Concerto for Brutalist Buildings

Myself and Peter Faulkner, in our role as artist/agitators The Neo-Futurist Collective, have been invited to contribute work for an ambitious site-specific performance at the former Commonwealth Institute building in Kensington High Street entitled Common Sounds : Touching the Void. Our response Concerto for Brutalist Buildings takes its inspiration from the derelict building and the crumbling of Empire on foreign soil.

Fruit for the Apocalypse are producing the work for World Listening Day, after last year's successful East London Soundscapes; supported by the Royal Borough of Kensington & Chelsea, as part of their InTRANSIT festival..

The End of Listening

The End of Listening (ReAwakening of a City #5)
by Joseph Young of The Neo-Futurist Collective

a&e gallery, Cheltenham Place, BRIGHTON. Jan 7th - 23rd (weekends only)

20th April 1914: Immediately before the outbreak of the First World War, the premiere performance of a revolutionary noise symphony Awakening of a City by futurist artist Luigi Russolo.

Almost a century later, a group of artists, led by Brighton-based Sound Artist, Joseph Young, come together to respond to the surviving 7 bars of the printed score in a series of ReAwakenings.

In this latest solo work, The End of Listening (ReAwakening of a City #5), Joseph has created an immersive sound installation for iPods at a&e gallery in Cheltenham Place, Brighton.

The sound files will be available online at http://www.josephyoung.co.uk from January 7th. You are invited to download the work at home and then bring along your iPod/iPhone/mp3 player and listen to it in our “auditorium”; or alternatively, you can pick up a pre-loaded iPod at the door (limited numbers available).

Preview: Friday 7th January 2011 @ 7 - 9 pm with an exclusive performance and artists' talk by Joseph Young.

East London Soundscapes

The latest work by The NeoFuturist Collective took place as part of the first ever World Listening Day on July 18th. The following is an extract from a revue by Bellyflop.

"START! – a neofuturist opera in 5 movements: feeding the urban appetite for collapse, the performers engage the public in a complete tour of the site. A conductor directs a quartet for three car engines, horns and radios into the sublimation of a traffic jam. The last words of the manifesto, recited in an opera fashion as an apocalyptic bedtime chorus by a woman behind a wall and a man sitting by a world globe light (with a vintage recording of a nightingale playing in the backround) sound together disarming and conforting : art will not save the world."

Read the full review here.

An interview on furtherfield.org

Marc Garrett interviews Joseph Young.

http://www.furtherfield.org/displayreview.php?review_id=389

Founded by Joseph Young in 2007 - The Neo Futurist Collective consists of a group of highly accomplished artists who have come together to celebrate urban noise in all its' visual and aural forms.

Inspired by the Milan Futurists and the Art of Noises manifesto (Luigi Russolo, 1912), as well the poetics of the Dada movement, the collective are arch-modernists; united in the hope of a positive future where technology, art and humanity will unite to overcome pessimism, despondency and futile utopianism in all its spurious forms.

Current and recent commissions include performance with 'Curious in The moment I saw you I knew I could love you'. Artist-in-Residence at Blast Theory; workshop leader with Mikhail Karikis at Tate Modern - The voice and everything else; a series of commissioned films with video artist Abigail Norris for Architecture Inside Out A - a collaboration between disabled artists and architects at Woking Lightbox and Tate Modern.

Preview in Portslade

Have a look and listen on my personal blog to hear and see the outcomes of my residency at Blast Theory. I had an incredible week and am deeply indebted to "the Blasts" for their support and encouragement.

ReAwakening of a City - a micro-performance

Joseph Young aka Giuseppe Marinetti will be the latest Artist-in-Residence with Blast Theory, in Brighton from April 26th-30th.

"In this latest piece of research, I will work solo, using field recordings from Portslade, found objects on the street and text, to present a short binaural location performance for an audience of 8 people at a time. I am interested in the theatricality of the binaural medium, whereby the listener is immersed in a 3D soundscape. To create the illusion of an aural stage, I will be using the “dummy head” technique. Supported by the lovely people at Blast Theory, I intend to develop a short performance score, weaving together text and sounds, both “live” and recorded, to create a noise network, following Russolo’s classification system in the Art of Noises manifesto."

"This work-in-progress will be experienced via headphones in a forgotten corner of 20 Wellington Road on Friday 30th April 6.30-8.30 p.m. I hope it will be both playful and insightful; an unusual way of experiencing those sounds/images that we normally ignore or consciously block out."

