Still from promo for NATO

This is one from the archives. A 35 second promo for the Northern Arts Tactical Offensive, to be used at screenings and events (obviously, or quacking for details may be somewhat less effective). NATO was a collective in Manchester who did various subversive and situationist-influenced performances and other artworks, including the March for Capitalism and a spoof tourist guide to Manchester for the Commonwealth Games (2002), directing tourists to the alternative Blitz Festival of international grassroots underground culture, in the form exhibitions, street theatre, outdoor music, film nights and presentations.

From NATO’s website:

NATO is a Manchester-based grassroots art collective. Our work as a collective, or through collaborative projects, aims to bring grassroots and underground art dealing with current social and environmental issues out of the confines of its more typical contexts, exposing it to a more diverse and mainstream audience.

We believe art and culture can be used as part of the transformation of life, society, and our everyday reality, not just a diversion from it.

True art and imagination can be used as part of the transformation of life, society, and our everyday reality, not a diversion from it. Art can be at its most inspired when it fosters awareness of the power each individual has to act for themselves, to make their own art, to believe in their own ideas, take control of their lives and change them.

Link to the subsequent Fundamental international art show exploring totalitarian religion here.

Rabid Tripped-Out Psychedelic Lesbian Koalas

I’m currently putting together a package of queer films from Australia for the Bangalore Queer Film Festival in February 2010. My friend Namita (who I met through the Transmission Asia-Pacific network of online video activists) is involved, so it’s bound to be intelligent, provocative and fun fun fun (read some of her thoughts on Queering Bollywood here or perspectives on porn from the global south here). You can find last year’s program here along with more info on the organisers. It’s a D.I.Y. event, so there isn’t much in the way of screening fees, just the joy of reaching queer Indian audiences with your work!

In terms of the kind of films the festival is looking for – the crazier / more flipped out the better. Suits me! Camp, rude, trashy, experimental.. anything goes, and any kinda queer you like. So with this in mind, the working title for this program will be “Rabid Tripped Out Psychedelic Lesbian Koalas” First prize goes to somebody who actually makes and submits that as a B-movie! Shorts in particular, but features considered also. Any digital format should be fine.

If you’re interested in submitting something please contact me here via this website. Just let me know title, duration, year produced, and what the film is about. If you have some images, or a copy online, even better, please send me links to those.

It’s very soon, so there’s not much time to get cracking and send me deets on your film!

Here’s the story in a slideshow for your viewing pleasure:

A bunch of my lovely friends helped out on the shoot, both in it and out of it. Much love going out to them! And the location was provided by the kindly hosts at Forepaw, much adored venue of shitcore Tasmanian bands and art and things u don’t get to see much other places, sadly closing it’s doors soon!

(thanks to bec stegh for the photo)

FABRIQUE.12
presented by Brisbane Powerhouse in association with ::ROOM40:: and SOOB
Straight Out of Brisbane 2004

A mix of electronics, abstract beats, experimental music and improvisation – fun for all the family, even the kids!

Featuring performances from:
Frost (launching Steelwound)
Spoole & Future Eater (live AV set)
Joel Stern & Anthony Guerra (from Sydney, London)
Fenella Kernebone (Triple J’s Sound Lab)
+ other guests

Electrofringe Panel Discussion and Performance
Title: PoliticKunstVideo
Description: How artists use video in different ways to reveal the political sublime.
Feat: Spoole : Live Popglitch humour
EmileZile-(Video munch)
Angelica mesiti :Serial
7′s-The Kings Pins.

Scratch Cinema – fri nite / Jul 11th – Loop

With pixels as easily sampled & mutated as sound, an emerging breed of audiovisualists
are busy carving up the territories that lay between cinematic storytelling and the dancefloor bootylicious.

Using loops, layers, live processing, FX and editing, tonight showcases some of the approaches possible for ‘Improvised cinema’.

