The Night Has A Thousand Socially Distanced Eyes

 A  safe outdoor screening of three collaborations, by means of a fourth.

Dan Fox of Sound Intervention https://www.danfox.net/ has an off-grid on-wheels projection unit with fantastically good sound and  projected the video work from Ritual Exchanges onto  house walls in Ulverston. 

We had a nice audience from around the Gill, we behaved,  caught up with each other. plans were made. It was lovely to see them. We'll do this again.

 



This project has nudged me towards further collaborations.  There are two pieces here that involve friends who should know each other. Talking to Dan and Ulverston Animator James Alexander just now about where we are with our work at this time underlines how important local connections are, and how it should be possible to make work that is rooted in locality and community..and that can find an audience beyond it.

My Leeds Poly friend Andrew Beresford aka Barney is a prime mover behind the Unity Festival in Woodhouse, Leeds and has provided a soundtrack to The Night Has A Thousand Eyes.The title song is one of his favourites and usually closes performances by his improv orchestra Slimpro Six and the Bobbettes...here he was asked to record a sugared-up version on the fringes of falling to bits. He hadnt seen the video. It suits  my footage from the periphery of fairgrounds  and the additional sound from me and Bill Bartlett drawn from the guts of arcade gaming machine.  And there's stuff in there that somehow went in at the Poly without me realising.

James and me had worked on a couple of community theatre projects and on his BA  piece. He had showed me a test piece for his new figures, 'Alex and Her'...it was really well put together  and we agreed that, somehow, it fitted the "Epicentre" song so we  went with it, adding bits as we worked out what the song was about and where the character was going...this was great fun and very exciting, very like my old painting method. We've done more since.  The music is another collaboration, this time between  me and my schoolpal and long time musical ally JD aka Vincent Van Volt, with who I shared my earliest  attempts at understanding and making music in order to understand anything else. He now jointly runs the Optronica Festival in Sheffield and presents an eclectic radio show as Vincent Van Volt for https://www.mixcloud.com/FoodhallCommunityRadio/

The third is a short cut of the Horngarth film with a new orig soundtrack...this is coming out on vinyl in the new year..the plan is to make it available in charity shops; literally putting something back...whether they want it or not.

Here's the work..

Epicentre..  https://vimeo.com/461636449

Three Tides..https://drive.google.com/file/d/1I58bX7yiDHxFWCazBLBhYt6e1GVWDi3O/view?usp=sharing

The Night Has A Thousand Eyes..https://drive.google.com/file/d/1-2NPoKhQNg2_rkUvuTq9wg1ow3n6x66p/view?usp=sharing 

 Twas grand. First festive gathering I've ever been to where people got giggly over rogation ceremonies whilst wearing masks. 


Exciting manoeuvres in the dark, thanks ever so much, definitely a great Tuesday in a pandemic 🤩

'

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