THE LONG PROGRESS BAR, 2016

A FESTIVAL OF RADICAL IMAGINATION

PRESENTED AS PART OF BRIGHTON DIGITAL FESTIVAL

A one-day festival of talks, screenings and music, The Long Progress Bar celebrates radical imagination and explores new methods of empowerment, collective action and technological progress. We zoom in on the platforms, interfaces and resolutions needed to build a better future and ask a new generation of thought-provoking artists, activists and academics: what is progress?

Hosted by Warren Ellis. Proudly presented in association with WeTransfer.

GAIKA DJ Set presented in partnership with Brighton Dome

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HOST

WARREN ELLIS (UK) – Author

Warren Ellis is an award-winning graphic novelist and author of the NYT best-selling novel, Gun Machine. His graphic novels have been picked up for film and TV with Global Frequency being developed for television by Jerry Bruckheimer and FOX and Red being adapted into the film starring Bruce Willis and Helen Mirren. His latest work Normal, a digitally distributed serial, published in 2016, is a very near-future techno-thriller, set in a refuge where futurists go to recover from “abyss gaze”.

SPEAKERS

AIMEE CLIFF (UK) – Journalist

Aimee Cliff is an associate editor of The FADER, based in their London office. Previously, she has written for Dazed & Confused, Vice, The Quietus and others. She has interviewed innovative artists and musicians – from celebrated electronic producer Jam City to metamodernist celebrity Shia LaBeouf – and her column Popping Off interrogates pop cultural issues, from the presentation of sexuality in music videos to the decline of the London club scene. She also co-hosts the monthly Radar Radio show Angel Food, with DJ and producer E.M.M.A.

ASH SARKAR (UK) – Journalist & Activist

Ash Sarkar is a senior editor for Novara Media, which addresses social and economic issues shaping contemporary society, for which she presents the video series OMFG Sarkar. In a recent edition, she interviewed people in the London borough of Barking about the EU referendum: The Unbearable Whiteness of Brexit. She is active in the anti-austerity movement and is interested in postcolonialism, anti-capitalism, race and race formation, gender, sexuality and pop culture. She also has an active interest in art and literary culture, and is a published poet.

ROGER HIORNS (UK) – Artist

Roger Hiorns’ work generates and inhabits interstices between dissentient ideas: construction and destruction; the theological and the technological; temporality and permanence; authoritarian control and organic spontaneity. In Turner Prize nominated Seizure, he transformed a derelict flat in South London into a sparkling blue environment of copper sulphate crystals. In his forthcoming project Untitled (buried passenger aircraft), he will bury a Boeing 737 on a derelict canal island in Birmingham, where he grew up.

MELIKA NGOMBE KOLONGO/NKISI (BE) – Artist

Melika Ngombe Kolongo (aka Nkisi) is a producer and DJ, and co-founder of NON, a multinational collective of artists from Africa and the African diaspora, using sound as their primary media, to articulate the visible and invisible structures that create binaries in society, and in turn distribute power. Recent projects include: Black Friday, a global call to buy goods from black owned businesses to support Black Lives Matter; NON Legacy Systems show at New Museum, NY; and NON Quarterly digital magazine. (Photo: Angel-Ho, Nkisi and Chino Amo by Maria by Jose Govea/RBMA).

NINA POWER (UK) – Philosopher & Author

Nina Power is a senior lecturer in philosophy at Roehampton University (with The History of European Philosophy; Atomism; Marxism; Equality and the Generic stated as just a few of her research interests). As an author, she published One-Dimensional Woman, which asks: “Where have all the interesting women gone?”. She writes for numerous publications, including The Guardian, New Humanist and The Philosopher’s Magazine. Her photographs have been published in culture magazines, frieze and Icon.

SCREENINGS

AS CHINGY

Digital artist Sam Rolfes’ video for AS Chingy, by Berlin-based duo Amnesia Scanner, is as abrasive and disorientating as the track. “Rolfes twists a 3D environment to the contours of the music, shot through first-person videogame tropes.” – Killscreen.

