2018
Fridman Gallery 5th Anniversary Festival
September 17-25, 2018
Co-curated by Daniel Neumann
Each night: Victoria Keddie, new videos
Mon Sep 17 Red Desert play Kreidler, Lucier, Oliveros, Vítková, Wolff
Ikue Mori
Charmaine Lee, Ben Bennett
Tue Sep 18 Hiro Kone
Drew McDowall
Emil Bognar-Nasdor
Wed Sep 19 Hiro Kone
Drew McDowall
Valise
Thu Sep 20 Ka Baird
Tamar Ettun, Miya Masaoka
Younes Baba-ali
Fri Sep 21 Cecilia Lopez, John Driscoll
Lea Bertucci, Seth Cluett, Phil Edelstein
Sat Sep 22 MV Carbon, Maria Chavez, Lesley Flanigan
Michael Schumacher
Nino Cais, Carla Chaim
Sun Sep 23 Phill Niblock
Yvette Janine Jackson, Abigail Levine
Carver Audain
Mon Sep 24 Sarmistha Talukdar
Octophonic performances:: Ed Bear, Chuck Bettis, Richard Garet, Daniel Neumann
Tue Sep 25 HAT (Hatim Belyamani)
Valentina Kvasova
Vitche-Boul Ra
All performances 8pm, except Sep 18-19: 9pm.
SCROLL DOWN FOR DETAILS OF EACH PERFORMANCE
VICTORIA KEDDIE
New video works screening each night.
The selected video works capture an intimate space between the subject and the camera. All works were composed with myself as subject, facing an Ikegami broadcast tube camera in short range. Body movement was restricted to the visible area within the lens. A 13” CRT monitor acts as viewfinder, enabling me to successfully move within the framed parameters. The body moves in circular, and repetitive patterns, working to maintain stability within the confined arrangement. Sometimes, violent, and at other times quietly nuanced; the body communicates a response to the camera's eye. The camera and subject become objects orbiting at close proximity to one another. In a seemingly fixed space, one can witness the changing of light, texture, color, and focus as the camera and subject engage. For this work, I chose to use only natural light, and offset the tubes (Red, Green and Blue) inside the camera in the effort to translate light and shadow into particular colors in an RGB space. The works were composed at the Yaddo Artist Residency, May 2017.
Victoria Keddie is an artist working within cross disciplines of sound, video, installation, and performance. Keddie is the Co-Director of E.S.P. TV, a nomadic TV studio. She co founded, UNIT 11, a re outfitted ENG van, which acts as her own mobile studio for transmission based field work. Keddie is currently building a "Satellite Studio" in the Mohave desert for her work and research involving space junk. Keddie has performed and exhibited internationally at venues and festivals such as, The Barbican, Fridman Gallery, The Swiss Institute, Pioneer Works,The Kitchen, Museum of Moving Image, The Museum of Art and Design, Queens Museum of Art, Human Resources (Los Angeles), Lightcone, (Paris), Syros International Film Festival (Syros, Greece), Studio XX (Montreal), LOOP Festival (Barcelona), Pallas Projects (Dublin), Reykjavik Arts Festival (Reykjavik), and General Public (Berlin). Keddie has been artist-in-residence at Koneen Saatio, Yaddo, Wave Farm, Signal Culture, Pioneer Works, Storefront for Art and Architecture, and the Museum of Arts and Design.
