LOCUS
An audio-visual installation
by Ken Steen and Simon Taylor
The Concept
57 min 28 seconds video
See the full video here
1) Scratching the surface, touching the emotional mine fields that lie below the epidermic boundaries of imagination.
(2) Momentary connections with mammals, the elements, and indeed other humans, create a web of experience powerful, salient to the civilizations which hold all…closely.
(3) Progressing toward paradigmatic shift, decentralizing creative directional power, restoration of responsibility for community to the hands and experience of the collective.
(4) Progressing toward non-narrative experience, moment-form, an experience of time that is more vertical than linear, being somewhere, yet nowhere; simultaneously.
(5) Breaking discourses that bind. For those immersed in participation, the videographer, as documentarian and participant, disappeared.
(6) The microphone: objective harvesting of sonic experience; it too disappeared, presenting no distraction, no conscious intervention within experiential flow.
(7) Losing the sense of individuation, collective experience presses into the mythological, the ritualistic - led by sound, action and interaction.
(8) Connected - as if having been directed, planned; yet without instruction or guideline.
(9) Asking audience/viewers to approach the piece experientially rather than adopting an observational locus.
(10) The work is not intended as a film or documentary to be watched from beginning to end with an intentionally narrative chronological arc.
(11) Much like life, one enters and exits at points not planned, but rather as experienced.
About the Artists
Ken Steen
Ken Steen's music and sound art is recognized internationally for its authentic vitality, remarkable range and distinctive personal vision: from Mumbai to Tripoli, Buenos Aires to Reykjavík, Ljubljana, Melbourne, Stockholm, and NYC. Whether acoustic, electronic, or some multimedia combination, his work has been characterized as seductively gorgeous, featuring sumptuous textures of gradual yet unpredictable evolution.
Since 2012 Steen's multifarious sound works have enjoyed over 100 performances worldwide. Co-winner of the inaugural 2017 Steven R. Gerber Composition Prize from the League of Composers-ISCM NYC for his concerto grosso DĔPO FLUX, he has received numerous other awards for composition including an ISCM Boston Composition Award, an American Symphony Orchestra League New Music Project with Saint Louis Symphony Orchestra, grants from CT Commission on the Arts, NEFA, Meet the Composer, Roberts Foundation, and American Composers Forum; as well as residency fellowships to The Millay Colony, The Artist’s Enclave at I-Park, The MacDowell Colony, Gullkistan (Iceland), Drake Artist Residence, Kokkola, and Arteles Creative Center, Haukijärvi (Finland), Elektronmusikstudion EMS, and Audiorama in Stockholm, and Visby International Centre for Composers, Gotland (Sweden).
Simon Taylor
Simon Taylor is filmmaker and photographer. He graduated from the University of Cape Town with a BA Honours in Political Science and Economics. Simon has extensive experience in the production of documentary films, his last film being picked up by the BBC as well as other broadcasters. Simon is past bursary fellow of the World Congress of Science and Factual Producing and the Berlinale Talent Campus. Some of his past clients include the BBC, Al-Jazeera, The Daily Show with Jon Stewart - Comedy Central USA, FOXsports, Heinrich Boll Foundation (DE), The South African Broadcasting Corporation, The University of Cape Town, Global Integrity (US), The Western Cape Department of Health (ZA) and the African Centre for Cities. Simon’s films have been shown at various international festivals and exhibitions including Berlinale, the Encounters Film Festival, The Zimbabwe International Film Festival, the Zlin Festival for Youth and Children in the Czech Republic, the Kragnorgorski Sports Film Festival and the Rwanda Film Festival. Simon was one of the founders of the Zambian International Film Festival, which is a going concern today.
His images and audio-visual art have been exhibited at a number of galleries around Cape Town, including a solo exhibition at the AVA Gallery. In September 2017, he exhibited an audio-visual piece entitled “other future” at the Gothenburg Fringe Festival in Sweden. During the month of July 2018, Simon was an artist-in-resident at the Arteles Creative Centre in Finland. Over the past year, his images have attracted international attention through displays at select venues in Berlin, Paris and Dakar.