Theoretical: Thinking Out Loud: Christoph Cox and Seth Kim-Cohen

Thinking Out Loud: Christoph Cox and Seth Kim-Cohen

Everybody likes a good fight. Earlier this year, in the pages of Artforum, Christoph Cox and Seth Kim-Cohen publicly disagreed on how to think about the sonic arts. Cox advocates a sonic naturalism “which short-circuits the aesthetics of representation and mediation and instead affirms an aesthetics of force, flux, and resonance.” Kim-Cohen, argues that “it is the worldly, rather than the earthly, that presents the possibility of meaning – sound derives its meaning from context, from intertextuality, from the play of difference in its conceptual and material strata.”

Oftentimes, the only thing you get out of a good fight is a bloody nose. Hoping for more, Cox and Kim-Cohen will sidestep the ad hominem upper cuts that sometimes pass for critical debate in the art world, exchanging their ideas of the sonic and trying genuinely to think out loud. Each will come armed with examples: audio, video, image, and text. These might include works by John Cage, Robert Morris, Francisco López, Christina Kubisch, Vito Acconci, and the work that started the debate: Doug Aitken’s Sonic Pavilion. Theorists are likely to be dragged into this as well: Friedrich Kittler, Jacques Derrida, Gilles Deleuze, Jean-Luc Nancy, Manuel de Landa, et al.

No champion will be declared, no belt will be awarded. The hoped-for outcome is a few new ideas, a more thorough understanding, maybe even one or two “ah-has.” By thinking out loud about the sonic, Cox and Kim-Cohen believe they can accomplish more in tandem than either could in isolation. It’ll be a friendly fight: Marquess of Queensberry rules.

Seth Kim-Cohen
Seth Kim-Cohen is an artist and theorist. His work has been presented at venues spanning the cultural spectrum, including: CBGBs, Tate Modern, PS 122, ZKM, Issue Project Room, Peer Gallery. His recent book, In The Blink of An Ear: Toward A Non-Cochlear Sonic Art, (Continuum 2009), argues for a wide-ranging sonic conceptualism and against sound-in-itselfism. Kim-Cohen has written for Artforum, The Chicago Reader, Art Review, Pitchfork, and Pop-Stock. He received his PhD from the London Consortium and has taught at Yale University and Pratt Institute. Seth Kim-Cohen is Director and Assistant Professor of Art and Theory at the Institute for Doctoral Studies in the Visual Arts.

More at www.kim-cohen.com

Christoph Cox
Christoph Cox, Professor of Philosophy, teaches and writes on contemporary European philosophy and contemporary art and music. He is also on the faculty at the Center for Curatorial Studies (CCS), Bard College, and a member of the CCS Graduate Committee. Cox is the author of Nietzsche: Naturalism and Interpretation (University of California Press, 1999) and co-editor of Audio Culture: Readings in Modern Music (Continuum, 2004). The recipient of a 2009 Arts Writers Grant from Creative Capital/Warhol Foundation, Cox is editor-at-large for Cabinet magazine and regularly writes for Artforum, The Wire, and other magazines. He has curated exhibitions at the Contemporary Arts Museum Houston, The Kitchen in New York City, New Langton Arts in San Francisco, and G Fine Art Gallery in Washington D.C. Cox has written catalog essays for exhibitions at the New Museum of Contemporary Art, Mass MoCA, the South London Gallery, Berlin’s Akademie der Künste, the Museum of Contemporary Photography, Seattle Center, and the Santa Barbara Contemporary Arts Forum. He is currently at work on a philosophical and historical book about sound art and experimental music.

May 11, 2010 | Categories: critical theory, events, literary, music, performance, upcoming events | 1 Comment »

ISSUE PROJECT ROOM and SAGIndie present “ACTOR AS AUTEUR” with STEVE BUSCEMI

John Hockenberry Leads Brunchtime Conversation

To Benefit ISSUE Project Room

Actor, writer, film director and ISSUE board member Steve Buscemi will talk with Emmy Award-winning journalist and Co-Host of WNYC Radio and PRI’s The Takeaway, John Hockenberry, about creating unforgettable characters that ultimately drive a film’s narrative and impact. The brunch which is presented in collaboration with SAGIndie, an organization that unites working thespians of the world with passionate filmmaking mavericks who buck the system.  The afternoon will feature film clips from the actor’s career and will be held at Bussaco located in Park Slope, Brooklyn.

