is a collaborative effort by four nameless artists that draws
heavily on cyberpunk vernacular. 'These stories are of the interface-adaptationdanger-circuit that is our lives. This is a nervous network, a schizoid novel
visualized' reads the press release. What you get is a subterranean display of
video works, flickering ultraviolet sunbed lights and techno tracks.The graffiti on the
walls sketches out a bleak scenario of urban alienation and comic book dreams.
Anteomega 1997 Bank Space, London
excerpt from 0D Wave mag interview, Belgium. 1996. Mapping a new species.
The entrance to the show was draped in 'an alien's shed skin'. We inherited some
snakes. They inspired many aspects of this show. They have a wired stillness.
They feel the world around them as vibration. We saw them as a prototype for
changing perception because they are tuned in to frequency and vibration'. Beyond
the skin, the walls were patterned with different images: video and tv stills,
drawings and symbols, diagrammatic clusters, 'making a map on many levels like
techno music, with different frequencies- the bassline and so on- and elements
repeating like melodies, motifs, themes, beats'. Reminiscent of circuit diagrams,
0(rphan)d(rift>) maps express strange, transformative processes.
Martin 1998 Commercial Gallery, London; Catalyst Arts, Belfast;
Maygood Gallery, Newcastle and Galeria Dziekanka, Poland
OD Video work 'YOU IT¹S EYES' produced for MARTIN traveling exhibtion of
works inspired by George Romero¹s 1970¹s vampire film 'MARTIN' First
Showing at Commercial Gallery and Atlantis, London 12/6-9/7 1997 Excerpts
from Review by Pauline Mourik Broekman- Mute Magazine, Issue 9 0rphan
Drift¹s installation "You It¹s Eye¹s" is an older piece. Deliberately placed at the end
of the exhibition in 'Martin's' planned Heart of Darkness¹, "You It¹s Eye¹s" doesn¹t
require the curator¹s meta-discourse to pull you into otherworldliness. - It¹s silent
surrounds demand a different kind of attention and reward it amply. The video has
been worked and reworked to the point where dissolution is always on the horizon.
Viewing it means flitting in and out of a bleeding, congealing televisual world at
speeds which come to feel anything but human. Perhaps that¹s the sensation
Martin was getting at when he tried to tell his family what he felt like.
Orphan drift 1995 Cabinet Gallery, London
ID Magazine. June 1995. Serotonin Overkill. Art posse 0rphan drift describe
themselves as 'insistent signal' and refuse to specify their backgrounds or how
many people are in the group. They've written cybersaturated, poetic fiction, are
developing a computer game and generate cool images. Their pictures show
human figures dissolving into colours alongside hallucinogenic landscapes,
handfuls of disco pills, slasher style torture and the evolution of a cyborg. It's future
dreaming- but with a violent edge.'
Time Out. March1995. 'When culling images from TV screens, there's a shutter
speed that avoids interference lines. I can't remember what it is and neither can
0rphan drift (unless theirs are deliberate). These photographs have a full
complement of them; pixelated and camera shaken. Computer circuitry informs
their layout over the freshly silvered walls. There's even an ambient, trancy
soundtrack. 0rphan drift is a collaborative project, a soon-to-be-published book,
and the title of the show. A colour co-ordinated dynamic runs through the gallery's
two rooms. Blind ninja and whirring helicopters populate a vampiric desert dawn
and a subterranean jungle. Although extremes of aural, visual and technological
states are implied, the result is strangely vernacular; grounded between high-brow
and sci-fi. Touchstones emerge when the images dissolve into pure heightened
colour. According to 0rphan drift, these are after images for ' a generation addicted
to extremity in order to feel'.'
Dave Beech @ The Cabinet Gallery. 1995. in The New German Critique. No.25
'Sex, Drugs and Remote Control. 0rphan drift has drawn on the popular genres
most associated with the excessive disorder of dreams: horror, science fiction, and
their hybrid- the documentary about technology. This is the culture of spectres.
Even though the unframed photos are distributed more or less on a grid pattern
across the walls, they inhabit the space without any definite sense of purpose or
structure. These video stills are the object of contemplation, but more they
anticipate a drunken, ecstatic and unhinged response. Filling a gallery with
spectral, frozen shards of the longed for and the feared is going to be almost
inevitably uncanny. The neurosis will have bite only if the tropes of otherness are
allowed to mumble in their sleep, never quite expressing themselves. This much is
achieved in these stolen images of lost bodies and drifting landscapes. Quite
unaccountably, though, this cyberscape of somatic edginess has a vague utopian
yearning. I say 'vague', but I mean something more like 'cryptic', but without the
connotations of stealth. For, the mesh of significations which is this tinted room
with silver windows and ambient sound combines with the images to produce
something not only strange, but quite opposed to normalization. For instance, the
representation of desire as android emotionality doesn't quite settle between the
thrill of electric surges and the threat of automatic chaos. This imbalance is an
opening. Utopia is in there somewhere. Pictures taken from the TV always look
diseased, their skin fractured by the grammar of transmission. As the unresolved
collision of formats, the diseased image is a sign of difference, non identity. Too
often such inscribed difference is employed for the purpose of professional vanitya sure sign of high-brow intertextuality- but it can also register the violent
manufacture of subjectivities. Here, as the uncertain surface of images of floating
existencies or of the panic of drowning, mediated photos of the mediafication of
bodily intensities read the somatic disruptions of sex and drugs via their remote
encoding in fantasy and myth. This isn't a matter of quotation, but contamination- a
sort of technological expressionism. . .'