Project Valis

Featuring - Bank, Sacha Davison, Rod Dickinson, Margarita Gluzberg, Simon Hollington, Kypros Kyrianou, Chad McCail, Claire Taylor, Greyvoid, The Nazgul, Orphan Drift, The Band of Nod + film, video, documentary and DJ's.

A multi-media international art event commemorating the 20th anniversary of the death Philip K. Dick, one of the most celebrated science-fiction authors of the last century. Dicks visions of the near and distant future predict a society in which surveillance and simulation technologies have made the real world and the authentic human being impossible to distinguish from their artificial and mass produced copies. In the drug-dependent paranoiaverse in which Dicks protagonists repeatedly find themselves time is reversible; the past, present and future have become unhinged. As we moving into a new century Philip K. Dicks fictional worlds bare an uncanny and increasingly unsettling resemblance to our own.

Saturday March 2nd 8.00pm-2.00am - £2 before 11pm, £4 after.

Coinciding with a simultaneous event in Vancouver, Canada, Project Valis features a variety of audio-visual works and performances, static art works and video screenings. The centerpiece will be a weblinked feedback audio-visual interface established between the two locations. The interface will attempt to create a vortex in the space-time continuum creating conditions conducive for contacting the spirit of PKD at the precise moment of his death on March 2nd, 1982.

Artist Rod Dickinson and designer Sacha Davison present a video projection of their on-line psychology experiment ‘The Theseus Project’. The audience are invited to navigate the experimental maze through a computer terminal installed in the gallery.

Artist collective Bank will orbit the gallery depositing silver space ephemera.

Video-Installation artists Simon Hollington and Kypros Kyprianou will present ‘On Heaven as it is On Earth’ a 're-animation' of the 1986 Challenger disaster presented as a continuous slide-loop activated by the viewer. The artists will also create and install a site-specific Bughouse related work for 291 gallery.

Margarita Gluzberg will create a pink information-dissemination beam and present a display of virtual fashion and designer products for the future.

Live artist Claire Taylor will present her Gnomic Militia project.

Artist Chad McCail will present a series of narrative sequence of images from his Genesis project.

Sound-collective Greyvoid will perform a specially created work for the event and veteran Krautrock outfit The Nazgul will perform material from their 1974 PKD inspired studio sessions. Both performances will be accompanied by a live video mix by international artist-collective Orphan drift. The Greyvoid-Nazgulperformance will culminate in a rendition of Sun Ra's Space is the Place involving a number of invited vocal and instrumental performers including John Strutton and The (Mini) Band of Nod.

DJ sets in the bar throughout the event feature Peter Rockmount (electro-man-machine set), Med from extrasensory (abstract-machine-glitch set), Kode9 from Hyperdub (darkcore-garage set), Mark Fisher from CCRU (metamatic-synth set), and DJ Perfect (west-coast-psychedelic-meltdown set).

Artworks will remain in 291 Gallery until Friday March 8th

Sunday March 3rd

A matinee of short, experimental and documentary films inspired by the work of Philip K. Dick

including: Owl in Daylight by Intermission, When is Now by Derek Brunen, John Cussans and Randy Cutler, Furbie Empathy Test by Colin Lane Films - accompanied by musical interludes by King Felix

4pm-10.30pm - entrance free

Wednesday March 6th

An evening of feature films based on the work of Philip K. Dick

6.00pm till 2.00 am - entrance free