Ever made a mixtape and found you didn’t have *just* the right sticker to embellish it?

Have you made the perfect side A, but lost your mojo halfway through side B?
Do you suffer from format angst and worry that your imix or mixCD will fail to please in the way that your old mixtapes did?
Or are you a seasoned practitioner of the craft of the mixtape, simply looking for fresh perspectives and enthusiastic comrades?

At Mixtape Consultancy events our principal consultants, Stavroula Kounadea and Felicity Ford will happily share with you their extensive knowledge and expertise on the craft of mixtape creation. Presenting a range of decorative techniques and custom-made stationery to assist you with the packaging of your mixtape, they will guide you through the process of styling the mood and atmosphere of your creation.

Once you have established the tone of your mixtape visually using our unique, customising facilities, you will be able to proceed with organising media onto your chosen format with ease and self-assurance.

Mixtape Consultancy offers clients the opportunity to reconsider and celebrate the mixtape in an encouraging environment, so that you have the widest possible range of tools available to make your mixtapes speak in your own, beautiful, personal terms.

Because that’s what mixtapes are about.

Mixtape Consultancy is an ongoing collaboration between sound artist Felicity Ford and performing artist Stavroula Kounadea. For more information visit the official Mixtape Consultancy website at www.mixtapeconsultancy.com.

You can hear an interview with the Mixtape Consultancy personnel on the OCM website here, and you can read about the process of how our special mixtape/mixCD stationery has been created here.

Mixtape Consultancy’s debut event took place in April 2011 at Editions Of You Zine Fair in collaboration with the Oxford Castle and O3 Gallery and it was commissioned and produced by Oxford Contemporary Music.

Fresh Minds (2005)

After the damaging events of the first act, we enter into a world of cleansing of the body and the mind, where a female figure covered in bubble wrap and FRAGILE sticky tape enters a free-standing shower cubicle and while she tries to wash we can see the muddy water pouring into the transparent and clinically precise drainage container, filling it slowly with  nightmare-ish hues of purples and browns. The catharsis comes through the performer’s lips while she speaks to us with a soft but broken voice a few lines from Hans Christian Andersen’s “The Last Pearl” :

Do you see the shimmer of the rainbow, which unites earth to heaven? So has there been a bridge built between this world and the next. Through the night of the grave we gaze upwards beyond the stars to the end of all things. Then we glance at the pearl of Sorrow, in which are concealed the wings which shall carry us away to eternal happiness.

Fresh Minds was presented at Bios , Athens in 2005 as part of their Random Characters Festival. Stavroula collaborated with designer Rhodi Iliadou who, primarily responsible for the video-art and the built environments, made an invaluable contribution to the overall aesthetics and conceptual development.

Except “Somebody Loves Me” (Frank Sinatra) and “Something” (Coil), the show’s music consists of original scores all composed by musician/composer Niadoka especially for Fresh Minds. 

Dr Misha Maglev, Prof. Bio-Science of Human Emotions, University of Moscow, Melody from the non-profit organisation “Spread The Love” and Ophelia Depeau, writer of the best seller “Imagine Love”. Three women, leading professionals in their individual fields agreed to bring some controversial light to the secrets of the Love case.

Effable's characters (from my notebook)

Their points are exuberantly demonstrated through practical experiments, public interventions, human interaction and examples from personal stories and all happens in front of the eye of the camera.

The audience will have, at last, the freedom to look at Love from all different perspectives simultaneously. The Knowledge is being given to the people now and the ineffability of Love becomes a thing of the past.

Note: The 3 views can seem opposing at one point and complementary at the next. We are aware that this paradox can create a sense of chaotic confusion, fear of the unknown or even fill the viewer with a need to suddenly dance or giggle. This is neither intentional nor discouraged by the artist.

Love is Awesome publicity poster. photo/design: Felicity Ford

Effable: 3 Acts of Love was comissioned by Gallery 10 in Reading for their multi-disciplinary exhibition “Love is Awesome” in February 2009 and was later also shown at The Jam Factory, Oxford as part of “Inspirations”.

All three characters are created and performed by Stavroula Kounadea.

Inspired initially by an Oxford Times article regarding an attacking cow, Kounadea wished to give voice to the cow to make an apology. When the human trait of language was gifted to the cow, the fascinatingly overlapping world between two different species was revealed.

The work uses the tools of metaphor and pun to explore the relationship between women and cattle and consequently, the one of humans and animals and results in raising a question regarding hierarchy and roles in the context of human, animal and inter-species relationships in contemporary society.

Cow at Modern Art Oxford (2008)

Cow consists of two aprox. 5 minute acts.

Act I:

The stage persona resembling the archetypical image of the silent movies’ femme fatal, introduces herself to the audience by uttering a list of self-describing statements. Her monologue addresses the audience, capturing their attention inviting them to look and listen to her only for them to discover that her words, seemingly casual, actually sway between cryptic and funny. The first act ends with a lack of resolution for the audience.

Act II:

The female performer turns on a projection and, while she walks away, we watch footage of a cow in a field and the previously spoken monologue being played back by the recording. Now every single word reveals its hidden meaning. The audience has cunningly been trapped into a parable, knowing not whether to laugh or feel guilty as they are slowly being confronted with the connections between these two seemingly unrelated creatures.

Cow has been succesfully presented in the following venues:

International Women’s Festival, Contact Theatre, Manchester (2008)

Obsessions, Modern Art Oxford, Oxford (2008)

Oxford Pride, The Jam Factory, Oxford (2009)

Tour De Bord Experiment, Bow Road Warehouse Unit, E. London (2009)

For video documentation of a studio version of Cow please click here.

How to be a Love Magnet is a revolutionary lecture that deals with the demystification of the workings of Love and Erotic Attraction.

Dr Maglev’s expertise takes the audience to a fascinating journey from Ancient Rome and the Enlightenment, to Modern Magnetism and Popular Culture and promises to offer tips on how you can be a Love Magnet.

The combination of simple scientific experiments with sophisticated laboratory instruments enhances Dr Maglev’s lecture and makes the mysterious and ineffable Love accessible to all of us.

How to Be a Love Magnet has been successfully presented at South Hill Park, Bracknell (with support from ACE South East); Oxford Pride Festival 2010 and at Stammtisch in Oxford.

For a full documentation of the performance presented as part of Testing Grounds at South Hill Park, Bracknell in 2009 please follow the Vimeo link below:

Dr. Misha Maglev: How to Be a Love Magnet from stav k on Vimeo.