Actor as Auteur – There are numerous iconic characters in film history, from The Little Tramp to Charles Foster Kane to Colonel Kurtz to Travis Bickle, all of them well drawn and directed. However, had Chaplin, Welles, Brando or DeNiro not played these roles would the film had the same powerful impact on our culture? Can a case be made for actor as auteur?

It is difficult to imagine Buscemi’s roles and their indelible effect on each film without his personal, stylized approach in bringing them to life. They emit essential energies striking a balance between deeply held neuroses and outward bombast. From lead roles in films like Fargo, Resevoir Dogs, Living in Oblivion, Trees Lounge, and Ghost World to supporting roles and cameos in films such as The Big Lebowski, and Barton Fink, his presence breathes life into every corner of a film. “Buscemi is a quiet tyrant of artistic fury who threatens to overrun every frame he’s in with the inner desperation he projects even in his most subtle performances,” says Hockenberry.

An active Board Member of ISSUE Project Room, Buscemi began his career in, and continues to support experimental theater, writing and performance. All proceeds from the event will benefit ISSUE Project Room, one of the country’s preeminent centers for experimental culture.

“Actor as Auteur” Brunch To Benefit ISSUE Project Room, Presented in Collaboration With SAGIndie
Sunday, June 6, 12 pm – 2 pm
Bussaco, 833 Union Street, Brooklyn, NY 11215
$125 Per Person ($95 tax-deductible, three-course brunch is included.)

SEATING IS LIMITED. Buy Tickets

For more information please call 718-330-0313.

May 10, 2010 | Categories: discussion, events, film, Funding News, fundraising, master class, performance, radio, theater, upcoming events | Tags: benefit, Bussaco, John Hockenberry, SAGIndie, Steve Buscemi | 1 Comment »

May is the Month of the Ecstatic Moment @ ISSUE Project Room

May is the Month of the Ecstatic Moment @ ISSUE Project Room

During the month of May, ISSUE Project Room will present a series of performers whose works embody notions of the ecstatic through the use of a variety of extended techniques including free improvisation and sounds bordering on noise.

The ecstatic refers to a state outside of the body. Historically, ecstasy has been associated with religious and mystic states. Willhelm Reich discusses the concept in conjunction with sexual energy and orgasm. Bataille conceives of ecstasy as a “’yawning gap’ between the one and the other” — a dissolving of the boundaries between traditional subject-object relationships. Rather then attaching this idea to a specific state or act, we utilize this term as an active concept describing a means of production. Furthering Bataille’s notion, Jean-Luc Nancy points out “one could not properly say that the singular being is the subject of ecstasy, for ecstasy has no ‘subject’ – but one must say that ecstasy (community) happens to the singular being.” This concept of ecstasy as a state outside one’s self yields potential for new forms of community and experience.

Perhaps Faruq Z. Bey’s (5/27 and 5/28) comment on his decision to start playing after seeing John Coltrane and Pharoah Sanders perform best exemplifies our concept of the ecstatic:

The people who were rioting in the street, they moved like one mind. It was almost like how a hive of insects moves. It was like a wave; it just moved, but that whole episode put me in a frame of mind of thinking about our position here as a subculture, and how to deal with that.

The ecstatic moment is predicated on being there, being present, being an event. Jacques Attali has argued that the rise of the recording industry has had a profound transformation on the production of live music, likening music to a simulacrum of itself where consumers relate more to the recording (better fidelity) than the event of live performance. For Attali, music is the organization of noise and that organization is a mirror of the social; but, rather then being a one-to-one reflection of the social, music can act as a prophetic force for the future due to its inherently anti-material nature.

Re-imagining traditional notions of authenticity and authorship, Sam Ashley’s (May 13) work ranges from symbolic representations of shamanic phenomena to direct presentations of magic events, devices, or objects. Described as amplifications of imaginary sounds, Ashley’s live practice goes beyond the limitations of tangible devices. Engaging with the non-material world through direct spirit possession, Ashley goes as far as to credit ghosts as his collaborative artistic partners.

Free improvisation plays an ulterior role in relation to what Attali defines as the driving force behind the economy of music in a capitalist society: the reproduction of the original. Performers like Giuseppi Logan, Befo’ Quotet, TAUOM (May 14th), Paul Flaherty, Chris Corsano, Okkyung Lee (May 20th), and Paul Metzger (May 21st) all work with varying levels of improvisation in their work to create unique live events that release music from its material constraints (notation).

