Phoenix will offer an array of experimental art, including performances, music and installations by The Institute of Unnecessary Research, Spirit of Gravity and Beatabet Collective plus special guests and anything else that fixates us.

Images: (Above clockwise) White Noise by Monia Brizzi, Kassia Zermon AKA Bunty. Love Hunt, Manuela Metazoa, Clara Vichy, Anna Dumitriu x3, Phoenix Brighton Jon Gilhooly and Stig Evans,  Nyx, Aharon Amir, Anna Dumitriu, Simon Park, Madame Ivana, CiCi Blumstein, Lisa Flynn, Baron Gilvan, I’m Dr Buoyant and  Jon Gilhooly

The Institute of Unnecessary Research (RED STAGE)

19:00 Sandra Lim (Head of Creative Reality)

Installation: Summer Solstice

Video work which investigates the phenomenology of the everyday. (repeated throughout the night)

19:00 Petrusco (Associate in Subversive Kunst)

The visual reactionary Petrusco is here again with the intention to terrorize your minds with his SUBVERSIVE KUNST

19:00 Monia Brizzi (Head of Joy)

'White Noise', a participatory installation and an experiential workshop investigating the psychosocial relevances of the phenomenon of White Noise.

20:15 Richard Robinson (Head of Statistical Probablity)

Talk: “If you can stay up and listen with a fair degree of attention to whatever garbage, no matter how stupid it is, that they're coming out with, 'til ten minutes past four in the morning ..... you're in!” so said Peter Cook. But can staying up late really increase your chances of success with the object of your affection? Richard Robinson, author of “Why the One You Fancy Never Fancies You” and Head of Statistical Probability at the Institute of Unnecessary Research tells us the bizarre, scientific facts about love and sex in a white-knuckle ride through your libido. (30 mins)

 

21:00 Anna Dumitriu (Director of the IUR)

Talk: Fixated on Unnecessary Research

The Founder of the Institute of Unnecessary Research talks about her obsessions and why talking to bacteria through chemical communication is a worthwhile thing. Einstein said “If we knew what we were doing it wouldn’t be called research, would it?” and Anna proves it by extending her chemical communication research and creating a new performance “Love is in the Air” - Harnessing human chemical communication to engender love (performance from 02:00) (30 mins)

21:45 Blay Whitby (Head of Ethics)

Talk Do You Want a Robot Lover?

Notions of love and sex are changing as artificial intelligence and robotics technology evolves and having a robot lover could become a reality. This highly interactive talk unpacks what that might mean and will challenge all your preconceived ideas. (30 mins)

00:00 Paul Levy (IUR Advisory Panel – Though we don’t listen and can’t be told)

The Critical Incident at Phoenix in Night-time - Part 1

Midnight Cream Tea and Exorcism, serving scones and banishing       ghosts.

01:00 Rikki Tarascas (Associate in Troublemaking)

Performance improvisation workshop. (Repeated throughout the night).

03:00 Paul Levy  (IUR Advisory Panel – Though we don’t listen and can’t be told)

The Critical Incident at Phoenix in Night-time - Part 2

Global Brainstorm   

Connecting through videoconferencing to solve the world’s problems.

4:00 Anna Dumitriu (Director of the IUR)

Nocturnal Creativity Workshop

How does working at night affect your creativity? How does alcohol consumption affect it? Visitors to the event might become the artists and boundaries will break down. What will happen? Join us and find out.

Manuela Metazoa

Installation: Microscope installation

System Separation” is an installation piece in the spirit of Duchamp’s ready-mades. The piece invites the viewer to use a scientific instrument in the exploration of conceptual spaces in English culture that conventionally divide one frame of reference from another. Rather than marking these spaces as divisional, the piece suggests a series of fluid relationships. (ongoing throughout the night)

All night long Jon Gilhooly (Head of Magic) and Stig Evans (Head of Chromatography)

Lighting up the Phoenix

For one night only, a system of coloured lighting will replace the standard bulbs in the studios at the front of the building, from the first to the fourth floors, transforming the Phoenix building into a spectacular, multi-hued light sculpture.

Beatabet Collective (WHITE STAGE)

Beatabet perform work created at their recent French residency             programme, including:

Visual Response:  New Zeland artist Mike Hawkins performs a visual-response live-action painting to improvised music from five or six musicians.

One to Eight:  Multi-amp surround sound performance taking the audio feed from one musician and splitting it 8 times; each identical live feed will be manipulated, edited and morphed by eight separate sound artists positioned all around the space. Artists: Beatabet Collective ensemble

Trimachinochord: Sonic performance by Dave Meckin with his award winning electro-acoustic instrument trimachineochord (somewhere between a hurdy gurdy, a guitar and a robot). The instrument is designed so as not to have to use amplification as the vibrations from the strings are transported to metal sheets. It is operated using a light-box, blocks of wood, a computer and many arduinos. An extraordinary invention.

