“Stealing Beauty: British Design Now” brought together a collection of British designers who were searching for a new method and meaning in design. This cross disciplinary exhibition was curated by Claire Catterall for the ICA in London in 1999, in 2000 it was toured to the Mead Gallery in Warwick.

The Light Surgeons exhibit drew its inspiration from the old secondhand analogue equipment that had become their trade mark for their visual displays in 90′s club culture. The resulting installation was a mixed media piece which combined film, slide, video, collage, print making and sculpture.

The piece used recycled old film and slide equipment, dyeline print artwork and 16mm film collages. These were fused together with an array of different projections to form an elaborate deconstruction of their processed based approach to image making; blurring the boundaries between design and art.

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Collaborating Artists: Chris Allen, Andy Flywheel, Rob Rainbow & Jude Greenaway.

The first live AV performance created by The Light Surgeons took place at the Lux Cinema in 1998 and was commissioned by the London Film Makers Co-Op.

The show consisted of many sampled scenes and fragments from different cult sci-fi and thriller films which together formed a Frankenstein narrative. A feeling of suspense and tension was built during the show as a time code slowly counted down to 00:00.

This use of a visual time code was also key to the syncing of the music and the visuals by giving queue points for the live musicians to start tracks at specific points. All the music was performed live by the band the Herbaliser, with additional soundscapes from Dynamic Syncopation, both artists on Coldcuts Ninja Tune label.

The show formed the opening event for the Lux Cinema in Hoxton Square and was run in collaboration with the Blue Note club next door where there was a big after show party curated by The Light Surgeons with a line up of DJ’s and audio visual artists.

Sadly both venues no longer share the address.

See flyer for details:

The Performance went on to be shown at the Rotterdam Film festival in 1999.

Visual Artists: Christopher Thomas Allen, Andy Flywheel, Andy Firman & Mark Blackburn
Musical Collaborators: The Herbaliser & Dynamic Syncopation

A cut and paste promo for the Herbaliser’s “Wall Crawling Insect Breaks” release, completed in 1998 for Ninja Tune Records.

The video shoot involved recording various 16mm film loops from our analogue archives and layering them with 35mm slide projections in camera. This material was then mixed with a studio shoot with Ollie Teeba scratching and taken through post-production on an Avid at Clear Cut Pictures.

Directed & Edited by Chris Allen & Andy Flywheel