10 November 2007
Rational Rec Goes South
For one night only, Rational Rec dropped into the Queen Elizabeth Hall at the Southbank Centre for a special night of film, performance, music and sonic art.
- Marcia Farquhar - new commission - Up My Street
- Plus Minus ensemble - Louis Andriessen’s ‘Workers Union’
- Mike Sperlinger curated film screening - The Fundament
- Ana Laura Lopez de la Torre - COMPANY
- Fausto Romitelli's 'Trash TV Trance'
- Adam de la Cour - Benny the Clown
- Celine Condorelli - in support of culture (AVAILABLE TO DOWNLOAD IN ADVANCE.
We presented a new work by live artist Marcia Farquhar, Up My Street.
Not everyone was "swinging" between the coronation and the jubilee. Marcia Farquhar illustrated this point with her portable record player, her box of singles, her anecdotes of pop music history and her memories of not "being there". It's a child's '60s in the King's Road.
Specially commissioned by Rational Rec, Farquhar’s ‘Up My Street’ was devised with musical histories and the Queen Elizabeth Hall in mind. Taking place in museums, galleries and site specific locations, Marcia Farquhar's performances are often concerned with the telling and retelling of stories from both private and public areas of experience.
Plus Minus ensemble performed Louis Andriessen’s iconic Workers Union.
A programme of experimental film and video curated by Mike Sperlinger entitled The Fundament. Each of the six short videos in The Fundament goes back to basics, or touches bottom. It starts with a narrative of primordial creation, takes in a primal scene of familial confrontation and some entities rehearsing their existence backstage, a stand-up comic hitting his nadir and a short scatological odyssey, before concluding with a musically-modulated primal scream.
Including work by Steve Claydon, David Blandy, Sebastian Buerkner, Ann Course & Paul Clark, Katie Davies and Wojciech Bruszewski.
Full film programme available here (Word document, 32k)
Roaming around the whole space, artist Ana Laura Lopez de la Torre performed a newly commissioned work: COMPANY. Thinking about the solitary nature of addictions and how the pursuit of our addictions can make us lonely, and continuing the focus of much of her work in creating a personal relationship with individuals, Lopez de la Torre offered herself to the members of the audience to accompany them in any solitary pursuit they might have needed to undertake during the evening.
Proposed accompaniments include company for going outside for a cigarette, adjusting make up in the ladies or having a drink if you’ve turned up alone. Audience members were also welcome to come up with their own ideas for accompaniment and negotiate them with Lopez de la Torre.
One lucky winner of a draw had Lopez de la Torre walk them home.
Stationed alone, Lopez de la Torre welcomed people to her table one at a time for these intimate performative acts, probing the sociability so central to Rational Rec.
In two dedicated spaces, boundaries between stage and audience were challenged with the psychedelic spectralism of Fausto Romitelli’s Trash TV Trance.
Benny the Clown is Adam
de la Cour
Adam de la Cour is an experimental composer and performer living just
outside London. He studied composition with Rodney Newton, Kit Turnbull
and Michael Finnissy who supervised his Doctorate at Southampton University.
Adam's work embraces a huge diversity of influences with his scores
combining elements of video, photography, installation, literary cut-up
techniques, absurdity, pataphysics and
comic book form.
You can still relive Rational Rec on the South
Bank with your iPod or MP3 player and experience the commissioned audio
guide to London’s South Bank by London-based architect Celine
Condorelli. See also www.supportstructure.org.
The walk starts from inside the Queen Elizabeth Hall.
Copyright © Celine Condorelli, 2007
Download: in support of culture, audio walk, mp3
16:28 (22.3MB)
An interpretation of Luca Frei's book, The So-Called Utopia of the Centre Beaubourg, itself an interpretation of 'la soi-disant utopie du centre beaubourg' by Gustave Affeulpin, a pseudonym for Luca Meister's later Italian translation 'sotto il beaubourg'. With music by Zafka, A.L.S., "music for shopping malls", a support structure project, 2007.