Mezz #4 - Nick Laessing

Nick Laessing’s work hovers between fact and fiction, tuning into the world around in such a way that leaves you caught between what you would like to be true and what is actually true. His latest project focusses on the Soviet scientist Victor Stephanovich Grebennikov and his ‘discovery’ of the gravity-defying properties of certain insect wing cases, with which he made a wingless flying machine.

Based in Berlin, Nick travelled to Siberia to interview people who knew Grebennikov, and for the first part of the evening he will be installing a video projection of these interviews alongside a 16mm film of Grebennikov at work. Following this, he will be talking about his practice, including work exploring the world of free energy machines (almost mythical contraptions that generate more energy than they consume) and his recent performances at the Serpentine with the singer Esmeralda Conde Ruiz using an eidophone, a 19th-century invention that turns sound vibrations into beautiful organic patterns.

8pm / Thu 3rd Dec 2009 / Stroud Valleys Artspace / £4

Mezzanine is a new series of screenings and talks curated by artists Louisa Fairclough and Simon Ryder, and currently hosted by Stroud Valleys Artspace.