The next Kosmika event at Arts Catalyst is coming up. (I presented at one of these last summer–they’re good fun!) I’ll miss it as I’ll be on holiday which is a shame but encourage other space cadets out there to go!
20 April 2012 at their Clerckenwell Road space
50-54 Clerkenwell Road
London EC1M 5PS
7-10pm
Free
In April’s KOSMICA, space scientist Dr Lucie Green explores the atmosphere of the sun, artist Chooc Ly Tan scrutinises physics, and Guess What play music inspired by Russian cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin and Persian astronomer Al-Khawarizmi. Plus a screening of Semiconductor’s stunning short film Brilliant Noise.
Dr Lucie Green is a solar researcher who studies activity in the atmosphere of the Sun, in particular, immense magnetic fields in the Sun’s atmosphere. These sporadically erupt to form a coronal mass ejection. Lucie is based at the Mullard Space Science Laboratory, UCL’s Department of Space and Climate Physics. She sits on the board of the European Solar Physics Division (ESPD) of the European Physical Society and is a member of the Royal Society’s Education Committee.
Chooc Ly Tan is an artist living and working in London. Her multidisciplinary practice includes performance, video, text and sculpture. Part of her inquiry is the arguable role of physics, which is scrutinised through materiality and time-based media to question its attributed functions. Tan’s often-playful experiments explore fragility, with matter that coexists in states between order and chaos, for example, gravity or materials that repel or work against each other to create tension and volatility.
Guess What was formed in 1968 (2005) by Luke Warmcop and Graham Mushnik They started out working indoors only, producing obscure metaphysical music and soundtracks. In 1972 (2009) their first LP was recorded and released on Catapulte. Titled Yuri Gagarin – 12 Modern Odes To History’s Greatest Spaceman, it explores the inner-world and outer-world of Gagarin and his adventure. In 1973 (2010), they discovered the mighty “Giallo” cinema, and recorded some Italian-sounding music, due out in 1975 (2012) on Imagenes. In the meantime, a new focus is keeping them busy: the Persian mathematician and astronomer Al-Khawarizmi, and music from the Middle East.
Semiconductor is UK artists Ruth Jarman and Joe Gerhardt. Over the past fifteen years they have become known for developing a unique and innovative body of moving image works, which explore the material nature of our world, how we experience it and how we create an understanding of it: questioning our place in the physical universe.
The KOSMICA series is curated by Nahum Mantra and The Arts Catalyst, and is endorsed by ITACCUS, the International Astronautical Federation’s Committee on the Cultural Utilisation of Space.
