AV Festival
AV Festival is the UK's largest international festival of contemporary art, music and film. A biennial event, the Festival is thematically curated to engage audiences with current ideas across art, society and technology. The latest edition of the festival runs from 1st March-31st March 2012.
The bi-annual Festival takes place in the cities of Newcastle/Gateshead, Sunderland and Middlesbrough in the North east of England. The 2006 festival took place in March and went for ten days across three major north coast towns of the UK with events starting at 10am and going till 2am. The 2006 and 2008 Festivals were directed by Honor Harger and produced by Fiona Fitzpatrick (2006) and Michelle Hirschhorn (2008). Tom Cullen directed all technical aspects of the show. The 2010 Festival was directed by Rebecca Shatwell, who returns in the role for the 2012 Festival.
The Festival commissions new work, and curates thematic strands of internationally significant existing work. Each Festival consists of around 20 exhibitions and 60 special events including concerts, film screenings and talks, simultaneously across Newcastle, Gateshead, Sunderland and Middlesbrough.
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[edit] History
Past editions of the Festival have taken place biennially since 2006, with a pilot edition in 2003. Since then it has developed to become a significant international event, achieving both public and critical acclaim. The evolution of what was previously a ten-day Festival to a month long edition in 2012, aims to create greater engagement.
The Festival is built on collaboration and partnership working and has a strong network of supporters across the North East, and around the world. Our partners include major regional venues including mima Middlesbrough Institute of Modern Art, The Sage Gateshead, Baltic Centre for Contemporary Art, Tyneside Cinema and Tyne & Wear Archives & Museums.
The last edition of the Festival was delivered in 2010. Over ten-days it achieved a 65% increase in audience attendance to 70,000 visits, including a 135% increase in visitors from outside the North East. It worked in partnership with 31 cultural venues, engaged 140 artists, 164 volunteers, commissioned 20 new works and created £1.25 of economic output per pound invested. In 2009 and 2012 AV Festival won a Silver Award at the North East Tourism Awards.
AV Festival has previously commissioned and worked with leading artists including: Kenneth Anger, artificiel, Autechre, Craig Baldwin, Vicki Bennett, Sonia Boyce, Oron Catts, Marcus Coates, Cluster, Gina Czarnecki, Rhodri Davies, Graham Dolphin, Evelina Domnitch & Dmitry Gelfand, FM Einheit, Graham Harwood, Felix Hess, Joyce Hinterding, Harun Farocki, Richard Fenwick, Alec Finlay, Iain Forsyth & Jane Pollard, Felix Gonzalez-Torres, Suguru Goto, Andy Gracie, Ryoji Ikeda, Atsuhiro Ito, Zilvinas Kempinas, Felix Kubin, Steve Kurtz, Pe Lang, Liliane Lijn, Anthony McCall, Kaffe Matthews, Gustav Metzger, Yuko Mohri, Alan Moore, Carsten Nicolai, Michael Nyman, Stephen O'Malley, Charlemagne Palestine, Lee Patterson, Marko Peljhan, Jean-Jacques Perry, Rick Prelinger, Ken Rinaldo, Kate Rich, Aura Satz, Semiconductor, Iain Sinclair, Simon Fisher Turner, Staalplaat Soundsystem, Susan Stenger, Chris Watson, Jana Winderen, and :zoviet*france:
[edit] Themes
Since 2006, each festival has had a theme that loosely organizes the events. Festivals have had the following themes:
- 2006: Life
- 2008: Broadcast
- 2010: Energy
- 2012: As Slow As Possible
[edit] Events
In 2006 the theme of Life brought a panopoly of international digital arts talent with works such as:
- Celestial Radio by Neil Bromwich & Zoe Walker (with a soundtrack by zoviet*france:)
- Spine by Gina Czarnecki (new commission & World Premiere),
- Wonderland by Claire Davies (World Premiere),
- System C by Marius Watz (UK premiere),
- datamatics by Ryoji Ikeda (new commission & World premiere),
- Who Am I? by UMAMi, Preamptive, Retina Glitch & Grainy Collective (new commission & World Premiere),
- RoboticMusic by Suguru Goto (UK premiere),
- What I Know About Stem Cells by Richard Fenwick (new commission & World premiere),
- Marching Plague by The Critical Art Ensemble (World premiere),
- The Autotelematic Spider Bots by Ken Rinaldo & Matt Howard (new commission & World premiere),
- Autoinducer Ph-1 (cross cultural chemistry) The Phumox Project: Andy Gracie and Brian Lee Yung Rowe (new commission & World premiere),
- Swell by Anthony McCall (new commission & World premiere),
- The Remains of Disembodied Cuisine by Oron Catts & Ionat Zurr (UK Premiere),
- Artificial Worlds V.3.0 by Richard Fenwick (new commission & World Premiere),
[edit] AV Festival 12: As Slow As Possible
In the run-up to London 2012 with its motto of “Faster, Higher, Stronger” the festival proposes an alternative slower pace and relaxed rhythm to counter the accelerated speed of today.
Titled after ASLSP (As SLow aS Possible), by pioneering artist John Cage, the theme explores how artists have stretched, measured and marked the passage of time. Some works last the full 31 days others are infinite in duration or move imperceptibly slowly: 14 seconds become 31 minutes, an hour becomes 24, and we can all dream in a 12-hour sleep concert.
This fifth edition of the biennial Festival runs, for the first time, over a whole month. It takes place at different speeds, paces and times of day, across NewcastleGateshead, Middlesbrough and Sunderland. Including 22 exhibitions, 34 film screenings, 15 concerts, 6 walks, a 744-hour continuous online radio plus new commissions and UK premieres.
