This is the press release from Yello office:

LOUD & CLEAR

On the 22nd of November 2002 BALTIC, Centre of Contemporary Art has the
world première of a new and outspoken DVD project, called LOUD & CLEAR.
For a period of 2 years the Bifrons Foundation in Amsterdam has worked
on this ambitious project it initiated in 1999 and Baltic as
co-organizer is now very proud to present LOUD & CLEAR in Gateshead to
the public.

LOUD & CLEAR is basically about electronic signboards nowadays to be
found more and more in streets and other public places. Signboards are
made for the purpose of advertising commercial products. Here
advertising is used for a non-commercial purpose. Visual artists,
composers and publicity designers have been asked to make a DVD film and
to work together in an individual way. This makes the project unique.
Never before have art, advertising and music been brought together in
this way, instead of the disciplines merely being confronted with each
other. In LOUD & CLEAR each participant was asked to make his or her own

contribution as an autonomous art piece, while ensuring that a dialogue
was created during the process to prevent the visual aspect of each DVD
as a whole becoming too independant. In most cases discussions first
took place between composers and visual artists about musical
preferences. Later on musicians in Amsterdam, Reykjavik, Zurich and New
York started to execute the newly made compositions. At a third stage
these compositions were handed over to the visual artists and publicity
designers. The former were invited to make an art piece on film and the
latter were asked to advertise on film the world of the artist or the
artist's DVD film as a non-commercial product in itself. Obviously both
disciplines have been either inspired or steered by the music, which
plays a dominant role in many of the DVDs.

Each DVD reveals a lively symbiosis of art, music/sound and advertising.

LOUD & CLEAR shows that art is definitely different from advertising,
and vice versa. Something which no one will be surprised at, yet at the
same time it is something that should be said here and now, and LOUD &
CLEAR. There is no doubt that in all the disciplines employed ? even the
technical ones of the Dutch company Anything Is Possible, for example -
creativity is at a refreshing high level. Looking and listening to the
results one is immediately struck by the way in most cases the visual
artists tend to produce slowly moving images, as if life should have no
beginning and no end. The publicity designers tend to make a paraphrase
of the artist's film, often with the sort of clue which one is nowadays
regularly confronted with in TV commercials and in advertisements in the
cinema.
It is a pleasure to see and hear that the publicity designers were
challenged - with their own mentality of making ad images with music ?
on a highly artistic level. It is also a pleasure to see how the visual
artists are true to themselves and their works, in many cases expressed
in a technique they are not used to at all.

Participating Artist's, Composer's and Publicity Designers:

1. Pierre Huyghe-Steamboat Switzerland - Tyler Whisnand

2. Pierre Bismuth - Theo Loevendie - Strawberry Frog

3. Marlene Dumas - Ryuichi Sakamoto - Erik Kessels/KesselsKramer

4. Aernout Mik - Gudni Franzson - Matthews & Peled/Wieden & Kennedy

5. Viktor & Rolf - Toek Numan - David Droga/Saatchi & Saatchi

6. John M Armleder - Hans van Manen - Fastland/Ground

7. Oliver Voss/Jung von Matt - Haukur Tòmasson - Yayoi Kusama

8. Pipilotti Rist - Caroline Berkenbosch - *S.C.P.F.

9. Gillian Wearing - Yello - New®