Spoole – aka Spanna (Anna) & Poole (Jean ) – live AV mash-up
Future Eater – live soundtrack 2 Schwarzenegger
Cicada (video) vs AI Yamamoto & QUOCKENZOCKER (audio)
Slimy (Tas) – downtempo glitchery with homemade VCR-Turntable~!!

@ LOOP

23 Meyers Place, melbourne city

WHATS UP KUNT???
MELB: Sun 20 April @ Rob Roy Hotel, Fitzroy
+ Antideluvian Rockinghorse, Barrage, the Go’s, Future Eater, Sol, SelfHelp, Spoole (live AV set) & Casionova

dLux Dataterra Interalia Closing Party
9pm till late, Sat 7th Dec 2002 $5.

The Chocolate Factory
Level 2, 144 Cleveland St, Chippendale
accelerate into osmotic overdrive – a maze of image, sound and text resonating for one night as an oscillating narrative

InterAlia [definition: among other things]
is dLux media arts research laboratory of experimental media art collaborations and live audio / visual data processing. InterAlia is the last event of the futurescreen02 : data terra program and will metamorphose into our Closing PartyŠ

InterAlia:: media lab for the construction of experimental situations, rendering as an audio/visual/performative environment whereby an oscillating narrative of image, sound and text will be hacked, patched and re/screened for live contexts. Audience and party goers alike are invited to embrace an accelerating drive of content and concern mediated digitally.

InterAlia situates itself within our information saturated reality and focuses on artists’ creative manipulation and subversion of data using new technologies and their own specially modified digital tools.

A stellar line-up of Sydney AV + performance artists have been invited to engage with the fs02::data terra thematic. Lalila, Cicada, Ciindi, Jason Gee, Spanna, Wade Marynowskj, Alex Davies, Ian Andrews, Peggy Wallach and Veren Grigorev will compose discreet sets of audio / visual or performative / textual material with following timeframes; / 1 x 5 min / 1 x 10 min /1 x 20 min.

These sets will be mixed live resulting in a site-specific choreography…

enter the INTERALIA mist…

and then – party on with the ‘DIFFERENCE ENGINE’

VIDEOBLITZ
Straight Out Of Brisbane 2002
Time: 08.00 PM till 12.00 AM
Date: 23.11.2002
Cost: $12
Venue: ArtCom warehouse New Farm (corner Commercial Rd and Arthur Tce)
Our massive Saturday night party fresh from a gorgeous warehouse
space, SOOB brings you the audio/visual extravaganza of VIDEO BLITZ.
An audio/visual extravaganza! Beat benders and visualisers unite to
create wide-screen, surround sound sensory treats. Way too many
projectors!

Featuring:
DeF 1 (strudel – sydney), KID KAY FERRIS (nine09 records), JAMIE
WHITESIDE (Love & Roxy), PONYLOAF, J ORCHESTRA, DVOID, TEAM
PLASTIQUE, SPANKY, SPOOLE – ANNA SPANNA +JEAN POOLE, PLUM V’S PAUL ABAD, PIXEL SLUT
9000, KITTYMECHS (HARD GARBAGE + AISU KURIMU + MITOCHONDRION),
SIMULCAST, RYE BARRY, GEOMETRICK, PULSE SUGGESTION

De-mystifying the technical aura of vjamming
Time: 04.00 PM till 06.00 PM
Date: 24.11.2002
Cost: $0
Venue: Secuumb Space, 5 Wynn St the Valley
De-mystifying the technical aura of vjamming – an exploration of
different approaches, software and hardware for creating live
audiovisual vjamming techniques. This inludes mac and PC software, as
well as max/nato and director applications.

Featuring:
Jean Poole, Anna Spanna and Spanky

This was my first experience of VJing, a fun and experimental environment of late nights jamming away in the permanent smoke haze of the studio (working through endless packs of Ninja Skins), even if there weren’t that many people tuned in to watch. Crews around the world had shows at different times and days of the week.

