Presented by Alpha and Omega Lodge (Ordo Templi Orientis)
Combining live and archival video by Michael Strum and sound realization by Scott Barnes with a ritual performance by occult artist Barry Hale, NOKO have created a body of work that draws on numerous folk religions, occult and esoteric traditions, to explore the intersection of creative practice and magick. Having performed at the Equinox Festival, London, Seattle, and the Sydney Biennale they now bring their powerful and evocative work to Adelaide.
4 performances over 2 nights.
26/02/2011
7:30pm
8:50pm
27/02/2011
7:30pm
8:50pm
IRIS CINEMA (Mercury Cinema Complex)
13 Morphette St
Adelaide, Australia
NOKO is an art/magical research project that operates at the very fringes of expanded cinema, live performance, music and magick.
NOKO explores a variety of aesthetic and esoteric traditions, merging magical ritual with contemporary audiovisual technologies, creating highly original assemblages within a multimedia environment.
NOKO, a collaboration between 3 artists, operates at the intersection of disparate creative practices that are drawn together in a mutual desire to examine creative and magical practice. Authors William Burroughs and Brion Gysin have described the emergent property of such collaborations as the ‘Third Mind’, integral to the creative process. Noko view their collaborative process in similar terms.
Barry William Hale: Concept and performance. Barry William Hale’s lines of esoteric research provide the conceptual framework for the NOKO project. The NOKO performance and vocalization practices become creative avenues through which magical and occult technologies are explored and articulated.
Michael Strum: Visuals. Combines 2 and 3D animation, found archival footage, documentation of magical practices and real time image-capture to create a swirling sea of ever-changing images. Responding sensitively to the environment in a flickering of a magic lantern, fuelled by the energy of the ritual space.
Scott Barnes: Sound Realization. Creates virtual machines that define potential phase spaces providing a variety of possible outcomes which he mines for raw material from the data sets. This is subsequently re-incorporated into the compositional process, creating new sonic possibilities.
The work exhibits a plasticity that allows disparate elements to merge or disintegrate into a range of new audio and visual forms, enabling an improvisational aspect that is rare in audiovisual performance.
In the past year, NOKO has performed at the Equinox Festival in London in 2009, the Occult Literary Festival Seattle 2010, and the Sydney Biennale 2010.
For the Adelaide Fringe Festival NOKO will be presenting a new work, developing ideas from ritual practices that inform Barry William Hale’s forthcoming book/art project HYPERCUBE 210 (Fulgur Ltd, 2011). This project represents a new direction in the esoteric research and investigation of the Enochian Magical System, with particular focus on the Lingua vel Adamica, or the Enochian Alphabet, received in the 15th century by Dr John Dee, consultant to Queen Elizabeth I, and Edward Kelley, and popularized in modern occult circles by Aleister Crowley.
NOKO: HYPERCUBE 210 comprises twenty-one discrete elements, analogous to the twenty-one letters of the Enochian Alphabet, these are arranged into a triptych where each of the seven compositions structurally references its numeric correlate: Engaging in esoteric ritual through abstracted experimental sound and visuals, erupting into what is traditionally considered a fine arts arena.