Operating Table: an installation involving contact mics, human bodies, a cage, audience participation and a live silent movie. Artists: Eilir Pierce, Bunty.

Memories: Spanish movement artist Pepa Ubera performs the the third part of her triolgy memories. Teaming up with musician Jules Arthur and sound artist Xahdrez, the performance will include live violin and viola, max/msp manipulation and contemporary movement.

Bunty live set

Torcher: Investigating communication through a surround-performance involving torches, darkness, live musicians and dancers. Artists: Beatabet Collective ensemble

Wiball: An interactive sonic ball-game. Artists: Xahdrez, Jules Arthur, Dave Meckin

Sleeping Session: Improvised vocal looping performance with cushions and ovaltine... Artists: Bunty, Jules Arthur

Sleepy Ed Hicks: comedian, street theatre actor and musician Ed Hicks performs his one-man-one-banjo live set.

Beatabet Cinema: a late-night video session running through a choice selection from the Beatabet Collective's summer residencies.

Anna Casey: solo movement and dance

Samson: acoustic set from jazz-folk singer Olivia Bradbury and her band

AngrySam: live poetry interspersed through out the night from the founder of Hammer and Tongue and long-time Beatabet collaborator

Live soundtrack performed to silent movie. Musicians: Tim Didymus, Vole, Jules Arthur, Abraham Mougrahbi. Video: Beatabet Collective

Metaluna

Live Visuals

Metaluna and Ed Chivers

Midnight Confessional

Social networking, You Tube and blogging has created a generation of people who's first choice of confidant is their computer. A weekend of debauchery follows the usual monday morning blog confessional. This installation is a tounge-in-cheek exploration of today's digital priests. Tell it your sins, some of these may appear on the screen as you speak. Whatever they are, you can be assured of complete  digital absolution.

 

Spirit of Gravity Collective (GREEN STAGE)

The Spirit of Gravity Collective was founded in 2001 to provide a

setting for live experimental electronic music. When such a thing was

unusual. Still going strong on a monthly basis we showcase local and

international electronic, electro-acoustic and experiental electronica

in sympathetic surroundings with custom interactive visuals by

minimalVector and our regular host Laptop Lee Hume.

 

Tony Rimbaud

I’m Dr Buoyant plays Songs of Love

Founder member of the Spirit of Gravity collective, and one half of Brighton-based duo and purveyors of electropoetica This Sound Bureaucracy, I’m Dr Buoyant improvises with loops treated through digital and synthesised effects, based on random samples captured and manipulated in a live setting - unlikely source material producing an organically developed wash of electronic sound.

For this performance, I’m Dr Buoyant will use popular love themes as his source material, twisting and altering the music to produce a whole new sound, one which may not turn out to be romantic in mood...

 

Chris Cook

Sitar with electronics www.myspace.com/sameactor

 

Noteherder & McCloud

Taking inspiration from hard-boiled detective fiction, analogue

synthesisers, free jazz and Polish film. Brighton 3 piece Noteherder &

McCloud (Geoff Reader (electronics), Chris Parfitt (saxophones) and

Bartosz Dylewski (VJ programming)) weave an interactive blend of

paranoid urban free improv invoking the rainy watchful darkness that is home to the detective documenting the suspected faithless.

http://www.myspace.com/noteherdermccloud

Slash's Wormhole

Henry is tidy, Henry likes to use the vacuum cleaner late at night. Slash's Wormhole is Henry's new project which features a homemade bass guitar crafted from the body of a hoover boss loop pedal, circuitbent keyboards and toys .

ElMaes fantasise about exotic places in the middle of the night. They dream of the east, Thailand, India. ElMaes come from many places and they all have different dreams. Sitar, voices, lights and electronic effects: a dreamlike state.

Also performing  will be HRT and some other special guests.

Nyx  (GREEN STAGE)

Live performance

“Somniloquy” Dostoyevsky meets Dr. Caligari, in a sonic drama

Nyx is the Ancient Greek goddess of the night, one of the first-born elemental gods. With Darkness (Erebos) she produced Light (Aither) and Day (Hemera), the first components of the primeval universe. Alone, she spawned a brood of dark spirits, including the three Fates, Sleep, Death, Strife and Pain.

Previous Nyx* performances include “Syzygy” at TescoDisco (Regents Street 2007) and at OMSK (Whipping House 2008), with performances of other sonic drama pieces at Trumann Buildings, and The Andrew Logan Sculpture museum. Nyx is composed of Dave Lawrence & Fiorenzo Palermo - with a focus on the dark and dramatic aspects of human emotions, and blending poetry, electronic and analogue sounds.

23:00 Rikki Tarascas (NORTH GALLERY)

Spoken Word Performance

Inspired by the Beat Poets and by crummy faded old film footage of Charles Bukowski (The American Poet Laureate of Skid Row). reading his work in American universities, troublemaker Rikki Tarascas , accompanied by performer Judy Barrington Smuts, will read Blind Spot, a new short unpublished text by cult writer Jeff Noon. In collaboration with Sonic Artist Timothy Didymus an experiment will transpire. This is the beginning of a larger word/sound/ picture performance project to be developed at a later date, drawing on inspiration from the images of the photographers Weegee and Brassai.

