A surreal audio-visual performance based on two folkloric legends from Sheffield and Kyoto. A mash-up of sinister folk-horror and fantastical mythical imagery.
The performance is a collaboration between animator Noriko Okaku and composer/performer Helen Papaioannou, in a mixed-media animation with baritone sax and electronics, including sound design samples from Başar Ünder. The work probes collective memory, historical events and key city sites, focusing on two old folkoric texts that describe experiences of Sheffield’s GabrielHounds and Kyoto’s water-weeping ginkgo tree. The exchange between the tales is mediated by the looping of the Japanese and English texts through online translations, warping the legends into a bizarre and spectacular new mythology.
Noriko Okaku, based in London and Kyoto, explores the laws and transcendent forces that shape the world. Integrating theoretical frameworks from philosophy, religious studies, quantum mechanics, and information thermodynamics with myths, legends, and occult folklore, she combines collage, animation, VR, and AI technologies and performance to create works that encourage active participation from the audience and present diverse perspectives.
Her notable exhibitions and performances include #Spread (Towada Art Center, 2024), That Long Moonless Chase (21st Century Museum of Contemporary Art, Kanazawa, 2023), VOCA 2019 (Ueno Royal Museum, Tokyo), and The Interpreter (QUAD, UK, 2015). Her awards include a nomination for the International Competition at the Oberhausen International Short Film Festival (2016) and the Best Music Video Award at the Ottawa International Animation Festival (2011)
Helen Papaioannou’s work draws from her varied experiences across electronic music, performing in bands, improvised musics, and experimental ensemble compositions. She is based in Leeds.
Across her music, Helen’s style derives partly from a fascination with minimal sound palettes and evolving patterns, matched with an unrelenting intensity that spills out into music that is at once stark, visceral, playful, and precarious. She indiscriminately mixes a jigsaw of ideas and sounds from cultures of industrial, drone, electronic music, and contemporary composition.
Helen’s ensemble compositions have often played with systems that intensify a focus on the interpersonal and social aspects of coordinating rhythmic actions or patterns. She explores this in various ways, from traditionally notated music revolving around hocketing, interlocking parts or persistent unison rhythms, to instructional text scores which focus on rules for patterns and systems of interactions in game-like scenarios. Her solo project, Kar Pouzi, melds baritone saxophone & electronics into singular textures which move between heavy, fractured beats, ecstatic drones and minimalistic, incessant repetitions.
Helen collaborates with various artists, from her audiovisual performances with Noriko Okaku, moving image scores, to improvisation with a range of musicians. Helen is currently part of an improvised electronics and percussion duo with Charlie Collins, focusing on very quiet sounds. She has played as one half of the multi-instrumental duo Garlic Hug, and one third of the bands Beauty Pageant and HOKKETT.