Friday April 25, 7pm – 9pm
Edinburgh Grand Opening at “Finishing School”, the Embassy’s Performance and Video Night in the Sculpture Court with
Ei Arakawa, Stefan Tcherepnin, guest artists and students from Edinburgh College of Art
http://www.eca.ac.uk
http://www.nationalgalleries.org
Following the successful residencies of 2007 Turner Prize winner Mark Wallinger and Anna Barriball at Randolph Cliff, Clémentine Deliss, Charles Asprey, and guest selector Anthony Huberman are delighted to welcome Ei Arakawa and Stefan Tcherepnin to Randolph Cliff in Edinburgh. Perched over an abrupt rock face, Randolph Cliff looks out over the Dean Bridge to the Water of Leith, and forty miles further to the estuary of the Firth of Forth. Over the centuries, the house, with its impressive Georgian façade, has inspired Edinburgh’s leading optometrists and specialists of anesthesia and claustrophobia.
Randolph Cliff residencies are supported by a new partnership between Edinburgh College of Art and the National Galleries of Scotland. During their time at Randolph Cliff, guests are encouraged to engage in the prelusive or formative phase that leads to the generation of new works. The College of Art and the Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art seek to assist this period of fluid research, as they do the backstage communications that emerge between artists, intellectuals, and students in the city
of Edinburgh.
During April 2008, acclaimed New York-based Japanese artist, Ei Arakawa who recently received the New Museum’s Altoid Award for Emerging Artists, will use the residency to work on Grand Openings, the performance concept he developed together with Jutta Koether, Emily Sundblad, Stefan Tcherepnin, Daniel Baumann and collaborators in Tbilisi. Arakawa will team up with composer and performer Stefan Tcherepnin, Georgian artist Gela Patashuri (via Internet), and students from Edinburgh College of Art. The result will be performed as part of “Finishing School”, the Embassy’s Performance and Video Night on April 25 2008.
Grand Openings are renowned collaborative performances incorporating actions, dance, music, lights, film-screenings, concerts and discussions. Arakawa co-organizes these with numerous participants, pushing to the extreme the coexistence of different languages and interpretations. These experimental performances generate a form of “continuous architecture” between two or more places such as Tbilisi, New York, Tokyo, Nigata, Shindisi, Vienna and now Edinburgh. Stefan Tcherepnin’s contribution to Grand Openings incorporates elements of noise, indeterminacy and improvisation, as well as aspects of traditional composition resulting in what has been described as Brownian Reggaeton. For Edinburgh Grand Openings he will deploy a rare modular musical instrument, the Serge Synthesizer.
Image above:
Engraving of Randolph Cliff
For more information go to: http://www.eca.ac.uk
