As the godmother of alternative rock and one of the founders of Sonic Youth, Kim Gordon is a truly creative spirit. Enigmatic, iconic, original and multi-faceted, she is increasingly working in the medium of visual arts and diversifying her music projects into more experimental territory. Perfect Partner is a first time collaboration between Kim Gordon, highly renowned video artist Tony Oursler and acclaimed filmmaker Phil Morrison. In a response to America’s enchantment with car culture, this surreal psychodramacumroad movie starring Michael Pitt (The Dreamers, Gus Van Sant’s upcoming Last Days) and Jamie Bochert unfolds to a thundering free rock live soundtrack. The sound world of Perfect Partner is textural improvised music breaking into occasional songs that interact with the narrative of the film. Kim Gordon is joined on stage by fellow Sonic Youth member, producer extraordinaire, composer and School Of Rock collaborator Jim O’Rourke, percussionist Tim Barnes, laptop virtuoso Ikue Mori and turntablist DJ Olive. Audiences across the UK should fasten their seatbelts for an invigorating trip through live music, video and projection in this one-off cross media adventure.

Gordon and Oursler’s shared fascination with the dream lifestyle promised by car manufacturers, and the aspirational language of car advert copy (selling cars as our ‘perfect partner’), provided the inspiration for this hugely inventive project. What followed was the desire to work with a filmmaker to create a backdrop road movie that would lead the narrative of an 80-minute performance. Cue Phil Morrison, a renowned film maker whose latest feature film Junebug was premiered at the Sundance Film Festival and showcased at Cannes this year. Morrison has also worked extensively in advertising and video – directing videos for Sonic Youth and Yo La Tengo (the latter provides the music on Junebug) – making him the ideal person to collaborate with. The resulting film tells a story of a young man in search of his mother. On his travels he falls in love with a woman who agrees to help him. Together they take a test drive which becomes a road trip and develops into a faux-Godardian adventure. Based around a dialogue mixed with car advertising copy, the lo-fi aesthetics of the film provide a setting to the music and action on stage, back projected onto a large screen. The film stars Michael Pitt fresh from his lead role as Kurt Cobain in Gus Van Sant’s forthcoming film scheduled for UK release in early September.

To say Kim Gordon is an extraordinary woman would be an understatement. For most being guitarist with legendary rock band Sonic Youth would suffice. Gordon, however, has been involved in numerous collaborations with other artists and musicians including Julie Cafritz and Yoshimi (in Free Kitten), husband Thurston Moore (in Mirror/Dash), Lydia Lunch, Vincent Gallo, Sean Lennon, Cibo Matto, Eddie Vedder, Yoko Ono — she even took the role of Iggy Pop in ATP LA’s Stooges performance in 2002 —as well as ongoing creative relationships with visual artists such as Dan Graham, Raymond Pettibon, Mike Kelley, Jutta Koether and Richard Prince. Kim Gordon’s installation work has been widely exhibited across the US, Japan and Europe. Gordon has been commissioned to create a large scale installation which will be premiered at South London Gallery in November as part of the group exhibition Her Noise. She debuts as a film actress this September in a role in Gus Van Sant’s new film Last Days about Kurt Cobain.

Based in New York, Tony Oursler’s brand of low-tech, expressionistic video theatre is singular in contemporary art. His work animates non-living objects with the use of projectors and is classified, alongside the likes of Bill Viola and Bruce Nauman, as one of the most outstanding contemporary artists working with the moving image. He has exhibited works worldwide at, among others, Jeu De Pomme, Paris, the Pompidou Centre, Paris, the Metropolitan Museum of Art and Museum of Modern Art, New York, Tate Gallery, London and MOCA, Los Angeles.

Similarly impressive is the diverse career of Gordon’s Sonic Youth band mate Jim O’Rourke; from music consultant on the Richard Linklater directed comedy School Of Rock and producer for Wilco, to a key player in the experimental music avant-garde. O’Rourke has been successfully bridging the gap between rock, jazz, electro-acoustic, improv and noise for over a decade and has collaborated with everyone on the experimental music scene from legendary improv heroes such as Derek Bailey, Eddie Prevost, and Keith Rowe to Austrian electronic pioneers Peter Rehberg and Christian Fennesz (FennO’Berg).

Other musicians on tour include DJ Olive who produces "Vinyl Scores" for the turntable; palettes of sound or compositional components produced in his studio and then pressed on 12" vinyl. He also runs the innovative The Agriculture label. Ikue Mori is one of the most respected musicians of the NYC downtown scene, with a past as drummer in legendary No Wave group DNA with Arto Lindsay, she is renowned for her abilities as an accomplished composer and improviser and as one of the foremost electronic music innovators for her unique use of the drum machine. She releases records on John Zorn’s Tzadik label and regularly collaborates with the downtown music scene centered around the label such as Fred Frith, Zorn, Christian Marclay, Zeena Parkins and many others. Awesome percussionist Tim Barnes can regularly be found performing at John Zorn’s NYC club Tonic and also plays with the acclaimed band Text Of Light. Collaborators include Royal Trux’s Neil Hagerty, Fluxus musician Henry Flynt amongst many others. Barnes is also as the keeper of acclaimed labels Quakebasket and Siltbreeze.

Perfect Partner will premiere at the Barbican Centre on Sunday 2 October 2005, 7.30 pm. Tickets can be obtained from the Barbican website. The production will then tour to a number of UK and international venues:

2 Oct - Barbican London

4 Oct - Sage Gateshead

5 Oct – Happy New Ears Festival Kortrijk, Belgium

7 Oct - GAS Festival Gothenberg

9 Oct – Phoenix Exeter

11 Oct - Brighton Dome

12 Oct - Romaeuropa Festival Rome

Perfect Partner is produced and curated by Electra and is a CMN Tours and Barbican co-commission.