RED DESERT play Lucier, Oliveros, Wolff
Monday, September 17
Red Desert will be playing the following six compositions as one continuous set of music:
Alvin Lucier Music for Snare Drum, Pure Wave Oscillator, and One or More Reflective Surfaces
Snare Drum and Electronics
Christian Wolff Microexercises
Percussion and Clarinets
Pauline Oliveros Single Stroke Roll Meditation
Snare Drum and Electronics
Devin Maxwell bluesnoblues2
Electronics
Lucie Vítková Five
Clarinet and Electronics
Johannes Kriedler Fantasies of Downfall
Vibraphone, Video Projection, and Electronics
Red Desert, the duo project of composer/percussionist Devin Maxwell and clarinetist Katie Porter, has been commissioning, performing, and recording experimental duos and solos for over a decade. They have performed at numerous venues, series, and festivals including the Utah Museum of Fine Arts, Spectrum, Le Hum, End of an Ear Records, Casper College, the Sun Tunnels, the Indexical Series, C4NM San Francisco, Westminster College, MoxSonic, Music Under Construction, Dartmouth College, and the Abrons Art Center. Recordings of Red Desert can be heard on Phill Niblock’s XI label, Edition Wandelweiser Records, and James Ilgenfritz’s Infrequent Seams label. Red Desert has premiered works by Lucie Vítková, André Cormier, Tim Parkinson, Michael Pisaro, Craig Shepard, Didier Aschour, G. Douglas Barrett, and other emerging experimental composers.
IKUE MORI
Monday, September 17
Live visual/audio playing of Pomegranate seeds.
Ikue Mori started playing drums and joined the band DNA soon after arriving to New York in 1977. In the mid 80’s she started playing drum machines and became involved in the downtown improvising community. Since then she has collaborated with numerous musicians and artists throughout the US, Europe, and Asia, while continuing to produce and record her own music. Ikue won the Distinctive Award for Prix Arts Electronics Digital Music category in 1999 and shortly after started using a laptop computer to expand her vocabulary - not only to play sounds but to create and control the visual work as well. Various collaborations include work with John Zorn, Craig Taborn, Joan Jonas, Zeena Parkins, Sylvie Courvoisier, and Kim Gordon.
CHARMAINE LEE, BEN BENNETT
Monday, September 17
Experimental vocalist Charmaine Lee will be joined by Philadelphia-based improvising percussionist Ben Bennett for an electrifying meeting of unconventional sounds, creaks, and techniques. Using amplification, microphones, modified drum heads, stretched membranes, and objects, the duo will explore an eclectic aesthetic territory together, comfortably moving between rapid-fire free improvisation and the sober austerity of lowercase and Japanese onkyo.
Charmaine Lee is a New York-based vocalist from Sydney, Australia. Her music is predominantly improvised, favoring a uniquely personal approach to vocal expression concerned with spontaneity, playfulness, and risk-taking. Beyond extended vocal technique, Charmaine uses amplification, electroacoustic feedback, and microphones to augment and distort the voice. She has performed with leading improvisers Nate Wooley, id m theft able, and Joe Morris, and maintains ongoing collaborations with contemporaries Lester St. Louis, Conrad Tao, Zach Rowden, and Leila Bordreuil. She has performed at venues such as the Met Breuer, Roulette, the Stone, and Experimental Sound Studios (Chicago). As a composer, Charmaine has been commissioned by the Wet Ink Ensemble (2018), and has a forthcoming commission with Spektral Quartet (2018).
http://charmaineleemusic.com/music
Ben Bennett has developed a unique and highly physical approach to percussion which takes the lineage of jazz, free-improvisation, and extended technique as its foundation. In searching for an expanded sonic palette, and more fluid movement between various timbres, he has distilled the drumset into a compact assortment of drumheads, stretched membranes, and other objects which offer a wide variety of unconventional sounds from few materials, which can be rearranged into different combinations during a performance. Bennett has played across the US and abroad as a soloist and with many high-level improvisors, including long-running collaborations with saxophonists Jack Wright and Michael Foster. He is also known widely for his YouTube channel, Sitting and Smiling.
HIRO KONE, DREW MCDOWALL with EMIL BOGNAR-NASDOR and VALISE
September 18 and 19
Release shows for Drew McDowall and Hiro Kone.
