Reactor Halls E11: The Dark Horse Moving Picture Show
Saturday 24 May 2014, 19.30

Reactor Halls E11 is the last in the current season of events. The Dark Horse Moving Picture Show is a Film/Live Performance/Music event by artists Jennet Thomas, Paul Tarragó and Leo Chadburn (a.k.a. Simon Bookish). It’s a kind of experimental variety show, a rich and strange cocktail of aesthetic pleasures, unusual ideas and cerebral, pop-cultural experimentations.

Amongst other works, you will see:

‘I AM YOUR ERROR MESSAGE’ - Jennet Thomas performs a bizarre Q and A dialogue with a day-glo character trapped in the Video screen, attempting to save your world from an Error- ‘That Algorithm’ - spreading deep inside the structures of everything.

We will visit Paul Tarragó’s world of PAUL AND THE BADGER a simulated TV puppet show series that is not quite right… but strangely sincere in its adventures in wrongness. Paul will also perform a multi-screen Tape/Slide/Super 8 feat of celluloid poetics.

Simon Bookish will perform with vocal mastery a spoken word + music piece from Trainwreck/Raincheck – truly alarming tales directly transcribed from his dreams, work which has drawn comparisons with "Bowie and Baudrillard, Burroughs and Byrne".

There also will be a couple of live mystery events which will defy all logical explanation, and a real quiz, with actual prizes

Jennet Thomas makes videos, performances and installations using speculative, experimental writing. The work can look like T.V. news, experimental film, childrens’ drama, or performance art behavior, with uncanny visual and verbal puns. It is often absurd and disturbingly entertaining. Based in London, her work emerged from the anarchistic, experimental culture of London’s underground film and live art club scene in the 90′s, where she was a co-founder of the Exploding Cinema Collective.

Her work shows across Europe and North America with recent solo shows SCHOOL OF CHANGE  and ALL SUFFERING SOON TO END! at Matt’s Gallery, London, THE ADVICE SHAPE at Outpost, Norwich, THE BROKEN SHAPE at the Pleasure Dome, Toronto, and RETURN OF THE BLACK TOWER at Peer.

Paul Tarragó’s work is a mix of underground experimentation and metafiction, tugging at the leash of film language but with narrative often held close at hand. His work has shown widely on film festival and gallery circuits (International Film Festival Rotterdam, NYUFF, EMAF, National Review of Live Art, Triangle France, Brooklyn Museum of Art, ICA London), and includes several award winning experimental narratives, video installation, a collaborative feature film, cinematic sketchbooks, moving image + live soundtrack performance work.

Leo Chadburn is best known as Simon Bookish, and in this guise he has released three albums of transgressive, investigatory pop and electronic music. He is also a classically-trained composer, producer, arranger, vocalist and live artist, whose work includes experimental music, improvisation and remixes for some brilliant artists. He has a special interest in contemporary visual art, collaborating on some acclaimed video and installation art projects in the last few years. He occasionally writes on creative music. He is also currently an associate composer of the LSO (London Symphony Orchestra), as part of their 'Soundhub' scheme.