EUPHRASIE SHOWCASE

FILM: ELLY LYNN, ROSS PEARSON, JACOB WATKINSON PERFORMANCE: NAN ZHU MUSIC: THAT TRAVIS, VOSTOCK

Yes – this was excellent stuff: experimental music, films and performance art deep in the heart of the city.

EVEN is a group that has been organised to establish a new permanent local venue for experimental music, moving image, performance art and literature.

The email I received alerting me to their existence – and informing me that they have organised a month’s worth of events at the Undercroft Gallery, between the market and City Hall – was titled ‘weird stuff’, and, with the recent programming of the Norfolk and Norwich festival tending to veer away from the experimental, it was marvellous to see the diverse range of events that EVEN have arranged.

The EUPHRASIE showcase on Saturday was a perfect example. EUPHRAISE is a local arts collective and record label who had programmed the above six acts for a packed evening of disorientating, thought-provoking art. Not all of them hit the mark for me - but then it would be fairly ludicrous if they had, given the number of them and the often singular nature of their approach – however, a very good proportion of them did click and I left the event feeling heartened and inspired, both by the art itself and the commitment and energy that goes into performing and staging it.

The undoubted highlights for me were to be found in the work of three incredible film makers: Ross Pearson (whose film resembled the kind of dream you might have if you spent the day drinking Red Bull and reading Private Eye and then fell asleep watching an Adam Curtis documentary); Elly Lynn (whose bizarre found-footage-like collage of the rituals of a crustacean worshipping cult in a derelict church was perhaps the stand-out work of the evening – an expertly assembled and genuinely unsettling meditation on nature, spirituality and obsession) and Jacob Watkinson (two excellent, and complimentary, films exploring memory and decay in a fascinating, dreamlike manner, as though the techniques of William Basinski were being applied to your Great Aunt Alison’s collection of cine films).

Bravo to EUPHRAISE and EVEN! And here’s hoping there is more like this soon, and that EVEN’s quest to establish a permanent venue for this kind of thing is successful.

The EUPHRAISE SHOWCASE was part of EVEN’s month-long series of events at The Undercroft Gallery. Tickets are still available for some of the subsequent events, details are on the EVEN website: even-norwich.co