Open School East celebrates the end of the term with an evening of performances, radio broadcast, dj sets, dance, mulled wine and Christmas treats and late evening kids’ games.

Programme

7pm: Force Majeure, Sum Places: A Distant Land
7.30pm: Franck Leibovici and Mini-opera for Non-musician workshop participants
8pm: Broadcast of Parallel Radio
Throughout the evening: dance, music, late evening kids’ games and Christmas treats…

Free, no booking required.

Details

Force Majeure presents A Distant Land, part 1 of the ongoing collaborative choral project titled Sum Places. Using Italo Calvino’s 1972 book Invisible Cities as a starting point, Sum Places invites collaborators to interpret the notion of ‘place’ through music, sound, objects, video, art and design. For A Distant Land, members of Force Majeure provide live vocal accompaniment to an original musical composition written and recorded by Melissa Bugarella-Lazzaro.

Force Majeure is a London-based choral project currently hosted by OSE. It comprises members of all levels of vocal ability with an interest in performance, singing and creative collaboration. Force Majeure operates like a community choir, but equally as a collaborative platform for interdisciplinary creative projects. Current and past projects include: Whistable Biennale, (2014), Richard Wentworth’s Black Maria, RELAY, King’s Cross (2013) and Eupnea, Ilona Sagar, commissioned by The Architectural Association (2013).

For a number of years, artist and poet Franck Leibovici has developed a mini-opera for non-musicians, as a tool of re-description for “low intensity conflicts”. This series of performances and installations, based on notation systems stemming from experimental music or dance, science studies, or conversation analysis, are, however, not related to any form of “live art”. At the invitation of Open School East, Franck Leibovici proposes a new collective performance, open to the public for participation.

Franck Leibovici is the author of quelques storyboards (2003), 9+11(ubu.com, 2005), des documents poétiques (al dante “forbidden beach”, 2007), portraits chinois (al dante, 2007), letters from jerusalem (spam, 2012), (some forms of life) – an ecology of artistic practices (questions théoriques / les laboratoires d’aubervilliers, 2012), filibuster! (a duration piece) (jeu de paume, 2013). Sequences from the mini-opera for non-musicians series have been performed in Paris, Berlin, Oslo, Copenhagen, Sydney, Quimper, Poitiers, Rennes.

Parallel Radio is the name of a 6-week long intergenerational workshop on radio-making, run by artists Eileen Simpson and Ben White (Open Music Archive); radio producers Nick Hamilton (Reprezent & Resonance FM) and Amy Redmond (Radio 1 / 1 Xtra); Rick Crust (Hackney Stream) and Franck Sweeney (Boroughs United). Parallel Radio started on 9th November and will end on 14th December, culminating in a broadcast on Resonance 104.4fm on Friday 20th December, between 8 and 9pm. It has welcomed 25 participants of different generations, living in and around Hackney.

The theme of the workshop is music playback as a trigger for conversation and generator for new ideas. In the radio programme, past and future will collide; ideas about listening, recording, collecting, playback and distribution will be considered; and stories will be recounted. On the evening of the broadcast, Open School East’s Tintin room will be used for a collective listening of the programme and to present materials and documentation collated during the 6-week workshop. Some of the participants will also play tracks in the hall. More to be announced.

Franck Leibovici’s performance is supported by Fluxus, Franco-British Fund for Contemporary Art.
Parallel Radio is supported by:
Arts Council England and Resonance 104.4 FM