David Keenan recently coined the term Hypnagogic Pop to describe the work of James Ferraro and his contemporaries, whose work exemplifies the reordering of tropes of 80’s American culture through the sonic unconscious. Through the dissemination of low-cost production and DIY aesthetics, Hypnagogic Pop forms micro-musical communities that reverse Attali’s assessment of the recording industry’s push towards high-fidelity. Ferraro’s live performances and recordings consist of reordered samples that blur all distinctions between the fidelity of the record and the authenticity of the event–ultimately undoing the dichotomy of the simulacrum in capitalist culture.

Exploring questions of spiritual practice and historical conceptions of ecstatic music, Ensemble Simul Cantare will present a program of medieval vocal church music on a shared evening with metal guitarist Mick Barr (May 5th). Prince Rama of Ayodhya were raised on an ashram by Hare-Krishna parents and sing mantra-laden psychedelic anthems of devotion and ecstasy (May 15th), while Genesis P. Orridge’s Thee Majesty explore notions of transgender, identity disruption and the manipulation of form through spoken word poetry.

May 05, 2010 | Categories: Announcements | Comments Off

Zs + David Linton: Bicameral Research Sound & Projection System

DARMSTADT INSTITUTE PRESENTS:

Zs was founded in 2000 and is Sam Hillmer (tenor saxophone), Ben Greenberg (electric guitar), Tony Lowe (electric guitar), and Ian Antonio (drum set). While Zs’ music has been variously categorized as no-wave, noise, and post-minimalist, it is primarily concerned with making music that challenges the physical and mental limitations of both performer and listener. Manipulating extended technique, unique instrumental synthesis, and near telepathic communication, Zs aims to create works that envelop the listener and unfold sonically over time, evoking unspoken past, present, and future rites and ritual. Zs has performed in lofts, galleries, basements, rock clubs, and concert halls across North America and Europe with The Locust, Gang Gang Dance, Animal Collective, Battles, The Dirty Projectors, Dan Deacon, Peter Brotzman and Han Bennick, and Louis Andriessen. Zs currently records for The Social Registry record label.

David Linton (born Newburgh NY 1956) is a Time based multiple media artist traveling the vectors of sound, subculture, and signal flow. He has been active in the downtown NYC experimental arts community for 30 years. Originally a percussionist, David has created sound, music, and something in between, for many collaborative dance, theater, & performance settings since his arrival in NY at the end of 1970′s. By the later 80′s – after a good deal of percussion work along side other musicians: Lee Ranaldo, Rhys Chatham, Glenn Branca, Elliott Sharp among others – he was equally known for his live wired solo electro-acoustic drumkit performances as well as his soundscore productions for the Wooster Group & choreographers Karole Armitage & Steven Petronio among many others. His 1986 solo Lp “Orchesography” was an unlikely collusion of street beats, early sampling tek, and theatrical post modernism. By the early 90′s he had retired from performing in the live electro-acoustic vein to concentrate on the vocabulary of entirely electronic music and the resultant paradigm shift in performance priorities this new ‘compressed’ format suggested. Throughout the 90′s Linton became a dedicated advocate for the expansion and appreciation of realtime performance in electronic media through the design and/or production of event/environments such as ‘SoundLab’ (1996) and eventually ‘UnityGain’ (1997-present). In the later 90′s David was a key participant in Meg Stuart/Damaged Goods multimedia improvisation project “Crash Landing”. From 2001 Linton’s fascination with instantaneous collaborative audio visual communication among select units of electronic sound and visual artists assumed the form of a live experimental television Manhattan cable/webcast project – UGTV – Unitygain Television (2001-2004) – for which he was producer/director – and occasional performer. In 2004 David embarked upon his present course with the launch of his solo audio-visual project: the Bicameral Research Sound & Projection System – With his “Bicameral Research Sound & Projection System” (2004) Linton aims to make vibrational wave induced perceptual energy states manifest by deploying interconnected measures of electric sound & pulsing light in live action with hand manipulated objects in physical (live camera) space. He employs an integrated recursive audio & video feedback system of his own perversely simple design modulated by freehand intervention to deliver vigorous eye, ear, and – sometimes – body shaking realtime audio visual performances from which a kind of retro-tech animist ritual “medicine show” emerges where subject and object blur. Thematically David likes to consider that within the 20th Century 60 Hz alternating electrical current gradually came to function as a primary subliminal Prana in the mass bio-energetic body/culture of human life in North America…

This event is made possible, in part, through generous support from the Experimental Television Center’s Presentation Fund. The Experimental Television Center’s Presentation Funds program is supported through mediaThe Foundation and with public funds from the New York State Council on the Arts, a state agency.

