PlanetMosh Keeping it Metal
Vivek Venkatesh, David Hall and the Made in NY Media Center by IFP proudly present a unique celebration of extreme metal music. The Sign of An Open Eye: Grimposium 360 will feature 360-degree world premiere screenings by Canadian filmmakers David Hall, Vivek Venkatesh and Jason Wallin, and the United States premieres of soundscape performances by Norwegian composer Ivar Bjørnson and Canadian artist Owen Chapman – all in the heart of Brooklyn, New York at the Made in NY Media Center by IFP at 6pm, April 14, 2016. Tickets are $30 and have gone on sale February 1, 2016 at nymediacenter.com/events/. More information can also be found on the newly launched website http://grimposium.com.
The Sign of An Open Eye: Grimposium 360 will see the world-premiere screening of Blekkmetal – a documentary about the one-off 2015 festival celebrating the origins of Norwegian black metal. Featuring exclusive interviews and footage of Enslaved, Taake, Aeternus and Gaahl’s Wyrd performing classic and rare songs from their catalog, Blekkmetal features an all-Canadian production team including director David Hall, metal studies scholars Vivek Venkatesh and Jason Wallin, and mobile media scholar Owen Chapman. Blekkmetal is co-produced by the festival’s organizers Ivar Bjørnson, Jannicke Wiese-Hansen and Kirsti Rosseland. The film will be screened using the state-of-the-art 360-degree projection experience designed by Light Harvest, and followed by a panel discussion with the filmmakers and festival organizers.
Today a brand new trailer for Blekkmetal has been released. View the trailer HERE.
BardSpec is the solo Electronic Dark Ambient-Psych music project byIvar Bjørnson (songwriter, founder and guitarist from Norway’s Enslaved). The listener is invited into weird and wonderful soundscapes, where deep minimalism meets cascades of psychedelic harmony and esoteric noise. The music will be complemented by film co-created by David Hall and Bjørnson, with additional visuals by Vivek Venkatesh and Jason Wallin. HERE you can view an exclusive interview that event curator Vivek Venkatesh conducts with Ivar Bjørnson and Grutle Kjellson (Enslaved).
This interview provides a broad overview of Venkatesh’s research program on metal music, bringing to focus some of the Nordic themes that Bjørnson and Enslaved explore.
Canadian soundscape designer and mobile media scholar, Owen Chapman will perform a live remix in Echoscape (a geolocative audio remixing application) featuring a mixture of soundscape recordings and musical riffs combined with scratch DJ/VJ elements.
A special message from the organizers of Grimposium 360
In the middle of February 2016, the Grimposium 360 organizers learned through a social media post by Audrey Ewell that NYC-based Aaron Aites, Audrey’s partner and co-director of Until the Light Takes Us, is suffering from cancer. We have been a longtime admirer of Audrey and Aaron’s work – their unflinching look at Scandinavian black metal has been a source of inspiration to our own research and creative work.
After conversing with Audrey via email, we are announcing that after covering our costs, all proceeds from the upcoming Grimposium events in Brooklyn and Philadelphia will go towards funding Aaron’s ongoing treatment.
Please visit Audrey’s gofundme page to contribute to Aaron’s treatment:
https://www.gofundme.com/aaronaites
You can also contribute to Aaron’s treatment by buying tickets ($30 only) and coming over to watch the world premiere of our BlekkMetal documentary and Ivar Bjørnson Official‘s North American premiere of his Bardspec project in Brooklyn on April 14 for our The Sign Of An Open Eye: Grimposium 360 event:
And, you can contribute to Aaron’s treatment by buying tickets ($5 only) and attending our unique panels, workshops and film screenings at the Choosing Death Fest: Grimposium where we will be showing an advanced screening of DEATH by MetaL.
