IVAHM

Jing Wang & Harvey Goldman – Passaddhi

Synopsis: Lost in tranquility, the ethereal sounds and imagery of the inner mind struggle to maintain their primal elegance, as turbulence from the world beyond begins to infringe on their domain. The transcendent inner soundscapes of the imagination are ever vigilant as they rumble with the vestiges of human endeavor. Passahhdi is an abstract experimental animation. A melding of sound and image that explores both the emotional relationships and the commonality of their formal language. The manner in which the elemental components of the underlying structure, such as line, shape, color/timbre and form, as well as principals, such as harmony, balance, rhythm, and counterpoint, translate between the auditory and visual experience is a primary concern.

Bios: Jing Wang, a composer and virtuoso erhu artist, was born in China. Ms. Wang has participated in numerous musical communities, as a composer and a performer of diverse styles of music. Her compositions have been selected and presented in China, Spain, France, Italy, Serbia, Turkey, Romania, Russia, Australia, Japan, Argentina, and throughout the United States. They have also been recognized by the American Society of Composers, Authors, and Publishers and Electro-acoustic Miniatures International Contest Spain. She was the winner of 2006 Pauline Oliveros Prize given by the International Alliance for Women in Music and has been awarded the MacDowell Colony Fellowship, the Vilcek Foundation Fellowship, and the Omi International Musicians Residency Fellowship. As an active erhu performer, she has introduced the Chinese indigenous erhu into Western contemporary music scene with her wide array of compositions for chamber ensemble, avant-garde jazz improvisations and multicultural ensembles. She has also successfully performed erhu concertos with several symphony orchestras in the United States. Ms. Wang is currently an Assistant Professor of Music at the University of Massachusetts Dartmouth where she teaches electroacoustic music, composition, and music theory.

Harvey Goldman has created critically acclaimed work in the fields of ceramics, digital imaging, animation and music. He is founder of the Digital Media program at the University of Massachusetts Dartmouth. His work has been exhibited widely throughout the United States, Europe and Asia. He has received grants from the National Endowment for the Arts, The Ford Foundation and the Massachusetts Council on the Arts and Humanities. Goldman’s work is included in numerous private and public collections including the Iota Center for Experimental Animation, Boston Museum of Fine Arts, Everson Museum of Art, Decordova Museum, Currier Museum of Art, and the Crocker Art Museum. His animations have been screened throughout the world including, the Smithsonian’s Hirshhon Museum, the Corcoran Gallery of Art and the White Box Museum, Beijing, China. His interests include gardening, storytelling, world music, sound exploration, language development, writing systems and basketball. He resides in Dartmouth, Massachusetts with his wife and fellow artist, Deborah Coolidge.

Igor Grubic – Monument

Synopsis: Monument is a poetic-experimental documentary, structured as a series of nine meditative ‘portraits’ of the massive concrete memorials commissioned by the former Yugoslav state. These sentinel forms were originally built to honour the Second World War victims of fascism.
During the Balkans war of the 1990s thousands of these monuments, perceived only as monoliths of abandoned Communist ideology, were destroyed on the territory of ex- Yugoslav state. The attempt to erase these structures was the starting point for this film, which focuses on the conditions and ‘life’ of a group of monuments.
Emphasizing the unexpected fragility of these monumental structures, the director places human attempts to fix meaning against a backdrop of seasonal change. In a landscape that has witnessed cycles of trauma and upheaval, this film mirrors the rise and fall of many monuments built to preserve the memory of events that might otherwise be forgotten.
As a poetic-experimental documentary, Monument creates an existential, or even spiritual, resonance with the political issues, questioning the purpose of monuments today.

Bio: Igor Grubic (born in 1969, lives and works in Zagreb) has been active as a multimedia artist since 1995. His work includes site-specific interventions in public spaces, performances, photography and films. He is known for his activism and his consideration about public space as a means of expression. In 2000, he started to work as a producer and author of documentaries, TV reportages and socially committed commercials. His work has been exhibited in various international institutions and at different artistic and cultural events and garnered with several prestigious awards.

Jai Du – Pechos bien formados…coincidencia?

Sinopsis: Este video performance hace referencia al poder de los símbolos (arquetipos)que a su vez son formas geométricas y, por tanto,  números. Estos símbolos, como bien explicó C.G. Jung, han dominado nuestras vidas desde el origen porque son parte de nuestro inconsciente colectivo y han determinado lo que es bello o bueno y lo que es feo o malo. Así, las religiones y los gobiernos los han utilizado a lo largo de toda la historia para crear efectos resonantes que manipulen la conciencia de la sociedad. Esto significa que fuertes o extrañas experiencias físicas pueden resultar en estéticas e interesantes experiencias (imágenes) sólo porque siguen potentes y heredados patrones y símbolos.

La artista se muestra también interesada en producir una diferencia en un espacio con el que espectador se sienta familiar y la idea de que una performance podría producirse en un espacio sacado de contexto obteniendo todo su potencial teatral.