May 05, 2010 | Categories: events, music, video | Tags: bicameral research, social registry | Comments Off

In Conversation With Matthew Mottel, Part I

Matthew Mottel is ISSUE Project Room’s Artist-In-Residence for April – June 2010. He  is an internationally recognized musician and artist, performing most notably with Talibam! for the past seven years.  He’s been hanging around NYC clubs since he was like 16, and dropping electric mind bombs with his synthesizer in those clubs nearly as long with folks like Cooper-Moore, Rhys Chatham, Karole Armitage, Awesome Color, Akron/Family, Jeffrey Lewis, Chris Taylor (Grizzly Bear), Kenny Wollesen, Chris Corsano, Ras Moshe, Cooper-Moore, Sean Meehan, and CSC Funk Band.

The next performance in the residency will be a free concert held on May 7. Read more about the project here. Preview audio here.

The following conversation is an extract from an extended chat held on April 28. Look for a second installment in June.

Matthew Walker: So, tell me about your plans for the May 7 performance of your residency.

Matthew Mottel: Well, it’s tied to the photography of my father {Syeus Mottel}. I first became aware that he had some hip photos about 11 or 12 years ago when I was going to The Cooler – a now-defunct space in the meat-packing district – a sort of gnarlier Knitting Factory-type venue. They had shows starting at midnight with a sort of Sonic Youth crew plus free jazz guys like Charles Gayle. It was a great place for me, as I was 17 at the time.

So anyway, there was supposed to be a Silver Apples benefit because Simeon {Coxe III} had a car accident. My dad found out about it, and was like, “Oh yeah, Silver Apples — I know them. I shot three of their concerts in the 60s.”

My dad was a recognized photographer — he worked with Lee Strasberg and the Actor’s Studio. He was also working with Buckminister Fuller as his media consultant for a number of years. He published a book called Charas, the improbable dome builders about Lower East Side community activists that decided to build geodesic domes.

As I’ve delved deeper into his archive, I’ve found photos of Thelonious Monk and Ornette Coleman in a double bill from ‘67, photos of John Cage doing prepared piano pieces in a gallery in ‘72, and the Silver Apples photos, and thought, “Wow, these are all my influences.”

So, I was excited to start dealing with my dad’s archive, which was basically just negative sheets in a closet. I wanted to mediate a project that tried to make the work contemporary. So, what I’m trying to do for May 7 is creating an environment that thinks about the cultural politics of the late ‘60s and ‘70s. My dad was a journalist – not a direct participant in these different scenes – so the idea is to show the work in a documentary/archival perspective but also to create a new environment, incorporating my music, in which these disparate events and places that he photographed can all merge into a larger consciousness…which is maybe my consciousness.

Photo by Syeus Mottel. Silver Apples at Washington Square Park, 1968.

MW: In contrast to, say, a Talibam! concert, how has your approach to the music been different in thinking about creating an actual environment for people to exist in and interact with the images?

MM: Well, Talibam! has been like a 200% direct over-the-line, you know, “watch us perform, have a fun time.” So, this is an opportunity to step back and focus on an ambiance, and really deal with sound in a more pragmatic way. I’m going to do a solo piano performance, using amps and distortion — thinking about the piano as a guitar in terms of approach and attack. It’s great because it’s an opportunity to be completely in control. I’ve been able to learn what the piano sounds like amplified and been able to spend time exploring the features of the space {at ISSUE}.

MW: Yeah, it’s a pretty unique experience to be able to rehearse and prepare in the actual space where a performance is going to happen. I’ve been able to do that a few times in the past and it feels so much better to know that you’re in complete control of every element of the performance…rather than unloading your gear in a club and playing a show 10 minutes later.

MM: Yeah, and that’s the vibe that Talibam! has managed to thrive on. We can just show up and hit if it has to be 10 minutes, and that’s a way we have progressed. In a sense, it used to be very much about the exploration of the moment, but we’ve now reached a point where we can refine the moment so much that we now have control over it in the most discriminating or indiscriminating situation. But yeah, being in the space for a large amount of time allows me to help shape the work that I’m going to do.

