Four evenings of artists' film and performance, talks and presentations, featuring legendary Russian cosmonaut Sergei Krikalev
Scientists, philosophers and artists from Britain and Russia presented reflections on the Russian space programme and the nature of living in space. With the legendary Russian cosmonaut Sergei Krikalev, member of the first mission to the International Space Station.
Friday 1 & Saturday 2 March 2002 - Lilian Baylis Theatre
MIR Flight 001
New works from The Arts Catalyst's MIR Flight 001, a multidisciplinary microgravity research laboratory for artists, scientists and philosophers at Star City, Russia.
Premieres of:
Gravity: A Love Story - Morag Wightman & Craos Mor
Zero Genie - Jem Finer and Ansuman Biswas
Wave Particle - Jem Finer and Ansuman Biswas
Kosmos in Blue - Flow Motion
Too G - Andrew Kotting
Universal Substitute - Andrey & Julia Velkanov
Plus talks/presentations by Anthony Bull, Marko Peljhan, Kevin Fong, Louise K Wilson, Mikhail Ryklin, Anna Alchuk, Alexei Blinov
Friday 15 March 2002 - Institute of Physics
Cosmonaut Sergei Krikalev
In one of the most beautiful sequences of the film 'Out of the Present' by Berlin film-maker Andrei Ujica, the cosmonaut Sergei Krikalev, alone in space on the Mir Space Station, contemplates the rivers, the continents, the perfect sphere or a real world in the setting sun: meanwhile way down below the tanks rumble and humanity, though invisible, stirs restlessly during the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991.
One of the most experienced cosmonauts and arguably the human who has lived longest in space, Sergei Krikaleve made a rare personal appearance between missions to debate on issues of culture and space with the artists and cosmonauts team.
Friday 19 April 2002 - Lilian Baylis Theatre
A Dancer in Weightlessness
Kitsou Dubois presented the premiere of her film (with Eric Duranteau), 'Trajectoire Fluide' (Fluid Trajectory), emerging from her 4-year research project with the Biodynamics Group at Imperial College. Professor Robert Schroter, Head of the Biodynamics Group, contextualised the project, and Dr Nick Davey, lead scientific investigator, gave a talk and demonstration of the scientific research aspects of the programme.
Artists
Ansuman Biswas was born in Calcutta and trained in the UK. He is an artist with an international practice encompassing music, film, live art, installation, writing and theatre. He is actively engaged in bridging the gap between science and art. In 2002-2003 he was artist-in-residence at the National Institute of Medical Research. He has an on-going research interest in consciousness studies, in particular the subjective emotional correlates of objective physiological states.
Ansuman has shown visual and time-based art at Tate Modern, South London Gallery, Whitechapel Gallery, the Institute of Contemporary Arts, London, IIC New Delhi, Headlands Centre, San Francisco, and many other galleries and museums around the world. He has worked as a composer and musician in a wide range of contexts from jazz to Indian Classical music, pop songs to industrial noise. He has been commissioned by the Sonic Arts Network, the National Theatre, the Royal Ballet, the English National Opera and Guangdong Modern Dance Company in China as well as numerous other ensembles, film makers, theatre and dance companies. His theatre composition credits are numerous as are his film and acting credits.
Flow Motion Anna Piva and Edward George’s interest in the cosmos has its autobiographical roots in the cold war space race of the 1960’s and the landing of the first man on the moon; in black music and its traditions of the exploration of space in sound; in metaphysical and scientific writing on the nature of our universe.
These concerns with the cosmos have surfaced in a number of ways and in a variety of permutations, though their art as Flow Motion, and their music as Hallucinator. Running through their work is a constant weaving of different senses of space, which oscillate around and sometimes blur the line between sonic space and the space of the cosmos.
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