Great Article Link...
http://www.guardian.co.uk/artanddesign/2012/jun/24/jeff-keen
Live performance Friday 21 September 2012 at 20.00
Jeff Keen (1923-2012) was a pioneer of experimental film whose rapid-fire animations, multiple screen projections and raucous performances redefined multimedia art in Britain.
This major installation for The Tanks at Tate Modern was conceived by Keen in response to the unique nature of the Tanks. Featuring a large, dioramic screen, the installation will demonstrate the spirit of Keen’s expanded cinema events, his early experiments in drawing, painting and animation, his fascination with surrealism and popular culture, and his radical development of multiple screen projection, cut-up soundtracks and unruly live action.
A very special live performance in the Tanks on Friday 21 September at 20.00 will feature projections and live music and action performed by Keen’s daughter Stella Starr and a range of Keen’s collaborators, including Alan Baker, Chris Blackburn, Rob Gawthrop, Mike Movie and Jason Williams as ‘Silverhead’.
Keen was a veteran of the Second World War, and his work powerfully evokes the violence, colour, speed and noise of the 20th century. He transformed cinema into a riotous collage of comics, drawings, B-movie posters, plastic toys, burning props and extravagant costumes. His early 8mm and 16mm films are built for speed, combining footage of Beat-era motifs – jazz, motorbikes and car culture – with experimental animations in which the achievements and atrocities of the 20th century seem to flash by within a few short, cacophonous seconds. A single frame could not contain the frenzied energy of Keen’s imagination, and by the mid-1960s he began to use multiple screens and live action in presentations of his work. bye.
