AMP Highlights

AMP Highlights

Video highlights from the Contemporary Music Centre's AMP series of cross-arts evenings held during May and June 2008.

Based in the informal setting of Pravda, Lower Liffey Street, Dublin 1, the Contemporary Music Centre presented a series of discussion evenings centred on the issue of collaboration among artists, with particular emphasis on collaboration between musicians and artists working in other fields.

The evenings took place on three Tuesdays from 13 to 27 May 2008, with a final event in the Contemporary Music Centre on Thursday, 5 June 2008. Each week, speakers from relevant fields discussed their experiences working in collaboration with other artists, and this was followed by questions from the floor.

For AMP1 collaborative duo Anthony Kelly (artist) and David Stallingdiscussed past and current works, describing creative processes, obstacles they faced and their experience working with each other.George Higgs explored the idea of collaboration with particular reference to his current project Bed of Macbeth, on which he is working with Ger Clancy (sculptor).

At AMP 2 Tim Redfern (multimedia artist) demonstrated different styles and effects used in abstract music videos he created with various musicians and composers. Tim also spoke about his current PhD project, devising handheld devices that interpret wireless networks as musical soundscapes. Linda Buckley showed highlights of Textures, a documentary for which she is currently writing the soundtrack.

For the third evening in the series, Jo Mangan, Artistic Director of the Performance Corporation Theatre Company, discussed her involvement in different collaborative projects. She highlighted the completion of The Space Project, an initiative that brought together artists, architects, dancers, musicians and other creative personalities to explore the possibilities for collaboration across these disciplines.Jürgen Simpson spoke about his work with dancers and choreographers, including a recent project Receiving Systems, featuring Mary Wycherly (dancer), which was shown in the Dublin Dance Festival in April and May 2008. Jürgen illustrated this with clips from projects in which he was involved.

For the final evening in the series, CMC opened its doors to welcome musicians, artists, dancers, photographers and actors and allow them to meet one another in an informal atmosphere. Neil O’Connorperformed live electronics and artist Helen Horgan created an electronic site-specific art installation in CMC’s reception area. Screenings of samples of collaborative work were shown in CMC’s library, featuring pieces submitted by participants and audience members during the course of the AMP series.

The response to the series was extremely positive with much interest expressed by musicians, composers, visual artists, multimedia artists, dancers and theatre producers and performers.

CMC's 2008 events are supported by the Arts Council/An Chomhairle Ealaíon.