EUROPA, MON AMOUR (2016 Brexit Edition)

Lawrence Lek creates speculative worlds and site-specific simulations using software, video, installation and performance. In Europa, Mon Amour he portrays a near-future Dalston, in London, as a post-Brexit, post-apocalyptic utopia, filled with forgotten nightclubs, neon-lit music venues, election booths, Turkish snooker clubs and luxury penthouses.

FINDING FANON PART TWO

Finding Fanon Part Two is part of a series of works by artists Larry Achiampong and David Blandy, inspired by the lost plays of Frantz Fanon (1925-1961), a politically radical humanist whose practice dealt with the psychopathology of colonisation and the social and cultural consequences of decolonisation. Part Two explores the post-colonial condition from inside the Grand Theft Auto 5 in-game video editor.

THE SPRAWL (PROPAGANDA ABOUT PROPAGANDA) (shard)

Mixing YouTube memes, state-influenced fan art, and original footage and graphics created by Metahaven, The Sprawl (Propaganda About Propaganda) reveals how the West and Russia are using the same technological infrastructure and cinematic aesthetics to present contrasting versions of the truth, whilst themselves creating a potent work of propaganda about propaganda.

THE SUBURBS DREAM OF VIOLENCE (KINGDOM COME)

Taking its title from J. G. Ballard’s final novel, Kingdom Come is a concept performance, devised by UK performance artist, composer and producer Gazelle Twin, in collaboration with filmmakers Chris Turner and Tash Tung.

WHERE LAND MEETS SEA

Using 3D laser scanners to capture models of scenes from Lesvos Island, in Greece, Embassy For The Displaced have created a haunting film, which portrays the realities of life for the refugees trapped there, who are presented in the work as ghost-like presences through which we pass. Music is by Helm.

MUSIC

GAIKA (UK) – DJ Set

London-based beatmaker, MC and artist GAIKA released his debut mixtape and video Machine in 2015. A recent signing to WARP, the label describe his latest release, 3D, as “Bringing together unflinching lyrics, concussive industrial percussion and apocalyptic dancehall swagger. An affront to the oppressive forces at work in the world and a strong indicator of what’s to come from and incendiary and subversive artist.”

ITAL TEK: (UK) – Live

Brighton-based music producer ITAL TEK (aka Alan Myson) released his fifth album Hollowed in March. Moving away from his previous dance music album Nebula Dance, described by NME as “clusters of dizzying breakbeats and swooning, sad house chords”, Myson says in Hollowed, he is returning to his roots, mixing real with synthesised instruments and "focussing on the relationship between space and weight”.

DRILL FOLLY (AUS) – Live

Drill Folly is the alias of Melbourne-born, Brighton-based, electronic music producer Sarah Phelan. Described by The Guardian as an “icily bracing industrial attack”, Drill Folly’s music is all about machinery and emotion – combustion, morphology, dependence and therapy, realised through found sound, synthesis and studio manipulation, with a warmer, existential focus at its core.

NKISI (BE) – DJ Set

Nkisi is the alias of Melika Ngombe Kolongo, an artist, producer, DJ and co-founder of NON Records, raised in Belgium and now living in London. Her high-octane style fuses various danceable forms, from gabber to West African club tracks. As a producer, she fashions densely layered, obstinate tracks designed to trigger and question collective memories.

YON ETA (NL) – DJ Set

Dutch producer Yon Eta (aka Maarten Brijker) takes a maximalist approach to sound while consciously striving to limit the options in the production process. The Amsterdam-based composer and DJ runs the DEVORM imprint, offering artists the opportunity to challenge their musical ideas. In recent years he has released audiovisual works in collaboration with FOAM, EYE Film Institute and Freeform Festival. He has won major awards at De Grote Prijs van Nederland (2010) and the Berlin Music Video Awards (2013).

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The Long Progress Bar is part of Lighthouse’s monthly Progress Bar series. It was proudly presented in association with WeTransfer and Brighton Dome.

Our media partner is POSTmatter. The Long Progress Bar takes place during Brighton Digital Festival – a month-long celebration of digital culture, made up of events, exhibitions, performances, workshops, conferences and meet-ups that take place in venues and outdoor spaces across the city throughout September.