This evening, there’s a video jockey in the house: a video artist performs live with her objects, her double cameras, her VG desk and even her body. She stands in front of the audience, so they can see how her pictures become alive; she is an extension of the band. The VJ is the local SLØR and the band is the German GRETA: exotic, pink, dreamy pop, simple, quiet, but with advanced pitches. The ‘X’ in the event title is the crossover between picture and sound, a process attempted with intense, yet gentle curiosity.

It becomes a laboratory, an experiment. No matter how much I try to write this, my words end up dry and very technical – totally contrary to what I expect we’re heading towards, with this event. The special thing about this concert is that the artist behind the visual element is present, live on stage and therefore equally visible in the performance as the music element. Usually, video artists are hidden away, up with the light technician, or they’ve produced the video well in advance. What’s more – the whole thing takes place in an experimentarium, where the walls between the public are completely transparent. They lock us in, in the process.

I feel hopeless trying to grasp and describe the beauty of it all; I’ll have to let this video help me:

TESTBED – the organizer – is a new local group of curators based in the do-it-build-it environment at DYNAMO Workspace, down in Odense Harbour. In the coming year, TESTBED will organize similar genre-blending events and will establish the framework for artist residencies. This event is the first in a series that has research as driving force and fuel: “test bed” is a concept used in experimental research; the very framework used to try something out, such as, for instance, testing a new engine in a working airplane – the airplane becomes the test bed. Quite in tune with this logic, every TESTBED event comes with a dedicated zine – a short report of test and trial as a creative medium, designed itself as a little thing of beauty.

After the video-concert/concert-video (what can we call this uncategorized phenomenon?) there’s a DJ set and party, bearing the DYNAMO stamp of approval and later, free entry to Boogies with the same ticket.