PirateTV logo

“http://www.piratetv.net was born out of the excitement of early London pirate radio days, frustration with the dumbing down of legal stations and the straightjacket of commercial television … a showcase for the creation and display of quality zentertainment, free from the financial and creative restraints of the industry …

It’s about wanting things raw and fresh. Like a salad. Put simply Piratetv.net is the place to visit for live audio/visual streams.

It’s like passing a fiddle around the world …”

Later on, Soozy and Mick from Undercurrents showed up to a few jams, and I travelled out to Oxford to help them set up the first Undercurrents PirateTV netcast. Not long after this Undercurrents offered me a job, so I stuck around in Oxford where we did our weekly netcast from the Undercurrents office, and later Soozy’s house. This show was a mix of mashup experimentation with live studio interviews, the activist news, and new and classic direct action videos. We usually had a big crew – Mick Fuzz, Hamish, Soozy, Hannah, Flo and whoever else was in town and wanted to get involved. Paul from Undercurrents set us up for a live stream from his home in a beautiful old heritage building in a nearby village for one special netcast.

We also broadcast live streams from events such as the Mayday protests in 2001 in London.

Check out the PirateTV.net archive channel on YouTube.

Spam was an all-girl band we started in 1994 when we were but 16 years old. Spam was Mantis on keyboards, Yensher on vocals, Megsy on bass, Philthy on drums and myself on guitar. We were more of a concept than a band, none of us really knowing how to play our instruments particularly well. As a result we considered ourselves punk, though our music was more lopsided and melodic, with a bit of jangliness and shoutiness thrown in. One of my favourite heckles of the band was “PLAY SOME ROCK N ROLL!!!” from an aged drunk from the back the Lass O’Gowrie, so I guess we weren’t a rock’n'roll band :{).

Spam played shows at hallowed Newcastle rock venues such as the Hunter on Hunter, Tattersalls Club, Islington Bowling Club and the Lass O’Gowrie (many of which we played underage, sneaking in with our fake ID). We played with bands such as The Hanged Man, Loose and 8-bit breakcore band Nasenbluten.

This photo’s from a show at Islington bowling club. We are wearing the band outfits “a la inconspique”, wardrobe chosen by mantis and yensher.

Stewart was our usual band wardrobe designer however, Megsy can be seen in one of his creations here, pink vinyl seemed to feature a lot. But actually my favourite was when we all dressed as Robert Smith, with a video of Standby Me projected onto us as we played..

We recorded a few of our songs, had tracks on a couple of cassette compilations and a couple of tracks on a tape put out by H records. There are a few video recordings of our shows floating about which I’ll try to put up online at some stage.

Spam played our last show sometime in 1997.

We’re hoping to have the book finished and exhibited some time in 2008.

A 10-second video produced/directed by me and Robbie MacEwan for a project run by the Tape Projects artist run initiative in 2008. Videos by various video artists are printed out as flipbooks to go with a 12″ record of locked grooves created by various sound artists.

Sound is by DJ Rainbow Ejaculation (Rank Sinatra / Victime de Mode / 7U? etc.) – “Carpet Cleaning Professionals”.

The Lock Groove Flip Book set was exhibited at the This Is Not Art festival in Sept/Oct 2008. Read a review by Dan MacKinlay of this amongst other shows, over at RealTime.

Lock Groove Flip Book Exhibition at TINA. Photo by Torunn Higgins

This screened recently as part of the excellent Esky video program in the Schmigloo at the Nextwave 2008 festival.

Poster for Camp Betty

Queer film is not just about re-interpreting straight storylines to accommodate ‘gay’ characters – it’s an excuse to play with more than gender and sexuality… super 8, chroma key, sci-fi storylines about aliens and androgynous bisexual nymphomaniac fashion models and remaking Soviet propaganda into a transgender revolution were all examples in the Camp Betty Cinema film programme of how queer film can play with you, and cinema too.

Camp Betty (a weekend of radical sex and politics in June 2007) crowds came along for queer shorts, a performance by Gaylourdes invoking the film theory spectre of vagina dentata in song and dance, 2 minutes of infamy for queer film makers and a screening of the cult 80s sci-fi movie Liquid Sky.