PHIL by Anna Best with the London Philharmonic Orchestra
Performances
- Saturday 27th July, 6 pm & 9 pm at the Beaufoy
Institute audio webcast at www.philphilphil.net Entrance
is free and refreshments will be available. PHIL is a new work by Anna Best and the first in a series of three temporary public art commissions concerning the future of The Beaufoy Institute in Vauxhall. PHIL takes a well known piece of classical music (Eine Kleine Nachtmusik by Mozart) and presents a performative detour whereby the TV screen becomes a performer, and the audience is host venue. Each musician is relocated into a Vauxhall home (chosen because the residents have PHIL somewhere in their name) where they play their part of the piece. This is filmed on video and finally reunited into an orchestra of televisions at The Beaufoy Institute. PHIL splices together television and orchestral culture with the historical Beaufoy building and thereby questions the social hierarchies embedded in entertainment, philosophy, music, love and what-to-do-on-a-Saturday night. The atmosphere of high culture in a symphony orchestra is physically and technologically disintegrated by the process. The currently unused Beaufoy building, like the orchestra, summons up the legacy of the Victorian era. PHIL investigates the relationship between urban regeneration, arts funding and the philanthropic attitude. By searching for Philips, Philomenas and Phillippas, the artist turns on its side any notion of a geographically defined community. PHIL is offered to the residents of Vauxhall and the London Philharmonic orchestra in the spirit of celebratory collaboration and critical provocation. The Beaufoy Commissions provide a unique opportunity to look to the future of Beaufoy Institute and discuss its role within the area. Anna Bests practice as an artist is not easily catagorised, though a constant thread is her interest in making connections and narratives between different people and situations. Elements of live art performance, documentation techniques and research processes are given equal emphasis in her work. Bests past projects include; A Real Pony Race For A Bridle, which saw a full-scale gymkhana in Burgess Park, Peckham and The Wedding Project, commissioned by Tate Modern, in Borough Market. More recently she has worked collaboratively at Grizedale Arts on The Festival of Lying, in Cumbria, made a website commission, error 404 for e-2.org and exhibited in Belgium, The USA and Venezuela. PHIL is part of the Beaufoy Arts Project, which will be delivered by a unique partnership of The Vauxhall St. Peters Heritage Centre, Lambeth Arts, Gasworks Gallery and Danielle Arnaud contemporary art. The project has been supported by Lambeth Riverside and will form part of a major year long programme of community involvement in the Riverside area to inform the regeneration process. The next commission is by art/architecture collective MUF and will take place in October 2002 and the final commission which will take place in December 2002 will see a new work by Helen Maurer. PHIL is being realised with advice and assistance from Gasworks Gallery, Amy Plant, Stefan Szcelkun, Myles Stawman, Bettina Wilhelm, and Paul Whitty.
Lambeth
Riverside, Lambeth Arts, Vauxhall St. Peters
Heritage Centre, Gasworks Gallery, |
