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** AN OPENING DISPATCH **
PSYCH FEST LAUNCH EVENT ACROSS
FACT, BOLD STREET COFFEE, ROPEWALKS SQUARE & THE BLACK LODGE
** Perambulator v.1 **
A Virtual Reality Collaboration Between Pete Fowler + Draw&Code.
Soundtracked by Huw Bunford of Super Furry Animals. **
** Psychedelia In Film **
Film season to screen @ FACT / Picturehouse in the run up to liverpool psych fest. **
Join Us For An Evening Of VR Adventures, Digi-Grit Noize + Print Explorations, Celebrating The Imminent Arrival of Liverpool Psych Fest 2016.
VR WORKSHOP + DEMOS @ FACT
EXHIBITION OPENING @ BOLD STREET COFFEE
BONNACONS OF DOOM LIVE IN ROPEWALKS SQUARE
PZYK DJs @ THE BLACK LODGE
FREE. 4pm ’til LATE – FRIDAY 26th AUGUST
To celebrate the imminent arrival of this year’s Liverpool International Festival of Psychedelia, we are pleased to announce AN OPENING DISPATCH – a one night-only PZYK celebration, to whet the collective kaleidoscopic whistle ahead of this year’s main event.
AN OPENING DISPATCH takes place on Friday 26th August, with a series of free events and performances across FACT, Bold Street Coffee, Ropewalks Square and The Black Lodge.
The action commences from 4-8pm, with a PZYK VR workshop in FACTLab / The Box @ FACT.
Liverpool Psych Fest 2016 (in partnership with Arts Council England) have commissioned a series of new Virtual Reality artworks for this year’s festival. One of these is Perambulator v.1 a collaboration between longstanding Super Furry Animal’s illustrator Pete Fowler, the band’s guitarist Huw Bunford and Liverpool’s own VR wizards Draw&Code. Join Pete Fowler and Draw&Code as they delve into the creative process in this VR workshop, alongside a showcase of Virtual Reality works within The Box. Tickets are free but booking is required – https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/psychfest-vr-demo-and-qa-with-pete-fowler-and-drawcode-tickets-27089014973
The party then rolls across to Bold Street Coffee (7pm-11pm) for the opening of an exclusive month long PZYK exhibition in our favourite caffeine haunt. Expect the finest digi-grit noize and nu-psych sounds, alongside large scale print and moving image. Pete Fowler will also be guesting on the decks, with his infamous mix of off-kilter oddness. At 9pm, Ropewalks Square (between Bold Street Coffee and FACT) will play host to a live performance from Liverpool drone-troupe and de-facto PZYK house band, Bonnacons Of Doom.
After the festivities across FACT and Bold Street have drawn to a close, the shindig rolls on to The Black Lodge, with PZYK DJs spinning until the early hours. The Baltic Triangle brewers launch their bespoke festival PZYK Guruguru Brain IPA on the evening (in appreciation of the Japanese Psych label of the same name in resident at this year’s festival).
We look forward to you joining us for AN OPENING DISPATCH.
Liverpool International Festival of Psychedelia 2016 takes place across 23rd + 24th September 2016.
Join the PZYK Colony.
#PZYK
PZYK VR
Perambulator v.1
A Virtual Reality Collaboration Between Pete Fowler + Draw&Code.
Soundtracked by Huw Bunford of Super Furry Animals.
Liverpool International Festival of Psychedelia are pleased to announce the development of a major new series of three Virtual Reality artworks, ahead of this year’s festival.
The first of these new experiences, Perambulator v.1 will bring together the idiosyncratic, off the wall madness of long time SFA illustrator and monsterist Pete Fowler, brought to life in partnership with Liverpool creative agency Draw&Code. The piece promises to be nothing short of a mind boggling excursion into a rather gloriously off-beat other world. Perambulator v.1 will be soundtracked by guitarist Huw Bunford of festival headliners Super Furry Animals.
As a festival, we have become increasingly excited by – and progressively more obsessed with – the boundless possibilities the ever blossoming sphere of virtual reality presents. Our goal with Psych Fest has always been transportation; taking people somewhere else, a voyage to a new perspective. For us, that was always the original psychedelic message and a mantra we’ve been working, over the past five years, to expand upon. Virtual Reality makes anything possible. By embracing this technology, we can go anywhere together.
