Steve Pratt sets the scene for next month’s biennial AV International Festival which is bringing music and moving images to North-East venues.

THE UK’s largest international festival of electronic arts is expanding into Middlesbrough. The North-East based biennial AV International Festival of Electronic Arts, Music and Moving Image is taking “energy” as its theme this year with plans to examine it from a variety of perspectives ranging from kinetic, sound, light and electromagnetic energy to the spiritual and human.

The programme from March 5-10 features 24 exhibitions, 20 performances, ten screenings, 14 talks, four club nights and three symposia across NewcastleGateshead, Sunderland and Middlesbrough.

New festival director Rebecca Shatwell has been a loyal attender of the festival since moving to the North- East in 2003. Now she’s the director of the biggest festival yet.

Other AV festivals are held – including ones in Austria, Germany, Barcelona and Montreal – but are usually confined to one site. “We’re unique because we go across the region. It encourages us to be site specific and respond to the characteristics in the places we work.

It allows us to explore the heritage of the region.

“This year’s is the most ambitious in terms of some of the artists we are working with. Electronic art across different areas by the very nature of the people who work with it, experimenting technically and across all art forms,” she explains Historically, she says, the festival has had “really fantastic” audience numbers. Some 47,000 people attended the festival last year with over 100,000 joining in events on screen and online.

She was keen to bring artists to the North-East that people would rarely get the chance to see.

“I’m really interested in these pioneering figures and for audiences to see where the current contemporary work comes from. I’m also keen to look at these avant garde pioneering figures and see what work they’re making today.”

For the first time, the festival is visiting mima in Middlesbrough, taking over the gallery space on the ground floor.

Here, the launch exhibition of AV Festival 10 pairs a living artist with a dead artist. Irish artist William McKeown is highly regarded for his paintings, drawings and watercolours that express a concern about our relationship with nature. Cuban-born Felix Gonzalez-Torres, a key artist of the Ninties, is known for his quiet, minimal installations and renowned for developing an interactive art, such as paperstacks, that can be taken away by the public. Gonzalez-Torres’ work will also be seen on billboard projects across the region.

The Star and Shadow Cinema in Newcastle will be transformed into The Astro-Botanical Garden, a habitat resembling the set from a Seventies ecological sci-fi flick. The programme comprises a club night, a no electricity night and a double bill of global disaster movies.

The closing night performance at the Sage, Gateshead, brings together writers and musicals for English Journey Revisited, offering a fresh perspective on J B Priestley’s 1933 book English Journey, recounting his travels from London to the North-East.

Those taking part include Iain Sinclair, whose work London Orbital was based on a walk around the M25, and graphic novelist Alan Moore, whose work includes.