About AV Festival
AV Festival is an international festival of electronic arts featuring visual art, music and moving image. A biennial event, the festival takes place in Newcastle, Gateshead, Sunderland and Middlesbrough in the North East of England. It consists of concerts and performances, exhibitions, film screenings, seminars, symposia, workshops and other special events at many venues across the three urban centres of the North East.
AV Festival 08 has the theme of Broadcast and runs from 28 February – 8 March 2008 in venues across the North East.
The Cremaster Cycle.
Director: Matthew Barney.
The first AV Festival ran between 8 - 22 November 2003, with over one hundred events across three towns in two weeks. It was the first and the biggest ever festival of new media culture in the UK with performances by the Cinematic Orchestra, DJ Food, Tina Frank and General Magic, screenings of Matthew Barney’s Cremaster Cycle, a Mike Figgis film retrospective, onedotzero screenings and a lively programme of workshops and lectures. Over 35 new works were commissioned, including new pieces by Richard Fenwick and The Light Surgeons.
The second AV Festival – LifeLike took place over ten days between 2-12 March 2006, again held in the three major urban centres of the North East: NewcastleGateshead, Sunderland and Middlesbrough. AV Festival 06 included over 90 events in over 25 venues, and an impressive range of energetic and challenging new work never seen before in the UK.
AV06 Opening Gala.
Photo: Mark Savage.
This second festival commissioned 15 major new works from renowned artists, filmmakers and musicians from countries as far afield as Japan, Australia, New Zealand, USA, Spain, France, Norway and Germany. It included new exhibitions by international artists, such as Ryoji Ikeda, Ken Rinaldo, Andy Gracie and Anthony McCall, moving image works by Gina Czarnecki, UMAMi, Claire Davies, and music works by :zoviet*france: and Suguru Goto.
AV festival is based upon an original idea developed by Jeff Cleverley for AV Partnership in 2002.
The AV Festival is run by an independent charitable company called Audio Visual Arts North East. The company is governed by a Board of Trustee Directors, chaired by Mark Dobson.
Audio Visual Arts North East was established in March 2007 and is a Company Limited by Guarantee. Registered in England Number 06141603. Registered Charity Number 1120368. The registered office is c/o Tyneside Cinema at Old Town Hall on West Street in Gateshead.
