Last night's AV Amalgamate was not a disaster. The real failure, I believe, was at a formal level. The selection of films was somewhat interesting but their 'one-after-the-other' sequence --including each of their introductory and ending titles--, kept the hour-long performance from gaining the momentum it had the potential to gain.
The sound was effective in terms of balance and instrumentation. The ensemble was capable of unraveling interesting ensemble-wide gestures by a crafty and well executed weave of simple, short sounds. These structures did not, however, manage to go past a phrase level. One could say this deficiency matched the one in the film arrangement. The piece could have started or ended at any point. Nothing carried the audience anywhere (except those who recognised past-time products and sighed or laughed nostalgically), nothing moved, nothing really did anything. Time was the neglected parameter.