MW: Will there still be a fair amount of improvisation involved in this new environment?

MM: Yeah, I’m more working with motifs, and we’re going to see where they go. It’s me thinking, “Do I like the sound combinations? Do I like my oscillator box with my sampler together? Where does the piano fit in?” I’m thinking compositionally in terms of arrangement, rather than there being a notation and score.

MW: And how will the photography be incorporated?

MM: I’m working with this guy Brian House, who does video and installation work under the name Knifeandfork. He’s going to do video editing, using computer filters with the photos, and make abstraction happen. So, using these music photographs, plus the political and cultural photos that he has, to create an environment that I think is going to be pretty exciting. It’s a way for people to get a further idea of what 1967-68 looked like from a different eye, because almost every image we see from that time period is now an image we’ve been accustomed to for a long time. So, just seeing unpublished photos of Martin Luther King, Jr.…

I mean, there are photos of an anti-war rally from ‘67 where my dad is a frontline photographer, with candid images of Ben Spock and Stokely Carmichael and Martin Luther King just hanging out, and it’s pretty phenomenal. And the work certainly stands by itself…it could easily just be hanging on a wall, but it’s important for me for it to not just be archival but to feel contemporary…

MW: To not just be tied to a specific time and place…

Photo by Syeus Mottel. Martin Luther King, Jr. and Ben Spock, April 15, 1967.

MM: Right, to tie it to me, and to my father and I, and to the influences we share… to make a new piece out of it all. What’s nice about a lot of my dad’s photography is that it shows that the public really was part of some of the more avant-garde things happening then. Like, two of the Silver Apples shows that he shot were free public shows — one at Union Square and one in Washington Square Park. Some of these photos are really amazing…like kids interacting with Simeon…and old people {interacting} too. It wasn’t just hipsters, but a much larger field of people, and that’s part of what I want to show in the environment that I’m going to create, that this music {isn’t limited to} the fringe genres that we put people in..it can be a consciousness available for everybody to like.

MW: So did you grow up listening to people like Ornette and Cage because of your dad?

MM: No, because my dad’s not a musician, you know…my parents sort of let me do my own thing. I developed my own tastes growing up in Manhattan, and was culturally aware by the time I was 16. But, I think it’s influence through osmosis, because these things are very much things my parents were both aware of and influenced by.

MW: So, how did your musical interests start to develop?

MM: I took jazz piano when I was 15, and got into improvising and bought a synthesizer. I was welcomed into the improvised music world in NY where you didn’t need that conservatory training — it was about developing your own individual language and so that’s what I did forever.

I went to Brooklyn Tech High School and my junior year I had to pick a 20-year period of history to write a thesis paper on. I picked the avant-garde jazz scene of New York from 1977 – 1997 and so going to concerts became research for me.

MW: So your learning more or less came from direct practice – from going to concerts and just getting out there and playing live with people. Who were you playing with early on?

MM: Well, I played with {Chris} Corsano — I have these tapes of us playing when I was 17 and he was 24. He was working at Tonic and I was just going there a lot and wanting to start a band. He ended up introducing me to Tom Bruno. I was a TEST fan, and I got a page one day – back when I had a pager – and was like, “I don’t recognize this number.”

But I called the number and got a voicemail saying, “This is Tom Bruno, the drummer. I know who I am. If you know who you are, leave a message.”  So, I’m like, “Uh, hi Tom, this is Matt Mottel. Yeah, uh, I guess you know me from uh…I’m a big TEST fan, I guess you called me for some reason, so call me back.”

And I’m thinking, “How the fuck did Tom Bruno get my number?” So, I called Corsano up, and am like, “Hey man, did you give Tom my number?” And he says, “Yeah, I guess I did a while back. He said he was looking to play with a young synthesizer player. So, I gave him your number.”

And then, me and Tom played almost every Sunday for about a year and a half or two years. And that was the beginning of playing duos with drummers. Also, at the same time, I would play with Michael Evans and Sean Meehan and Tim Barnes. And then, also, I met Cooper-Moore and played with him on a fairly regular basis…also Daniel Carter. It was just like New York was a welcoming place.

MW: I mean, what better people could you possibly come up playing with?

