Flash is an international contemporary art/music project whereby visual artists from home and abroad, contemporary composers and musicians are invited to react to each other from within the context of their own disciplines. It is about the development, execution and presentation of nine DVD's.
Blue is the colour of the sky, the colour of distance and depth, the colour of purity and ideas. In 'Rain of Feathers' you lie as viewer on your back and gaze into a field of blue. Sounds of someone who is rhythmically tapping a cow bell penetrate the image. A Buddhist atmosphere suddenly takes over. The everyday sense of time disappears. Shortly after, the first pure white bird feathers come on screen. Velvety feathers fall downwards and remain lying on the projection surface. The feathers become clouds and the clouds become imaginary figures, a smirking cat stares at you. More feathers fall, and the image is gone again. A fiery composition of harpsichord, percussion and cow bell sounds gives the image a childish undertone. Eric Calmes is known as a composer and bass guitarist and this work is his first written composition. The piece has a cutting rhythm from the very beginning. Using short, fast chords his harpsichord and percussion carry out a stormy discussion together. This stuttering dialogue stops in unison at the end of the composition. The flash switches the work to negative and movement returns, in reverse. The surface with white feathers becomes black with a slight touch of blue here and there. Bit by bit the bottom turns out to be yellow like the sun. The music breaks into lightning-speed and empties the entire surface in one minute. And we end again as we started, with an empty surface, subsided into total silence. With the Zero-artist Henk Peeters, things ultimately stand for what they are. Feathers are feathers, whether you look at them from the left or from the right.
– Ellen de Bruijne
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Production: Bifrons Stichting, Amsterdam (Netherlands) & BALTIC, Centre for Contemporary Art, Gateshead (UK)
Henk Peeters ° 1925, The Hague (Netherlands)
Lives and works in Hall (Netherlands)
Eric Calmes ° 1955 (Netherlands Antilles)
Lives and works in Amsterdam (Netherlands)
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