Placard

"Initiated in 1998 by Parisian musician Erik Minkkinen, LE PLACARD is a nomadic festival that presents live concerts to audiences transmitted via headphones, while streaming simultaneously the performances over the Internet." src: http://goto10.org/page/3/

placard #1 / musique sans ascenseur, Paris, 26-29 September 1998.
http://placard5.dokidoki.fr/p4123.htm
"Placard started off in 1998 in a small room, going on for 72 hours non stop, with mainly local musicians relaying themselves doing shows for headphones. The idea came out of being some kind of peepshow of a workshop."

placard #2 : Vienna, 26-29 April 1999, in the frame of Phonotaktik.
"Placard then moved to Vienna during the second phonotaktik festival in april 1999, this version was publicly streamed, still from a private apartment, many artists of the festival came to play in the apartment at strange hours ... This version, being outside of paris, and using a public stream made contacts & will to have different headphone rooms in different cities playing for a common program."

placard #3 : Paris, 22-25 July 2000.
(+ stream, + sushibar)
"Placard #3 was based in paris, but Lisbon, Brussels & Vienna participated via stream. Placard #3 was also the first test of having artist themselves decide when to play through an inscription website ; bringing out the idea of an open stage, and starting of the game of taking strategic hours to perform & anonymous nick names for multi-inscriptions."

placard #4 : Paris/Vienna, 27-30 July 2001.
(+ stream, + two rooms + out of placard)
"In the mean time the Paris placard festival was growing, for Placard #4 we had to open 2 different performance rooms, one more open to send/receive streams, the second for mainly video performances. Vienna opened a room for 72 hours receiving the Paris stream, and playing a few shows. Many artists came from outside of paris, the festival became a nonchalant meeting point for mainly french electronic artists."

placard #5 : Paris/Tokyo, 26-29 July 2002.
Paris/Tokyo live streaming 72h headphone festival

http://placard5.dokidoki.fr/
"We achieved to have two functional 72 hour headphone festivals going on at the same time in-between Tokyo and Paris, with a two way stream system; one performance room in Paris was streamed to Tokyo, while the main performance room was visioned in Paris. This attempt was the first to really achieve a link in between physical spaces, communication via video-conference and irc chat went on in-between the audience of both placards."

placard #6: somewehere > anywhere - April 26>July 29 2003
http://placard95.dokidoki.fr/
http://placard61to19.free.fr/
17-18 May: half-placard, Tokyo: http://leplacard.jp/6_tokyo/
27-28 June: Privatelektro, Leipzig: http://headphone-festival.de/content/docu_03_001.html
"After the first Paris event, the 6th edition went 'global' and ran for 95 days. Some international 'rooms' included Japan (Tokyo), France (Paris, Marseille, Nantes....), Spain (Barcelona during the Sonar festival), USA (New York, San Fransisco), Austria (Vienna) and UK (London, which introduced the concept of 'bring your own headphones')." src
"We decided to test out a three month non-stop festival (...) Quite a few cities participated : Tokyo - Hannover - Grenoble - Barcelona - Strasbourg - Lyon - Bordeaux - Neuchatel - Leipzig - Hamburg - Marseille - Brussels - Mulhouse - New York - London - Melbourne and Paris." src

placard #7: 8 May > August 11 2004
95 Days Non-Stop Streaming Headphone Festival
Official website (http://placard7.ath.cx/) is now dead, archive available at:
http://web.archive.org/web/20040925075113/http://placard7.ath.cx/
incl: 23 May: first Italian Placard@Peam2004 link
48h streaming event (july 23/24)
7-9 August: Placard #7 Tokyo: http://leplacard.jp/7_tokyo/

placard #8: June 02 > September 04 2005
incl: 3-4 September: Placard Toyko: http://leplacard.jp/8_tokyo/
September 4th: Rotterdam Headphone Lounge, V2 links up with Le Placard.
September 10th: London-Poitiers simultaneous stream (State51, London/Goto10, Poitiers).

placard #9: June 03 > October 21 2006
http://www.leplacard.org/
http://leplacard.jp/
Locations include: Canada, Slovakia, Sweden, France, Finland, Belgium, Japan, Germany, Switzerland, US, Netherlands...
4-7 August: the 72-hours non-stop 'grand placard', La Generale, Paris.
"Extra this year: an impressive 'vinyl cutting corner', where Jan Zimmermann sat cutting large portions of the placard's sessions directly onto solid 7 inch vinyl platters." src: http://www.harsmedia.com/SoundBlog/Archief/00589.php
DOCUMENTARY VIDEO about placard #9: http://public-access.org/archives/264

placard #10: January > December 2007
http://www.leplacard.org/2007/
http://www.pixelache.ac/2007/placard10
29-31 March: Placard at Pixelache festival, Helsinki.
10-12 August: Privatelektro Headphone Festival IV, Leipzig
"In the past few years, Placard has been beta-tested in various ways, and this year Placard is getting closer to a limitless tool, as it will remain open for a full year"

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"All placards were quite different, many in private apartments, some in gardens, some in venues at the same time as another event as a strange chill-out. What came out of this was quite various, it gave a possibility for local scenes to perform semi-virtually in quite a few other cities. It really brought out the artist/organizer factor, making it easy for any artist to become his own festival organizer ; providing he knows or learns how to stream audio , and set up a web-cam to send to the central stream server (merci nomusic - ic@merlan).It brought out also the public/organizer relation, the organizer being sometimes just part of the public, becoming organizer thanks to the simplicity of organization...

In a few cases placard became a side festival to other big festivals (as sonar in barcelona) providing a much more quiet atmosphere, giving a break to many artists and listeners lost in the hot crowds of summer festivals ; gave them time to talk and real moments to listen to shows comfortably. In Tokyo yoyo & the slidelab crew became professional making the best looking 72hr placard, with headphones hanging from above ; London brought out the idea of 'bring your own headphones' with success."
Source: http://web.archive.org/web/20040803100621/placard7.ath.cx/pub/about.php

"Placard opens a new space in live music representation, by creating an intimacy between the audience and the performer. The performer obtains the full attention of his audience through headphones, which has a tendency to motivate audience members into becoming performers, and to push performers into becoming organizers as well. These Placards have happened in diverse places: in Yoyogi Park streaming over a portable phone; in a Volvo 740 for the one or two listeners who could fit in the car; in many different apartments, art galleries, music festivals, phone booths... As a self-proclaimed organizer, the game is to find the right balance of interest between the audience (which can be very small) and the musician. This is easy to achieve, however, since most of the time, the organizer becomes one of the other two types of Placard participant: listener, or musician. Many times, Placard actually becomes closer to a reunion of experimental artists - more of a workshop than an actual concert." (Placard introduction by Erik Minkkinen)
Source: http://www.pixelache.ac/2007/placard10

Related: Communication Art

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