MM: Yeah, from 17 – 22, those were the people I was hanging with. I would go to William Parker workshops, I was volunteering at the Vision Festival…I got into Tonic for free from early on…So, I’ve seen so much avant-improvised-experimental music that I don’t really need to go to it anymore. But seeing so much of that music for so long, I saw the ceiling you get to with that stuff — both with the level of economic success and stability. So I thought, well, I can start with that influence, and then steer it into larger, different places.

But still, to have that as a fundamental background is really a cool place to start with rather than just being like only into the Beatles or only being a composer or something. So, it was such a great time, like the Pink Pony was a really happening spot…the Gold Sparkle Band guys were all doing shit there. I mean it was like all Lower East Side places.

The Coma series that still happens at ABC No Rio that Blaise Sula runs every Sunday night… that was a really formative place for a lot of people. I met Chris Forsyth there…I met Meehan around that time. All these guys were like ABC No Rio improvisers. It was sort of like the 4th or 5th generation of the NY improvised scene, after Zorn and all that stuff. But it was nice because they’d have a band or two and then an improv session and it was just really great – no one took things too seriously but it was still serious music. And you could see amazing people play in front of 10 people and it was awesome.

Photo by Syeus Mottel. Ornette Coleman at the Village Gate, 1967.

MW: So, have you been in the city your whole life?

MM: I went away to college at New Paltz, a state university in upstate New York, an hour and a half away from the city.

MW: What did you study there?

MM: I created my own major. I didn’t want to be an anthropologist, I didn’t want to be a sociologist. I was more into this kind of cultural study going back to when I was in high school at Brooklyn Tech. I was able to do a contract major, which was basically, like, pick electives from multiple disciplines, have advisors in three different disciplines, and do that. And I called it Political and Cultural studies. Like, I wrote a paper about the 1960s political free jazz connections and did a number of different things.

MW: What was it like being outside of the city?

MM: Well, it was a small town…mountains right there, swimming. You know, after the first year there, I like lived up there. You know, it was great. I got to learn about classic rock, you know, it was that type of thing. You hang out with your friends, you drink beers, you listen to records. It was nice. You have fires, go to the mountains…so, it was cool.

I was the only one at New Paltz who was interested in bringing live music to the college, outside of, like, the music program bringing, you know, their concert series or something. So, I brought it on myself to get involved with the student associations and do all that type of stuff. And I brought really good people. I mean, I had William Parker and Alan Silva play, I had TEST play, Joe Mcphee, Sean Meehan and Toshi Makihara… I had Greg Kelly and Bhob Rainey, I had Eugene Chadbourne, Cooper-Moore.

MW: Wow, that’s a pretty incredible lineup of people. I mean that sounds like an amazing concert series for any venue. What were the responses like?

MM: The responses…it grew and grew. Like, the first year I was there as a freshman, I brought TEST and I had to convince my friends, “You gotta go see this amazing free jazz band!” And they were like, “What’s free jazz?” And I’m like, “Well, it’s this…” But as people got to know me and the series developed…the concerts were more successful. Like, for Cooper-Moore, it was packed. So, it grew into more of a thing.

MW: And you were taking some classes at Bard during this time, too?

MM: Yeah, one class I took that was really a strong class was Joan Retallack’s class… you know Joan Retallack? She’s done some books with Cage, like John Cage in Conversation and then I guess is an artist in some form. But they had, I forget what the program was called, but the class was called “Silence and Art” and it was just about dealing with different perspectives of how art and silence mediate, you know? These were just like types of classes that didn’t exist at New Paltz. And the kids that were going to Bard were like…you could talk about John Zorn with someone. And the Electronic Music Ensemble was a bunch of weirdoes that were into weird music and we did Cornelius Cardew’s Treatise. We did a lot of different graphic score stuff. We did {Zorn’s} Cobra. And then we just improvised too. it was great. It was great to have Bard as part of my education.

Photo by Syeus Mottel. John Cage, NYC, 1972.

May 03, 2010 | Categories: Announcements | Tags: artist in, matt mottel, talibam! | Comments Off

This (Un)Shielded Search Sought

curated by Juliana Cope

Works by Jen Liu, Mie Olise and G.I. Gurdjieff

Issue Project Room presents new works, Jen Liu’s THE END OF TIME- Messian and Gabo In the Blonde Period and Mie Olise’s A Fugitive Crosses His Tracks, a double sided journey of the two Esben Arnakkes and Into the Pyramid, are presented in conjunction with a rare public performance of a composition by G. I. Gurdjieff.

