Waterloo Festival TeamVisit a Space #3: IKLECTIK [OFF-SITE] ART RESISTANCE
While creative venues and businesses are closed around Waterloo, we want to bring you their work through our digital festival. We continue this week, meeting IKLECTIK.
IKLECTIK is a non-profit art space founded in 2014 based at The Old Paradise Yard, next to the Archbishop’s park.
Our programme focuses on experimental music and multimedia arts. We are an art lab where emergent and established artists and musicians can experiment and push the boundaries of sound, music and other art forms and try new and innovative projects. Since we opened we have hosted more than a 1000 events including concerts, festivals, workshops and talks.
Like many other arts spaces, we had to close our doors until the foreseeable future. Just after the lockdown we decided to start a new project to support our arts community and keep IKLECTIK alive: IKLECTIK [off-site] Art Resistance.
IKLECTIK [off-site] is a dynamic online platform where artists and musicians can show their art work, videos, interviews, research and new releases. 2 sections are dedicated to R&D, where artists can share research projects, and ‘LIMINAL SPACE‘, an online exhibition space.
Currently, in our online residency, we are hosting Eleonora Oreggia, an Italian artist who works with interactive installations using light, sound, dust and self-made sensor-driven synthesizers. During the residency the artist will create and design interactive binaural soundscapes and expressive lights through Rebus, an innovative instrument which generates an electromagnetic field that forms an immaterial interface which can be manipulated by the hands and the human body. The residency will culminate in a concert and a talk with other artists who also focus their on electromagnetic interactions.
In our LIMINAL SPACE, we present Gutz, the work of immersive sound artist Christian Duke. Gutz is the live binaural recording piece of a full-hour experience for a blindfolded audience on a customised immersive sound system made of 54 speakers around the audience. The partial sensory deprivation aimed to pause the narratives of modern life, taking the participants through a meditative journey in the recesses of the unconscious.
IKLECTIK has also been organising live streamed concerts. So far we have hosted 17 online events and we will keep scheduling more. We are really thankful to all the artists and musicians who have been involved. It is amazing to see the positive energy and will to keep making music despite all the difficulties.
IKLECTIK has been awarded Emergency Funding from the Arts Council.
The fund will allow us to create new content and exciting projects for the community, as well as supporting artists with new commissions. It is really important for us to be able to continue engaging with our audience and provide a rich cultural programme. These are difficult times for many people, but the art and cultural industries have been significantly impacted by the pandemic. These are times for community spirit, art and resistance.
