Event Date: 22nd of February, 2008
Venue: Corsica Studios, Unit 5 Farrell Court, Elephant and Castle, London, SE17 1LB
Entry fee: £10 on the door, £8 advance
On a wintry night in February, those souls brave enough to be drawn from the comfort of their armchairs and lured into the unworldly atmosphere of Elephant and Castle’s Corsica Studios, will be rewarded by the year’s darkest, strangest night of entertainment to be found anywhere on earth. The edgy and demonic strains of ‘The Gas Organ’ will form an acoustic hub, around which darkly challenging performances, inspired by its ominous presence, will miasmically revolve. Witnesses to the scene will have their preconceptions of entertainment redefined as they are in turn beguiled and mesmerised, appalled and repelled as performers explore their relationships with beauty, pain, fetishism, romance, flame and flesh.
The night is centred around Experiment 1’s flagship sonic art installation, ‘The Gas Organ’, a gas powered pyrophone which creates a sound that has been likened to whale song, a didgeridoo and World War II planes passing overhead in The Blitz. Experiment 1, a South London based arts collective has gathered together a crue of performers, artists and DJs to collaborate together in a night dedicated to the themes of Flame and Flesh.
Patient Zero is the collaborative effort between London-based artist/performers, Toby Coe and Lydia Morgan. Their work explores elements such as flesh, identity, fetishism and violence. Not for the faint-hearted, their performance work utilises the instruments of surgery and flesh manipulation to explore a world of pain and beauty. Theirs is a strange world. Enter at your own risk.
Hellen Burrough from Polish performance art group SukaOff will present a piece which explores themes of body modification, scarification, medical aesthetics, romance and suffering. Her motto is “Your body is a battleground”.
Tatyana Zadorozny is a female bodybuilder. Bodybuilding is a fusion of art and science. It is one of the new paradigms of what is possible for the human form, even more so for the female form. The body as flesh made sculpture has rarely been exhibited and this in one of the intentions of this performance.
The Grim Beeper, SDNA, The Gas Organistas and Alias Cummins will provide a soundtrack of searing noise and haunting visual projections. The Grim Beeper will provide a live set which pulses with organic rhythms and ethereal sounds from ‘The Gas Organ’. His DJ sets breathe with gothic influence and a solid reminder of the human condition. Imagine Milo meets the Cocteau Twins meets The Fall meets the Future Sound of London.
Experiment 1 specialises in large-scale sensory installations, which fuse sculpture, music, science and performance art. Experiment 1 has most recently exhibited at The Shunt Vaults in London Bridge, and the Sassoon Gallery in Peckham. These exhibitions featured in the Urban Junkies’ Culture Calendar, Fridaycities.com and the Londonist.com. In previous years, they have exhibited at Glastonbury, The Truman Breweries and the 291 Gallery.