Drew McDowall’s backstory reads like a primer of psychedelic fiction woven into statements of the unbelievable, superhuman, and outright insane. Somewhere in the midst of the chaotic madness, McDowall shaped his own unique sound, establishing total control and absolute calm within his songs and artistic method. Crafting mostly instrumental tracks interwoven with a few vocal samples, McDowall creates brooding and apocalyptic electronic compositions.
http://www.daisrecords.com/collections/drew-mcdowall
Hiro Kone (née Nicky Mao), a New York City based electronic artist, has been personalizing spaces predicated on dark layers interacting with rhythm since 2011. With her early EPs on Group Tightener and Bitterroots, leading up to the EP Fallen Angels and the acclaimed debut full length album, Love Is the Capital (both on Geographic North), Mao’s meticulously crafted textures attracted collaborators such as Drew McDowall (Coil), Little Annie, and Roxy Farman (Wetware) while driving against the grain of experimental techno. Mao’s explorations often cast themselves against danceable structures, creating a duality of crisis and escapism.
Emil Bognar-Nasdor is a New York based performance and multi-media artist.
Valise is a multimedia project comprised of one half of the group Humanbeast. Abstractions formed through multiple software and visual avenues. Releases on No Rent Records and Primitive Languages.
KA BAIRD
Thursday, September 20
Ka Baird is a multi-instrumentalist and vocalist living and working in NYC. She is one of the founding and continuing members of the long running experimental psych project Spires That In The Sunset Rise. Since relocating to NYC in November 2014, Baird has set off in numerous directions apart from Spires with new collaborations as well as honing in on her own solo work. Her current work explores piano improvisation, electroacoustic interventions, rhythm sampling, extended vocal techniques, physical movement, and her unusual electronic manipulation of the flute. She co-runs the label and concert organizer Perfect Wave with Camilla Padgitt-Coles.
TAMAR ETTUN, MIYA MASAOKA
Thursday, September 20
Tamar Ettun is a Brooklyn based sculptor and performance artist, who is the founder of The Moving Company. Ettun received her MFA from Yale University in 2010 where she was awarded the Alice English Kimball Fellowship. She studied at Cooper Union in 2007, while earning her BFA from Bezalel Academy, Jerusalem. Ettun is represented by Fridman Gallery and has had exhibitions and performances at The Watermill Center, e-flux, Sculpture Center, Madison Square Park, Indianapolis Museum of Art, The Jewish Museum, Uppsala Art Museum in Sweden, Fridman Gallery, Braverman Gallery, PERFORMA 09, 11 and 13. The artist has been honored by organizations including The Pollock Krasner Foundation, Franklin Furnace, Macdowell Fellowship, RECESS, The Lower Manhattan Cultural Council, Art Production Fund and Socrates Sculpture Park. She is currently preparing for a solo exhibition at the Barrick Museum of Art in Las Vegas, which will open in 2018.
Miya Masaoka works at the intersection of sound and resonance, composition, spatialized perception, and social interaction. Her work has been exhibited nationally and internationally, including the Venice Biennale, MoMA PS1, Institute of Contemporary Art Philadelphia, and the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago. Masaoka has taught at New York University, Bard College (since 2003). In 2017, her installation Vaginated Chairs was shown as the Kunstmuseum Bonn, and in 2018 she premiered work for the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra and Glasgow Chamber Choir. Masaoka has created a new chamber Noh opera, and is a Park Avenue Armory Studio Artist for 2019. She has a Duo CD with Anthony Braxton, a Trio with Zeena Parkins and Myra Melford. In 2018, she was named Director of the Sound Art MFA program at Columbia University in the School of the Arts.
http://www.miyamasaoka.com/
YOUNES BABA-ALI
Thursday, September 20
Call for Prayer - Morse, 2011
Call for Prayer - Morse is a sound installation consisting of a megaphone in public space. The megaphone, a format that is know for mass communication, broadcasts the omnipresent Muslim call for prayer in morse code. Fives times a day, timed according to its specific geographic location, the call sounds as an alert signal, warning against the dangers of proselytizing while problematizing the relationship between religious practice and the absence of spiritual experience.