Through deliberate historical and critical investigation the artists in this evening arrive at new fictions and works. Included are suspended moments which we may or may not choose to enter; strangeness embraced.

When wanderings on the smooth spaces become intolerable, survivors seek magic mountains; spaces that become mountains by rising suddenly; or villages that disappear down a dead-end branch. –Gurdjieff

The recognition of utopia being not a place, time, or exclusive experience, artists Liu and Olise aim grasp the complexities of art making and bring to life their own fictions in real time.

JEN LIU

Jen Liu presents THE END OF TIME – Messiaen and Gabo In the Blonde Period

“Picasso had his pink period and his blue period. I am in my blonde period right now.” Hugh Hefner

Jen Liu’s drawings, videos, installations and performances pull together disparate historical and contemporary entities, to create new fictions and unexpected perspectives on the past. She has exhibited internationally, with recent exhibitions at Upstream Gallery, Amsterdam; Aspen Art Museum, Colorado; Kunsthaus Zurich; and Ceri Hand Gallery, Liverpool; and was in residence at ISCP in 2008/2009; She is currently working towards a 2-person show at On Stellar Rays in the Lower East Side, which will open this fall.

http://www.upstreamgallery.nl/jen-liu/

In 1941, Messiaen premiered “Quartet for the End of Time” at Stalag VIII-A, a German POW camp. This piece envisioned the apocalypse as a liberation from time itself. Twenty years earlier, Naum Gabo’s “Realist Manifesto” articulated an aesthetic revolution, that would obliterate Cubism and Futurism, narrative and color, to make room for an aesthetic suited to the ashes and vacancy of WWI’s ruin – what would come to be known as Constructivism.

Here, in “The End of Time,” musicians play excerpts from the Quartet, reconfigured to create a trajectory of decline. A vintage recording of Gabo reading his Manifesto plays over the phone, auto-tuned to sing along with the Quartet: a digital sing-song about time and space. A couple “Blondes” join in, complicating and obstructing the flow of these historical manifests, raising questions about the nature of revolution, and providing the visual distraction that is the primary characteristic of the contemporary moment. Messiaen and Gabo cast a blonde shadow on the present, and together, they bring time to a smooth, silent halt.

MIE OLISE

Working as a painter, constructor and filmmaker Mie Olise has developed a particular blend of architecture, art, and psychology. She works with narratives relating to space, abandoned places and desolate structures. Olise travels to these places in different states of disrepair, to research, collect stories and later subjectively develop particular layers of the found truths. Mie Olise has exhibited at the Skive New Museum of Contemporary Art, Denmark; Barbara Davis Gallery, Texas; Ystad Museum of Art, Sweden; Liverpool Bienalle, Liverpool and is an artist in residence at ISCP.

www.olise.dk

Mie Olise traveled recently to New Foundland to research for A Fugitive Crosses his Tracks, a double sided
journey of the two Esben Arnakkes.

 Here she presents Aksel and Esben are Brothers, Twins, the first of six works in the series. Through her travels Olise is trying to track down both the sailor, Esben
Arnakke – main-character of Aksel Sandemoses famous 
autobiographical novels (Esben Arnakke fled the same
island in Denmark where Olise grew up), as well as the ship, Esben Arnakke, built by
the artist’s father and lost in 1986.

In 2008 funded by the Danish Art Council Mie realized her 2nd trip to the North Pole to investigate a Russian abandoned ghost town, resulting in the work Into the Pyramid. Olise brought musician Goodiepal’s composition for the work. She played this on loudspeakers in
the Russian abandoned square in front of the Lenin Statue. Accompanying her were the birds and an armed guard to protect her from polar bears.

G. I. Gurdjieff (deceased 1949), known as a mystic and teacher, created a system including music, movements, and writing, studied by seekers of all kinds. His influence on contemporary artistic practice has recently begun to be investigated and publicized. Artists ranging from Meredith Monk to Peter Brook have studied his work. Music composed with Thomas de Hartmann and performed by musicians Mitzi DeWhitt, Chris Wertenbaker and Richard Finestone are included in this evening.

This event is made possible, in part, through generous support from the Experimental Television Center’s Presentation Fund. The Experimental Television Center’s Presentation Funds program is supported through mediaThe Foundation and with public funds from the New York State Council on the Arts, a state agency.

May 01, 2010 | Categories: events, music, performance, visual art | Tags: messiaen, naum gabo | Comments Off