RSVP to Dan Lamont by Thurs 29th April

A Pause and then a New Beginning

NeoFuturist Falicitations!

It's been a long while, my comrades and friends, since I posted here - but I am delighted to announce that NeoFuturism is flourishing and actively making links all over the globe.

Recently, I was delighted to reacquaint myself with my dear friend, Luigi Russolo, and to be able to report that he is alive and well and living in the Netherlands. His current project Prof. Russolo & His Noise Intoners has been making (sound) waves since 1995, and after nearly a century of absence, he is back with us, stronger and more vital than ever. His vision and mine have endured across a difficult age - our troubled world needs (now more than ever) a vision of optimism, where technology, art and humanity will unite to overcome pessimism, despondency and futile utopianism in all its spurious forms.

Saluti! Great and dear Marinetti and friends,

Via! Usciamo, pioche non potremmo a lungo frenare in noi
il desiderio di creare finalmente una nuova realta musicale.
(Away! Let us break out since we cannot much longer restrain
our desire to create finally a new musical reality).

How surprising and fine to hear again from you!
With acute ardour and accelerating heartbeats I took notice of
your recent efforts to impregnate ‘our world’ with joy and inspiration.

Never must we slacken, the global hunger for absurdity is almost unappeasable!

With respect and love,

your true and most humble servant,

Prof. Russolo.
www.russolo.nl

Some photographs from A CALL TO ARMS June 14th 2009

Here's a few photos and (below) the film of the performance; expertly shot by Mark Birbeck and edited by my son Louie Young. Several months late - no excuses for that... but hopefully providing a flavour of the climax to an incredibly creative and challenging project. Our thanks go out to the community of Upnor(s), Fuse Medway Festival and Medway Council for their unflagging support, and to all the artists and students who took part, led workshops, performed, put themselves out on a limb for the sake of Art.

ART WILL NOT SAVE THE WORLD

© Rowena Easton

A Call to Arms - finally!

the speech that never was...

Of all the Lowers and all the Uppers in all the world –
the Upnor that is uppermost in our hearts is
UpUpUppityUpnor. Up in Arms Upnor!
A Tale of Two Upnors that is one,
a tale of one Upnor that is two;
but only one Upnor,
not Upper.

A tale of four pubs in the morning
and a blood red sky,
no community centre, no shops,
no schools, a seagulls cry,
Wake up Wake up
it’s modern times.

A sand pit and a playground bare
Both empty now, no children there
Deserted beach where was once were ice cream shops
A bus so infrequent it hardly ever stops.

And The Lady in a Box who cannot see the sea,
so what does she see?
A WC?

M.O.D.
M.A.D.
the killing ships that fill the Medway
stream from Upnor to Afghanistan it seems.

Fleet House empty,
thinking tidy,
scrubland-wasteland,
get off my land,
fortress Upnor,
border Upnor.
Subject to closure at any time…

St George the patron saint of
Queen Elizabeth the great
and all her majesty,
the queen is here,
will tell you stories for the small price of a beer.

The Tudor Rosy,
Kings Arms cosy,
Pier and Ship relief,
where old friends meet and sing together,
Sunday roast goes on forever.
Where folk songs reverberate in the street,
near long-gone Post Offices where nobody can meet.

And artists come to weave a red thread
through the town,
A critic burns them down…

This is Upnor,
UpUpUppity Upnor,
Up in Arms Upnor,
the pride of Upnor is here.
For here in the smell of the rivers wake
we stand and watch the fretful dawn awake,
Wake up Wake up
A Call to Arms!

We don’t need no updating...

The Burning of the Red Thread

This is what happened when some unknown and unseen vandals/art critics (?) decided to burn Eva's red thread wrapping of the viewing platform beside Upnor Castle. A curious act, not without its own barbed beauty, but odd nevertheless, given that a lot of the thread survived.

It's part of what has made this project so fascinating. The relatively low turnout for workshops despite numerous leaflet drops and notices to the community, although this has changed in the last week; the sometimes heated debates with members of the public on the streets; the apparent friendliness of the locals, whilst expressing a certain irritation at having to share their village with the tourists. The contradictions of Upnor, its two halves, both literally and metaphorically, have come to characterise the place for us, as artists.

And now we are in the final phase of the project, where we are creating the ceremonies and interventions that will happen on the streets on the 14th, it is time to reflect back on the last few months and try to encapsulate that experience in our performance.

The Queen of Upnor (no really!!!)