3:00 Spoken Word Performance (NORTH GALLERY)

Vole and Rikki Tarascas.will deliver ‘The Haunted Palace’ a short text by writers Jeff Noon and Steve Beard. Another experiment in word and sound to be developed along with ‘Blind Spot’ as part of a larger project under the banner of After Eden

Aharon Amir (FOYER)

“Text a name of someone you desire” - it will be played repetitively via a computer.

 

Throughout the White Night, you are invited to text a name of a person you desire. The text will then be spoken by a computer for a few minutes, and heard in the lobby of Phoenix Galleries. Title of the work will be used as a musical scoring mechanism in the automation of the computer's voice sound output.

  

Foster and Gilvan (FOYER)

Each hour For White Night at the Phoenix Gallery, Foster & Gilvan will be

creating a giant clock inspired by the St Petersburg White Night, on the stroke of each hour they will come out and play a suitable song or piece of music. Foster & Gilvan combine; original tragicomic songs, small - unusual

instruments, theatrical clowning, and a painterly sensibility to create a strange magical world that confuses and hopefully delights.

 

Madame Ivana's Love and Oyster Bar (SOUTH GALLERY)

A small mecca of love, where the art of the oyster is covered and uncovered. Choose from a menu of aphrodisiacs and be enchanted by the gruff charms of your hostess, Madame Ivana.

CiCi Blumstein (REAR OF NORTH GALLERY SPACE)

Love Triangle - Installation

Have you ever lain awake all night wondering:

How much do you love me? How much do I love you?

How big is your love? Don't worry any longer - come and find out with the help of the LOVE TRIANGLE. For one night only, artist CiCi Blumstein will transform her current Measuring Room installation into the LOVE TRIANGLE. Carefully calibrated, it measures the heart and the secret spaces within it, revealing exactly how much love you have.

Enter alone or as a couple, come with an actual, intended or imaginary partner, with work colleagues or family members, old flames or new crushes .... the choice is yours.

Measuring sessions will run all night, from 7pm to 7am. Be prepared for experimental feelings. And remember:

“What's mine is yours, and what is yours is mine.”

Measure for Measure, 5. 1

Lisa Flynn (CORRIDOR SPACE)

"Out Damn'd Spot" (No rest for the wicked)

Why do we dream? Dreams allow us to go a little insane every night, safely and quietly. A regular, gentle exorcism of the mind and imagination, if you like.

What happens when "You lack the season of all natures, sleep"? Macbeth (3.4.167)

In a performance which interrogates the nature and purpose of sleep. The artist will keep herself awake all night engaging in obsessive drawing activity, rather than resting her body and mind in dreamful sleep.

Shakespeare often makes connections between madness and troubled sleep. In "Macbeth", when Lady Macbeth's mind becomes consumed by guilt at her part in conspiring to kill the good King Duncan, her insanity first manifests itself through her sleeping body; sleep-walking and obsessively trying to wash a spot of blood from her hands. Her disturbed mind cannot dream peacefully. The title of this performance is a reference to Lady Macbeth's ritualistic acting out of subconscious trauma in her sleep.

If we don't sleep and dream, will we go mad? For "Out Damn'd Spot" (No rest for the wicked) the artist rebels against her own insomnia by embracing wakefulness and tests the potential unruliness of the subconscious mind when it is deprived of sleep.

“Somniloquy”

Clara Vichi (VARIOUS LOCATIONS)

Wandering performance adorned with jewels

Love Hunt (FOYER)

Get lost in The Love Hunt and find treasures in the night.The Hunter Gatherers bring you a specially commissioned treasure hunt that dips in and out of the White Night festivities.

Denise Felkin

Images of Mutoid Waste Company projected from 2nd Floor studio window. (view from outside)

White Night Brighton & Hove - Do something different in the middle of the night.

A new city-wide arts festival from 6pm to 7am to mark the end of British Summer Time. Rediscover the city at night through special events and activities in cultural venues and through trails and tours through the city’s streets and secrets.  www.whitenightbrightonandhove.com

The event was organised by Anna Dumitriu (Institute of Unnecessary Research) and Sara Duffy. The Green stage was programmed by Spirit of Gravity and The White Stage was programmed by Beatabet Collective.

Apology

We offer our deepest apologies to nearby residents for any inconvenience caused. The event was our first time at organising such a thing, we endeavored to keep noise levels very low, but understand that a ground floor window had been opened by a visitor which affected houses just behind us. Obviously the event had been organised in close collaboration with Brighton and Hove City Council and their representatives were present at Phoenix Brighton throughout the night. We would like to assure everyone that these problems will not occur again and that steps will be taken.

Please check back regularly for updates