Speaking of the project, Pete Fowler enthused that, “Having the chance to create a world and let people wander around it is a mind blowing concept and one I jumped on immediately. I’ve been involved in animation before but this will be on another level entirely. After having seen what Draw&Code have done and can do I’m ridiculously excited.”
Draw&Code’s Andy Cooper: “Working with Pete Fowler and Huw Bunford is a thrill; it’s a rare treat to collaborate with artists that you have been into for years, especially as part of an event as daring as Psych Fest. When Pete came to visit the Draw&Code studio the designers among us were a wee bit starstruck!”
The whole scope of Virtual Reality, what it may become and the potential it posses is a global debate, one of the most vibrant of our times. When VR handshakes between presidents are front page news, we believe its imperative this technology is harvested to take people somewhere new, expand horizons and discover new realities. To go beyond the obvious and the mundane. With our PZYK VR commissions we’re seeking to facilitate the creation of a series of new alternative realities.
Perambulator v.1 is the first of these. A further two projects will be announced in the run in to the festival, as well as details of the immersive environment in which the artworks will be presented at the festival itself.
We would like to thank Arts Council England for their support for the project.
Psychedelia In Film @ FACT / Picturehouse
Leading up to Liverpool International Festival of Psychedelia 2016, FACT and Picturehouse present a special season of Psychedelia In Film inspired by the upcoming festival. The programme includes cult-classic Holy Mountain, psych-thriller Enter The Void, visceral period-trip A Field In England and Věra Chytilová’s 1960s masterpiece Daisies.
The screenings take place each Wednesday from 31st August through to 21st September, with tickets available from FACT or picturehouses.com. In addition to this, we will be welcoming FACT at this year’s Liverpool Psych Fest as curators of our PZYK Cinema programme. The full programme of artist-made shorts will be announced ahead of the festival in September.
The full programme of films being screened by FACT / Picturehouse in the run up to the festival is as follows –
Holy Mountain (Dir: Alexandro Jodorowsky, Mexico / 1973 / Cert: 18 / 115 mins)
Wednesday 31 August
6.30pm, The Box
£10.50 / £9.50
Jodorowsky’s visually arresting, completely surreal, fantasy masterpiece follows a powerful alchemist who leads a Christ-like character and seven materialistic figures to the HOLY MOUNTAIN, where they hope to achieve enlightenment. Drug-fuelled cemetery parties, a living art museum, and a sex machine are only snippets of the intense imagery which combines to create one of the most confusingly brilliant films you will ever see.
Enter the Void (Dir: Gaspar Noé, France / 2006 / Cert: 18 / 154 mins)
Wednesday 7 September
6.30pm, The Box
£10.50 / £9.50
This psychedelic thriller by visionary French maverick Gaspar Noé (IRREVERSIBLE, I STAND ALONE), is a visceral journey set against the thumping, neon, club scene of Tokyo, starring Nathaniel Brown and Paz de la Huerta. Shot from the point of view of a recently killed American drug-dealer, ENTER THE VOID is a technically stunning endurance feat which hurls the viewer into an astonishing trip through life and death, as well as the wonderful and horrible moments in between.
A Field in England (Dir: Ben Wheatley, UK / 2013 / Cert: 15 / 91 mins)
Wednesday 14 September
6.30pm, The Box
£10.50 / £9.50
A FIELD IN ENGLAND is a psychedelic trip into magic and madness from Ben Wheatley, award-winning director of Down Terrace, KILL LIST and SIGHTSEERS. This grimly visceral period drama follows a group of soldiers during the English Civil War of the 17th century and their gradual, grisly descent into mushroom-fuelled madness.
Daisies (Dir: Věra Chytilová, Czechoslovakia /1966 / Cert: 15 / 79 mins)
Wednesday 21 September
6.30pm, The Box
£10.50 / £9.50
Věra Chytilová’s 1960s masterpiece DAISIES is a brilliantly surreal trip into an aesthetic paradise, and a utopia where women are liberated from the conservative conventions of etiquette. The film stars two young girls who, upon realising that “Everything’s going bad in this world” decide to “go bad” themselves, and spend the rest of the film in a psychedelic rebellion.