The dream machine 2: Hisham Awad, Lamia Joreige and Sharif Sehnaoui

Organized by Beirut art center and Irtijal

The dream machine takes its name from the flicker device designed by Brion Gysin and Ian Sommerville in 1961. The dream machine (or dreamachine) is a cylindrical device with slits cut in the sides and a light bulb suspended at its center. The motion produced by the cylinder’s constant rotation on a record turntable results in a flickering light that induces a hypnotic state to be “viewed” with one’s eyes closed. The festival departs from a reading of both the apparatus itself and Antony Balch’s short film towers open fire (1963), which synthesizes footage of people testing the device with a jarring and multi-layered soundtrack featuring the voice of William Burroughs set against a frenetic montage that intensifies the trance-like invocations of the device itself.

The second edition of the dream machine festival attempts to trace the technical, artistic, and theoretical attributes and operations mobilized by the term “audiovisual” itself, assessing the ways in which the juncture in audio-visual has been theorized, undone, and reformulated.

In addition to hosting a series of live collaborative audio-visual projects, this year’s edition comprises talks, performances, lectures, screenings, commissioned works, and a workshop that revolve around two main clusters. The first relates to the soundtrack, analyzing the ways in which montage, the cinematic and post-cinematic mix, and voiceover interact.  Translations and displacements of the voiceover-image coupling, such as those designed in the audio-essay, will also be discussed and performed. Moreover, the festival will host conversations around the production of and the writing on image editing and sound editing/mixing, in the light of recent theoretical and artistic engagement with what is called “post-cinematic” montage, in which sensorial, extra-narrative associations proliferate. The second cluster of concepts and practices investigates the connection between sound and location, tapping into the spatial and temporal systems assembled by the field recording and the sound map.

The program:

Friday October 25 at Beirut art center

8:00 p.m. introduction to the dream machine by festival programmers Hisham Awad, Lamia Joreige, and Sharif Sehnaoui

Live performances

8:30 p.m. Katherine Liberovskaya (live video) with special guest Mazen Kerbaj (trumpet)

9:00 p.m. Thomas Ankersmit performs “serge”

—30 minute break

10:15 p.m. Katherine Liberovskaya (live video) with a live soundtrack by Phill Niblock

10:45 p.m. Phill Niblock performs “feedcorn ear”, “nataliawork”, and “two lips”

We acknowledge the support of the Canadian Council for the arts to make Katherine Liberovskaya’s perform possible.

Saturday October 26 at Beirut art center

Installation

8:00 p.m. Phill Niblock – n + m

Live performances

8:30 p.m. Magda Mayas (piano) – n + m

—-30 minute break

9:45 p.m. “between us” live performance by Fabrizio Casti (piano) and Elio Martusciello (electronics & visuals)

Sunday October 27 at Dawawine

Screenings 

5:00 p.m. “charisma x”, a documentary by EFI Xirou on the life and work of composer Iannis Xenakis

7:00 p.m. “blue” by Derek Jarman

Monday October 28 at Beirut art center

Presentation

8:00 p.m. void.cut / Hisham Awad and Basia Lewandowska Cummings

—-15 minute break

Audio essay/filmed conversation 9:15 p.m. “on vanishing land”, by Mark Fisher and Justin Barton – audio essay, followed by a conversation between Mark Fisher and Justin Barton, filmed by Robin MacKay.

On vanishing land was jointly commissioned and produced by the otolith collective and the showroom.

Supported with funding by arts council England and prs for music foundation

Tuesday October 29 at Beirut art center

Dream machine projects the dream machine festival invites a number of artists and writers to consider and deploy the following aural, visual, and audio-visual practices: the film soundtrack, montage, the sound map, and the field recording.

8:00 p.m. project 1: “magnetic liaisons” (installation + talk) by Ali Cherri

9:00 p.m. project 2: “Beirut streets project” by Berit Schuck & Julia Tieke (installation and artist talk)

—-30 minute break

10:30 p.m. project 3: “in between what is urgent” (listening session/ audio essay) by Rayya Badran (in collaboration with Brian Rogers).

Wednesday October 30 at Beirut art center

Talks 8:00 p.m. presentation of the “i.o.f.” workshop by Tarek Atoui

9 p.m. “the catastrophe of time”, a talk by Ray Brassier

“Frogfields”, a video by Katherine Liberovskaya with music by Al Margolis, will be installed on loop at dawawine on the 25th, 26th, 29th, and 30th of October, between 3 and 7 p.m.

With the support of the Italian cultural institute and Canadian council for the arts. Partners: Dawawine, Tunefork and ruptured