Synopsys: This video performance makes reference to the power of the symbols (archetypes), that at the same time are shapes and numbers. These symbols, as well explained C.G. Jung, have dominated our life since the beginning because they are part of our collective unconscious and have determined what is beautiful and good and what is ugly and bad. Thus, the religions and governments have used them throughout the history in order to create resounding effects that manipulate the society. It means that strong or weird physical experiences can turn into aesthetic and pleasant experiences (images) just because they follow powerful and inherited patterns and symbols.
The artist is also interested in producing a difference in a space the spectators would already be familiar with and the idea that a performance could use a space out of context bringing out all its theatrical potential.

Bio: Jai Du (Spain-Bilbao) starts her professional career as a business consultant in 2000, mainly working for banks and government institutions where she normally spent more than 12 hours/day. In 2008, thanks to a tragic accident and kidnapping suffered in Africa, which almost ends up with her life, she realizes about the lack of sense of passing life working at offices such amount of hours. Thus, she decides to fulfill her real life mission by starting talking and writing about the topics that nobody from her social and job sector would talk freely due to the fear of being fired or excluded. So, she becomes an artist with a hidden identity under the alter ego of Jai Du. In her first video performances emerge topics such as the internal conflicts and dependencies that the System’s rules produce in the citizens (the idea of personal success based only on “specific” professional careers, the current roles of the women in the different job sectors, the migration of people in search of a prosperous country, etc.) and, currently, her work involves the concept of the collective unconsciousness (C.G.Jung) and, the use of archetypes and mathematic series in order to create/activate specific emotions in the audience.

Jai Du believes that many of these topics or issues involve the most of our daily life producing serious physical and mental sickness. Through Art the artist has found not only the dispositive for self-reflection but also a way to raise social awareness. She thinks that this consciousness raising way plays a key factor to put in motion the social engine and to trigger the human being evolution.

As a poetry writer (“Snobby stories inspired in Afrique” 2008/2009, “Germany: in search of a prosperous country” 2011/12 and “Extractos d’UE” 2013/2014), she describes her own experiences in the different countries where she has been living and working. In 2012, due to the difficulty in the diffusion of poetry books, she started creating video performances inspired in some of her poems and, nowadays, her videos have been presented at galleries and festivals worldwide: Palais de Tokyo (Paris), Nouveau Theatre de Montreuil (Paris), Verge Gallery (Sydney), Artpotheek Gallery (Brussels), Bideodromo International Film Festival (Bilbao) winning the 3rd Prize (“Spanish Doping”), GIRÓN Center for Arts & Tactics (NY), Centre d’Art Santa Mònica (Barcelona), Cairo Video Festival (Egypt)…

As a performer, Jai Du is performing in almost all her videos with her cats using the body and physical experiences. She has had the opportunity to collaborate with the artists Tania Bruguera and Davis Freeman and to be inspired and advised by Rocio Boliver, participating in international festivals (“Acción!MAD” 2014, “Perfocilinne” 2013, “El Arte es Acción” 2009 and “ACCIONesLEON” 2009).

Jeroen Cluckers – Tears in Rain

Synopsis: A visual poem, trying to capture the poetics of a cinematic rain shower into the structure of its images. ‘Tears in Rain’ combines the techniques of datamoshing and slitscanning, injecting noise into the images of the 1982 science fiction classic Blade Runner, so that they mutate into a new visual poem.

Bio: Jeroen Cluckers (BE) is a video artist and experimental filmmaker. He explores the audiovisual potential of video and film by researching, deconstructing and transforming the language of both media. He attempts to write audiovisual poetry, resulting in dreamlike, often painterly images that leave traces and balance on the edge of recognition and alienation. His work has been exhibited in more than 20 countries, at festivals and venues like FILE Festival, The Hermitage Museum, Kasseler Dokfest, Ludwig Forum für Internationale Kunst, Internationale Kurzfilmwoche Regensburg, Athens Digital Arts Festival and ISEA.

Jerome Boulbes – Ghost Tracks

Synopsis: Wandering on forgotten tracks, seeking for a train that is yet to come or which vanished a long time ago.
« Ghosts Tracks » is a collaboration with experimental blues/noise musicians Rinji Fukuoka, Masayoshi Urabe and Shizuo Uchida. It is the second installment of a larger project about experimental and alternative musicians.

Bio: Jerome Boulbes studied at the “École Nationale des Arts Décoratifs” in Paris where he got a master degree in Illustration. In 1999 his first short film, “Le Puits” (The Well), obtained numerous prizes in festivals. Five other shorts followed: “La Mort de Tau” (The Death of Tau, 2001), “Rascagnes” (2003), “Éclosion” (Emergence, 2006), “Masques” (Masks, 2009) and “Le Printemps” (The Spring, 2012), “Ghosts World” (2014). In these films, he tried to develop his own fantastic and poetic universe and to explore the possibilities of 3D computer generated images. He attended two artist residences: «Villa Kujoyama» in Kyoto in 2007 and «Maison des Auteurs» in Angouleme (France) in 2008. He has been teaching computer graphics and animation in schools and he is now faculty member of the Kyushu Sangyo University in Japan.