Younes Baba-Ali makes art that is unconventional, intelligent and critical, mostly in public space or places uncommon to art practice. He is a sharp observer and raises pertinent questions aimed at society, the institution and above all, his audience. As a free thinker he holds a mirror up to society and confronts it with its ingrained habits and dysfunctions. Baba-Ali’s work often assumes the form of the readymade, but underneath its facade of simplicity there is a complex exercise in balance at work. Graduating from l’Ecole Supérieure des Arts Décoratifs de Strasbourg in 2008, and from l’Ecole Supérieure d’Art d’Aix-en-Provence in 2011, he was awarded the “Léopold Sédar Senghor” prize during the African Contemporary Art Biennial of Dakar (Sn) in 2012 and the “Boghossian” prize, during the Belgian Art Prize “Art’Contest” in Brussels (Be) in 2014. His latest projects were shown in institutions such as Kanal - Centre Pompidou in Brussels (Be), the Palais de Tokyo in Paris (Fr), the Jewish Museum and Tolerance Center in Moscow (Ru) and during biennials such as Documenta 2017 (De) and the Dak’Art Biennial (Sn), among many others.
http://www.younesbabaali.com/en
CECILIA LOPEZ, JOHN DRISCOLL
Friday, September 21
Composers Cecilia Lopez and John Driscoll share a mutual interest in music and sound that explore resonance properties of both spaces and materials. They will present a collaborative improvisation based on their unique rotating instrumental loudspeakers and multi-channel sound systems. This performance represents an opportunity for both to jointly explore layers of moving sound fields by physical and electronic means in the Fridman Gallery space.
Cecilia Lopez is a composer, musician and installation artist from Buenos Aires, Argentina. Her work explores the boundaries between composition and improvisation as well as resonant properties of diverse materials. She works across the media of performance, sound, installation and the creation of sound devices and systems. She holds a M.F.A. from Bard College and an M.A. in composition from Wesleyan University. Her work has been performed at Museo de Arte Moderno de Buenos Aires (AR), Festival Internacional Tsonami de Buenos Aires (AR), Roulette Intemedium (NY), ISSUE Project Room (NY), Floating Points Festival (NY), Ostrava Days Festival 2011 (Czech Republic), MATA Festival 2012 (NY), Experimental Intermedia (NY), Fridman Gallery (NY), Kunstnernes Hus (Oslo, Norway) and Ende Tymes Festival (NY) among others.
John Driscoll is a composer and founding member of Composers Inside Electronics (CIE). His work focuses on robotic instruments, compositions, and sound installations for unique architectural spaces, and music for dance. He recently collaborated with Phil Edelstein on: his Impulsions work, a new sound installation Cluster Fields and Rainforest V (variations 1-4) which is now in collections of the Museum der Moderne (Salzburg), MoMA (NYC), and the Vehbi Koc Foundation (Istanbul). His recent work was presented at the Fridman Gallery, MoMA (Warsaw), Univ. of Md. Art Gallery, Museum der Moderne (Salzburg), Lyon Biennale, Subtropics Festival (Miami), Stony Brook University and others. He is participating in the revival of Tudor’s Pavilion works with CIE, E.A.T. and the David Tudor Project.
LEA BERTUCCI, SETH CLUETT, PHIL EDELSTEIN
Friday, September 21
Using two discrete sound systems - conventional quadraphonic in conversation with Seth Cluett’s idiosyncratic array of unhoused speaker cones, the trio will perform a spatial gesture incorporating synthesis and manipulated tape. Phil Edelstein’s software based control interface will allow each player to control sonic and spatial parameters as the performers navigate the speaker array.
Lea Bertucci is an American composer and performer whose work describes relationships between acoustic phenomena and biological resonance. Her discography includes a number of solo and collaborative releases on independent labels, including; I Dischi Del Barone, Obsolete Units, Telegraph Harp, Clandestine Compositions and NNA Tapes. She has performed extensively across the US and Europe at venues such as The Kitchen, PS1 MoMA, The Drawing Center, Anthology Film Archives, Abrons Arts, The Walker Museum, Madison Square Park, The Renaissance Society, Chicago, ISSUE Project Room, Pioneer Works, The Queens Museum, Roulette, Artists’ Space, Caramoor, The High Zero Festival, and Experimental Intermedia, among many others. She is a 2016 MacDowell Fellow in composition and a 2015 ISSUE Project Room Artist-in-Residence.
