This August 28 at 7pm, Baltic Analog Lab and Skaņu Mežs festival invite you to an analog film screening and live tape performance by August artists-in-residence: Lilan Yang (CN), Taylor Alaina Liebenstein Smith (US/FR), and Rachael Finney (UK).

Lilan Yang is a moving image artist merging analog filmmaking with computational processes. Rooted in the materiality of 16mm, their practice explores the flux of migration, the decay of memory, and the intricacies of perception. Yang currently lives and works in Boston.

They have been developing and documenting the “Untitled Film Disinfection Project” during their residency, working across performance, moving image, and still photography. The project’s debut performance will premiere at the end-of-residency presentation.

Funding for the Untitled Film Disinfection Project has been made possible by The Puffin Foundation, Ltd.

Taylor Alaina Liebenstein Smith is a U.S.-born, French-nationalized visual artist, currently based in Oslo, Norway. In her practice she explores the poetic intersections between analog and biological media. She collaborates with scientists, poets, dancers, architects, gardeners and other species, attempting to address the climate crisis while deconstructing perceived boundaries between scientific and artistic knowledge.

During the screening she will show a selection of fragments from her current artistic research. This will include works in progress begun at BAL (experiments with ‘microbial mordançage’, footage from toxic lakes and islands in Norway, and Kodak factory emissions in her hometown of Rochester, New York) and her previous 16mm film ‘A feeling of longing that freezes and thaws’, which explores the poetics of permafrost. Taylor’s residency is supported by Kulturrådet, Arts Council Norway.

Rachael Finney is a musician, composer, artist, and researcher whose work examines histories and cultures of popular music, recording technologies, and the arrangements of sonic and musical space. She has a background in experimental music where her work makes extensive use of reel-to-reel tape. Releasing under the moniker R Elizabeth she has worked with various labels to release recordings including WhereToNow?, Nightschool records, and Kit records. Her work has been featured in publications and platforms including The Wire, Electronic Sound, The Quietus, the Vinyl Factory, and the Boiler Room.

During her residency at Baltic Analog Lab she has been exploring a creative interrelation between modular synthesis, piano, reel-to-reels and magnetic tape, and the analogue technologies associated with film to create sonic textures and patterns. Manipulating and editing sounds recorded to magnetic tape via what composer Glenn Gould has called ‘the splendid splice’ her work explores how tape and the function of the ‘cut’ can be used to make compositional decisions. She will present a live performance for tape sharing compositional sketches of pieces developed through her residency.

The event will take place in the Baltic Analog Lab 2nd-floor residence rooms, Lienes iela 19a.

Event language: English.
Free admission, drinks for donation.

Baltic Analog Lab Residency is supported by the Latvian State Culture Capital Foundation.

Image: Lilan Yang on the left, Taylor Alaina Liebenstein Smith on the right.