AV FESTIVAL 12: JEM FINER – SLOWPLAYER

Exhibition runs 1 March – 31 March 2012

Opening hours 12 – 6pm Monday – Saturday
Part of 24-Hour Festival Launch: Friday 2 March 9am-3pm

 

 

At extreme slow speeds the spin of a record player is reduced to a glacial crawl, the record to seismic rumbling. A beat may last a minute, and the tiny slices of silence between them become ambient voids.

The record player becomes an object of contemplation, a meditation on the passing of time, gathering dust, entropic.

On each day of the Festival from 1 – 31 March a different record is played, from Moondog to The Sex Pistols to Ornette Coleman, with the turntables r.p.m slowed down to the length of the gallery opening hours, 12–6pm. With this work artist and musician Jem Finer continues his interest in long-durational processes and extremes of scale.

The 31-day playlist consists of the below titles:

Moondog     More Moondog
Steve Reich     Octet +
Pierre Bastien     Mecanoid
Derek Bell     Carolan’s Receipt
Various     Electronium
Julie Andrews +     The Sound of Music
Johnny Pineapple & his Orchestra     Hawaiian Holiday with
Nirvana     Bleach
Various     Flatpack Antenna
Led Zeppelin     II
Various     Dance Crasher
Victor C Lewis     Bird Sounds in Close-Up
Drunken Master     Dragon Dance
Kraftwerk     Trans Europe Express
Ornette Coleman     Tomorrow is the Question
Spike Jones & his City Slickers     The Best of
Charles Mingus     Oh Yeah
The Green River Boys & Glen Campbell     Big Bluegrass Special
Various     Voices 1st book / record 1
The Sex Pistols     Never Mind the Bollocks
Trains & Bells     Real Train Sounds & Real Bell Sounds
BBC     Communication in Animals
Melt Banana     Cactuses Come in Flocks
Various     Las Vegas Grind Volume 3
The Kilfenoora Ceili Band     The Kilfenoora Ceili Band
Jackie McLean with the Fred Redd Quartet     Music from “The Connection”
Vanguard     Vanguard Stereolab Test Record
Augustus Pablo     Ital Dub
Tom Waits     Bone Machine
Soloists of the Ensemble Nipponia     Japan: Traditional Vocal and Instrumental Music
Captain Beefheart     Clear Spot

Jem Finer is an artist, musician and composer. Since studying computer science in the 1970s, he has worked in a variety of fields, including photography, film, music and installation. One of his most famous works is the installation Longplayer commissioned by Artangel in 2000, a computer generated composition designed to play for 1000 years.

Curated by AV Festival

 

INSTALLATION IMAGES

 

Slowplayer Installation view

 

Slowplayer Installation view

 

Part of AV Festival 12: As Slow As Possible

International Festival of Art, Technology, Music and Film
1 – 31 March 2012
Newcastle, Gateshead, Middlesbrough, Sunderland
www.avfestival.co.uk