This installation investigates the topic of silence through recorded interviews with five different people presenting their varied perspectives on the subject. Included are the fusion-jazz musician Toke Tietzen Mortensen, the heavy-metal reporter Emil Svendsen, and Jacob Kirkegaard who is a sound artist working on the concept of cosmic silence.

Kaleidoscope
by Lyla Rye/Nik Beeson
video sculpture

As a small child bounces, her mirrored image forms ever-changing Rorschach patterns. Optical artifacts and an intense soundscape create a psychedelic meditation on the collapsible space between trauma and euphoria. ©2005

Katarina Löfström - Four Video works

Katarina Löfström's films deal mainly with visual silence, even though they are highly
colourful and move. Her pieces represents a simultaneous standpoint at the opposite extremes of noise and silence, where both re-elaborated daily images and subtle sounds become very abstract, and thus not leading in any particular direction, but allowing the spectator a space of free thinking. A space of mental silence.

Red Light, 2002
The filmed sequence of red Light was shot in the traffic of the red light district in Kampala, Uganda. Original sound, and music by E.A.R.

Pan A.M. 2002
The film is based on the view of landing aeroplanes at an airport.
Music by E.A.R.

High Noon, 2003
High Noon is a mix between filmed material and animation. Musical collage by Katarina Löfström

Hang Ten Sunset, 2000
Hang Ten Sunset is the first film in a series of animations dealing with the perception of light. It is an abstraction of what a sunset looks like. The title refers to a popular clothing brand from the the 80's; Hang Ten. It is a line of surfer ware that uses abstracted sunsets as their trademark.
Music by Plastikman.

La Cellule d'Intervention METAMKINE is an open-ended group including musicians and filmmakers researching the relationship between image and sound. Since 1987 different concepts have been carried out and performed in festivals, galleries, cinemas and contemporary art spaces, in France, Europe, Canada, USA. Since 1995 they have developed collaborations with other groups or artists like Nachtluft (Switzerland), Kinobits (France), Loophole Cinema (England), Le Cube (France), la Flibuste (France), Voice Crack (Switzerland).

Through the magic of mirrors, multiple projectors and highly ingenious live on stage editing, Metamkine produces and directs a new film with each of their performances. Working around a core narrative, they spill eddies of impromptu vignettes, accompanied by a live soundtrack of tape fragments and ancient synthesiser sounds. These, three collaborators, who have worked together for ten years, have succeeded in pushing the boundaries of film and soundtrack into the realm of live performance - Utterly unique.

"Take a census of the autodidacts and we would certainly discover that their ranks are rife with musicians. Outside of the classical milieu their numbers count even among the well-known innovators (like Ornette Coleman and Jimi Hendrix). And if the early punk movement of the late 70's didn't make a lasting impression on you, it at least proved one of it's most important points. You don't have to be a virtuoso to make music. That is, you don't have to be a virtuoso to make effective music, music with impact.

By their own definition Metamkine call itself "une cellule d'intervention". Two of the three members' biographies note : formation autodidacte. Their performances have a visceral impact that does not bypass the brain. Their materials are film and sound. But they don't disagree when you notice that they resemble a band : They perform on stage, facing the audience, they have instruments which they "play" and they interact with each other through these instruments: they rehearse pieces, they improvise ; they use rhythm, orchestration ; they have played in rock clubs, jazz festivals, concert halls, they collaborate from time to time with other musicians.

But since they don't play "normal" musical instruments it's all the more irrelevant to wonder about questions like virtuosity.

Even so, when you see them live it's quite clear that they know exactly what they are doing. Based in Grenoble, Metamkine is a trio founded in 1987, compromised of two cineastes and one musician. Christophe Auger and Xavier Quérel wield super8 and 16mm projectors pointed in the direction of the audience where the image bounce off of two or more large mirrors to arrive on the screen at the back of the stage. The sound comes from Jérôme Noetinger's analog synthesizers, tape loops and amplified objects.

In their own words, "the work is not theoretical. It's completely empirical. One of us offers the sound, the others the images. The important moment is the confrontation on stage." Metamkine offers us the rare experience of music liberated from servitude to cinema, and a live cinema projected like music itself, the projectionists enjoying the spontaneity of an instrumentalist. A highly articulate improvisationnal spirit serves tightly rehearsed compositions and the empathy onstage is pointed as often at the subversion of expectations as in the affirmation and joy of collective music-making. Of course, they do belong to the tradition of experimental cinema, a tradition that Metamkine has deepended by acting like a band."
Tom Cora for Klangspuren Festival, Schwaz (Austria), September 1996.