Nightlife
Babylon Lounge washes the Monday Blues away and helps usher in a new art form.
Feeling groggy and down after a lost weekend in clubland? You don’t have to go on a shooting spree like the 16-year old girl (Brenda Ann Spencer, 1979) who fired at children playing in a school playground across the street from her home, killing 2 adults and injuring 8 children and 1 police officer. She showed no remorse for her crime, and her full explanation for her actions was "I don't like Mondays, this livens up the day." This almost immediately led to the Boomtown Rats hit, “I don’t like Mondays.” Look – I hate Mondays too, but rather than reaching for a rifle, I recommend people get themselves down to Babylon Lounge, which has launched an ambitious program of live cinema nights. They are calling it simply “Audio Visual Performance Nights” and promising an exciting marriage of jazz, ambient, electronica and experimental sounds visuals. Doubters and deadbeats piss off. This new mixing of movies, even narrative ones, may be the first genuinely new art form of the 21st century. Yeni Melek Performing Arts Centre was perhaps the first venue to showcase AV events bringing renowned VJs to Turkey, such as Spark*(UK), DJ turned (D) VJ Spooky (NYC). Their “Live Cinema Nights” were curated by artificialeyes.tv (Vienna/Paris/LA), probably the most talented act in the city. ae.tv’s workshops at the old Pi Artworks building in Ortaköy showed a whole new generation of kids that with the right application, MacBookPro, and enough ambition, you could become a VJ and pick up chicks or studs or whoever you’re into, just as kids who learned three chords in music class or in their garage had learned they could become immediate punk guitarists in the past. Cotton AV, who are graduates of the VJ workshops, have performed at Babylon Lounge. They take their work very seriously:
It concentrates on the spectacle of live cinema with poetic and rhythmic uses of video loops…different visual material coming into form to create a non-linear improvised way of narrating stories. Some loops contain diverse material such as close ups of men/women/children/streets/highways to representations and formations of found-footage, home video and video art.
They may sound grandiose, but their work is stunning. Other AV artists take a more hedonistic approach such as Holly Daggers (NYC). The piety of art galleries’ video installations may finally become a thing of the past now that clubs and lounges are providing mind-blowing DIY sets. Babylon Lounge is hoping to encourage the members of the city’s growing VJ community to come together and has provided a space for them to get some exposure and turn on the uninitiated. Kudos to them. Check it out.
Mondays no longer so blue
Writer: James Snow
Babylon Lounge washes the Monday Blues away and helps usher in a new art form.
Feeling groggy and down after a lost weekend in clubland? You don’t have to go on a shooting spree like the 16-year old girl (Brenda Ann Spencer, 1979) who fired at children playing in a school playground across the street from her home, killing 2 adults and injuring 8 children and 1 police officer. She showed no remorse for her crime, and her full explanation for her actions was "I don't like Mondays, this livens up the day." This almost immediately led to the Boomtown Rats hit, “I don’t like Mondays.” Look – I hate Mondays too, but rather than reaching for a rifle, I recommend people get themselves down to Babylon Lounge, which has launched an ambitious program of live cinema nights. They are calling it simply “Audio Visual Performance Nights” and promising an exciting marriage of jazz, ambient, electronica and experimental sounds visuals. Doubters and deadbeats piss off. This new mixing of movies, even narrative ones, may be the first genuinely new art form of the 21st century. Yeni Melek Performing Arts Centre was perhaps the first venue to showcase AV events bringing renowned VJs to Turkey, such as Spark*(UK), DJ turned (D) VJ Spooky (NYC). Their “Live Cinema Nights” were curated by artificialeyes.tv (Vienna/Paris/LA), probably the most talented act in the city. ae.tv’s workshops at the old Pi Artworks building in Ortaköy showed a whole new generation of kids that with the right application, MacBookPro, and enough ambition, you could become a VJ and pick up chicks or studs or whoever you’re into, just as kids who learned three chords in music class or in their garage had learned they could become immediate punk guitarists in the past. Cotton AV, who are graduates of the VJ workshops, have performed at Babylon Lounge. They take their work very seriously:
It concentrates on the spectacle of live cinema with poetic and rhythmic uses of video loops…different visual material coming into form to create a non-linear improvised way of narrating stories. Some loops contain diverse material such as close ups of men/women/children/streets/highways to representations and formations of found-footage, home video and video art.
They may sound grandiose, but their work is stunning. Other AV artists take a more hedonistic approach such as Holly Daggers (NYC). The piety of art galleries’ video installations may finally become a thing of the past now that clubs and lounges are providing mind-blowing DIY sets. Babylon Lounge is hoping to encourage the members of the city’s growing VJ community to come together and has provided a space for them to get some exposure and turn on the uninitiated. Kudos to them. Check it out.