Evolution 2007

Curated selection

Now in its sixth year, Evolution is a three day festival offering some of the most illuminating combinations of film, video, sound and visual art that you’re ever likely to encounter. With screenings of brand new avant-garde film/video, mind-blowing expanded cinema performances, enlightening lectures, new installations and workshops.

The artists chosen to take part in Evolution share a hunger to investigate unknown territories of the moving image, and to present their discoveries for others to experience. Much of the work presented in the programme is unique and ephemeral – like condensed rituals existing only in the moment of performance and demanding audiences to give in to the experience as it unfolds.

Stripping the cinematic apparatus to its barest components, performances by guests Ken Jacobs, Emma Hart and Benedict Drew, Ad Libitum, Christian Lebrat, Bruce McClure and Cellule d’Intervention Metamkine reach a rare and transcending depth. The lectures of Peter Kubelka position cinema in a wider lineage and, like his films, explore the intrinsic relationship of art to life. Important histories continue to be uncovered, this time in the films and videos of Aldo Tambellini who manipulated new technology for social, political and artistic communication. In a new installation by Ken Jacobs, cinema’s history is traced back to Leeds and Louis Le Prince’s 1888 film of Leeds Bridge is worked into sublime motion and depth.

Compendium, Evolution’s annual selection of new International avant-garde film and video shows that artists’ cinema, and the focussed engagement it commands, is still brimming with potential. Featured artists include Jennifer Reeves, Kyle Canterbury, Jacqueline Goss, Ben Rivers, Robert Fenz, Rose Lowder, Steve Reinke, Dalia Neis, Edson Barrus, David Gatten, Jeanne Liotta, John Price, Louise K Wilson and Nathaniel Dorsky.

Unique one-off workshops with no.w.here and Cucinema di Genzano also provide opportunities for hands-on engagement and creativity - open to people of all ages and abilities - ranging from creative projection and cooking with cinema.

Curated by
William Rose

Programme Advisors
Greg Kurcewicz, Mark Webber

Technical Staff
Phil Slocombe, Stuart Bannister, Laurin Federlein

Venue Coordination
Martha Jurksaitis

With Thanks To
Opera North (Dominic Gray, Louise Holley), Lux, Sarah Handley, Joe Gilmore, Kerry Harker, Pippa Hale, Kevin Linfoot, Beano Wholefoods, Jim Wickens, Michael Harvey, Richard Howells, Cobra Vision, Leeds City Art Gallery (Nigel Walsh), Garry Barker, Arts Council England, Screen Yorkshire, The Austrian Cultural Forum, République Française and Institut Français.