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Beneath the Spectral Oak

Melissa Ferrari (USA), Sarma Gabrēna (LV)

A Magic Lantern Phantasmagoria performance

Beneath the Spectral Oak summons the tradition of magic lantern phantasmagoria, an 18th-century form of horror theater that used hidden lanterns to project apparitions and mythical creatures. Anchored in the conceptual framework of historical phantasmagoria, this revival traverses scientific, supernatural, and spirit realms, tracing antiquated specters that bleed into modern belief systems.  Performed with 19th-century magic lanterns projecting hand-painted and antique lantern slides, light and shadow are woven into haunted landscapes and conjured visions of spiritualists, alchemists, and incorruptible bodies.  

Performers

Melissa Ferrari is an experimental nonfiction animator, magic lanternist and educator who seeks to acquaint folklores of the past with contemporary culture. In exposing peripheral histories, she aims to unveil the wonder that lies in the shadow of nonfiction, rather than fiction. Her practice engages with the mythification of science and pseudoscience, the preternatural, and histories of phantasmagoria and documentary. 

Melissa is based in Los Angeles (USA) where she received an Experimental Animation MFA at CalArts. Her films and magic lantern performances have been shown internationally in venues such as Hot Docs, The Exploratorium, UnionDocs, Hauser & Wirth, Ottawa International Animation Festival, and Ann Arbor Film Festival.  Her commissioned documentary animations have appeared on PBS, the BBC & CNN.  As an educator, Melissa specializes in teaching nonfiction and experimental animation, and she will be a Professor of Interdisciplinary Arts at the College of the Atlantic.

Wave Behavior/ Comportement d’onde

Loïc Verdillon, Clovis Lemaire-Cardoen (FR)

Two 16mm projector performance with sound and light

Wave behavior (Comportement d’onde) is a 30 min Improvised performance for two 16mm projectors played by Lewis & Clovic. The projectors become animals of film-free projection. The raw light, arriving 24 pulses per second, is ceaselessly sculpted to create form and movement. We play with pre-cinema for a Space-Noise Opera with optical manipulation and light beam trituration… an audio-kinetic fiction of four hands. Simulacra are sent and dispersed in every direction, but because we see only with the eyes, it occurs that, where we turn our gaze, it in that moment that all the objects strike it with form and color. In that instant the emitted image pushes forward and advances the layer of air between it and the eyes… this chased layer of air thus bathes our pupilles and passes on. All of this must naturally  occur with a prodigious rapidity.

Performers

In 2012, Clovis Lemaire-Cardöen began a university studies in anthropology in Lyon, where he became interested in experimental filmmaking practices, from creation to distribution. In 2013, he joined the 102 volunteer collective and then the experimental film programming collective "Artoung!". At the same time, he explored various artistic practices, notably improvisation, and in 2015, he and Loïc Verdillon created the project of a film without film "Wave Behavior," an improvised play of light and sound. Since 2018, he has been exploring blacksmithing and metal deformation. He currently lives and works in the countryside around Bourges in France.

Loïc Verdillon is a filmmaker, musician and printmaker. Since 2010, he has been actively involved in 102's music and film programme. His current research focuses on sound, its materiality and its forms. He built ‘yotta-phone’, a performance for multiple megaphones, played in various festivals during the summer of 2015. His graphic work focuses on Ernest Chladni's sonic forms in experimental printmaking. In 2015, he combined plastic art and audio for the installation of an ‘amusement park’ made up of dissected loudspeakers, working with the primitive elements of copper, paper and magnets. Since 2016, he has been co-directing and working at Atelier MTK Laboratoire de cinéma indépendant in Grenoble, where he makes films and performances in 16mm. He has presented Expanded Cinema performances of films and organised 16mm workshops around the world, including in Norway, Italy, Switzerland, the United States, Canada, Germany, France, the Czech Republic, Belgium and Indonesia.

Echo Echo/ Atbalss atbalss

Orbīta (LV)

Sound and text performance

The work explores new sound sources and the conversion of various energies into audible material. In the performance “Echo Echo”, using WiFi and GSM network, radio messages transmitted by the radio enthusiasts worldwide and radio communication of various services, commercial and public broadcasting, radiation and electromagnetic field measurements, infrasound and fluctuations in the electrical grid of the city, gives an insight into the wide-range radio ether and the rippling ocean of environmental data that surrounds us. Surfing these and other unaccustomed waves, measurements and data can also come across the voices of recently deceased poets, this time – Knuts Skujenieks. 

Performers

Orbita is a collective of poets, photographers, artists, and musicians, founded in 1999 in Riga and currently run by Alexander Zapol, Artur Punte, Vladimir Svetlov, Sergej Timofejev. 

Since that time Orbita has published a number of eponymously titled almanacs in which literary works appear side by side with works of visual art (photography, graphic work, painting). Additionally, Orbita has organized five "Word in Motion" festivals of poetry video and multi-media art in Latvia; issued two sound and poetry albums and a collections of poetry videos; created several multi-media installations; produced a number of theatre performances and multilingual poetry collections and other books in their own small publishing house. In 2014, when Riga became the European Capital of Culture, Orbita curated a series of events, multimedia exhibitions and residencies “Poetic Map of Riga”. Since 2022, the long-term project Strenči Sonification Station has been launched.

Klaberjakts, from 23:00, Bar 1983

BAL+Grab (LV)

An audiovisual rumpus with ritual features. Music provided by experimental rock band Grab, analog projections by the artists of Baltic Analog Lab and dancing by the visitors of Klaberjakts.

Grab is an experimental rock band from Riga, Latvia. It consists of Kārlis Tone (guitar, vocals, synthesizer), Sarma Gabrēna (bass, bass synthesizer, vocals), Artis Avotiņš-Lācis (drums), Jānis Emīls Katinskis (guitar, synthesizers).

Baltic Analog Lab is an artist-run film lab and collective based in Riga, bringing together filmmakers and audiovisual artists working with analog media. In this performance it will be Sintija Andersone, Elīna Matvejeva, Ieva Ozoliņa, Lāsma Bērtule and Betija Zvejniece.