This archive has been brought together over the last few months from the collections of Lol Sargent and Ghislaine Boddington/shinkansen. Compiled by Mike Harding and Mary Prestidge from The Philip Jeck Foundation.

Vinyl Requiem was a landmark avant-garde audio-visual performance created by British experimental turntablist Philip Jeck and visual artist Lol Sargent.

“Vinyl Requiem, the impressive film and sound event was an evocative celebration for the end of an era” – Winner of the Best Site Specific Event Timeout London Performance Awards 1993. In 1992 sound artist Philip Jeck & visual artist Lol Sargent conceived Vinyl Requiem to expressively mark the imminent demise of mainstream analog music, with vinyl record sales rapidly shifting over to the then new compact disc format – it was the beginning of the digital era.

Then having won a prestigious Arts Council New Collaborations Award as a commission to specifically create Vinyl Requiem, they blended together and rehearsed the entire sound and vision production over a number of intense weeks during a project dedicated residency at the Vooruit Arts Centre in Ghent, Belgium, followed by its UK premiere at the Union Chapel, London, on 4th June 1993. Vinyl Requiem consisted of an 8×6 metre wall of 180 Dansette record players, all! painted white, 12 Kodak 35mm slide projectors sequenced by an early Apple computer, and 3 Eiki 16mm film projectors.

It was both a record orchestra and a contoured projection screen combined into a single vertical scaffold structure. Numerous 7″, 10″ & 12″ vinyl discs – complete with Jeck’s trademark carefully positioned sticky paper dots – were manually played and swapped by three Dansette Operators (Gert Keunen, Robert Overson, Donna Rutherford) walking to and fro on their individual 8 metre long platforms (each equipped with stopwatch and Davy lamp) performing Jeck’s swirling, resonating, intricate turntable composition. Visually reflecting Jeck’s score, Sargent created 35mm slide and 16mm film animated sequences, which he and his assistant (James Mealing) hand triggered at rehearsed specific time points, producing a multi layered fusion of sound & light lasting circa 70 minutes, during which Jeck also performed two live solo sessions using a separate cluster of Dansettes on stage.

The creation of Vinyl Requiem was made possible by the public funding of the Arts Council of Great Britain, the British Council, the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation and London Arts Board with the sponsorship of Sony Music (Belgium), Integrated Circles Ltd and Myriad. Commissioning support from the Voice Over Festival, Tramway Glasgow, Now92 Nottingham, Theaterverein Wein, Time Festival, Institute of Contemporary Art and Union Chapel. Executive production by shinkansen.

Still image (Lol Sargent collection) from the digitalized Betacam SP video of Vinyl Requiem, Union Chapel 1993. Film; Sholto Ramsay