Seth Cluett is a composer and visual artist who creates work that explores everyday actions at extreme magnification, examines minutae by amplifying impossible tasks, and tries to understand the working of memory in forms that rethink the role of the senses in an increasingly technologized society. The recipient of grants from Foundation for Contemporary Arts Emergency Fund and Meet the Composer, his work has been presented internationally at venues such as The Whitney Museum, MoMA/PS1, Moving Image Art Fair, CONTEXT Art Miami, GRM, and STEIM. His concert work has been commissioned by ensembles ranging from the Hong Kong Sinfonietta and the International Contemporary Ensemble to So Percussion, Catch Guitar Quartet, and Clogs and is documented on Line, Sedimental, Notice, and Winds Measure recordings. Cluett is the Assistant Director of the Computer Music Center and Sound Art Program at Columbia University and is Artist-in-Residence with Experiments in Art and Technology at Nokia Bell Labs.
Phil Edelstein is one of the founding members of Composers Inside Electronics. Much of his performance and installation work is creation of situations framed in software that participants and performers encounter, enter and navigate. He keeps returning to the sense that sound is a plastic medium that has size, shape, position, and direction in space - that there is a territory of new works that are possible in the use of electronics, algorithm, and the physics of sound. He has a fondness to the point of obsession with resonance, spatial rhythms, sonic excursions, the literacy of code, structures as in the wisdom of trees, and complexity of weather found in bits of algebra in dunes and runes. There are simple pleasures and correctness in collaboration to join with others on these travels.
http://composers-inside-electronics.net/pedelstein/home/Bio.html
MV CARBON, MARIA CHAVEZ, LESLEY FLANIGAN
Saturday, September 22
Since 2012, MV Carbon, Lesley Flanigan & Maria Chavez have collaborated in multiple exhibitions, festivals and outdoor presentations as a performance trio. The New York‐ based sound artists are each known for the sculptural intricacies of their experiments in electronics with music, noise and improvised sound performances. Together, they turn a magnifying lens towards the intersections of their individual approaches, presenting a collaborative performance that combines reel to reel tape, cello, turntable, microphone feedback and voice with multi‐channel speaker presentations.
MV Carbon is an artist and composer whose work encompasses live performance, sound art, painting, sound for film, and multi-media installation. Her current work explores interchangeability, the human mechanism, perceptive states of consciousness, habitat, and the empirical force of nature. In live performances, a non-traditional approach to music is embraced with the use of electric cello, sculptural sound objects, gongs, amplified objects, oscillators, and hand constructed instruments. Carbon reinterprets the physical form associated with virtuosity, and challenges the way a musical instrument is defined, and approached. She is interested in the psychological effect of sound and works to heighten our senses through spatial, psychic, and temporal based explorations.
Carbon has done residencies at EMS (SE), Issue Project Room (NY), The Clockower Gallery (NY), and Roulette, (NY). She has performed at spaces including The Metropolitan Museum of Art (NY), PS1-MoMA (NY), The Guggenheim BMW Lab (NY), The Kitchen (NYC), The Copenhagen Music Theater (DK), ULU (UK), Nefertiti Jazz Club (SE), Socrates Sculpture Park (NY), The Stone (NY), Performa 2011(NY), Roulette NY), The Sage (UK), Pioneer Works (NY), The Knockdown Center (NY), Casa Des Artes, (PT), Worm (NL), The Tate Modern (UK).
Maria Chávez, born in Lima, Peru, and based in NYC, is best known as an abstract turntablist, sound artist and DJ. Her mprovised solo turntable performance combines recorded sounds from vinyl records with the electroacoustic sounds of vinyl and needle in various deteriorating phases. This raw approach merges the practice of improvisation with the inherent unstable conditions of a turntable, allowing accidents to dictate each sound piece.
Maria Chávez has been a research fellow of the Sound Practice Research Department, Goldsmith’s University, a composer fellow with Civitella Ranieri in Umbertide, Italy, and an artist fellow at the Robert Rauschenberg Foundation. Her instructional book of essays and illustrations, OF TECHNIQUE: Chance Procedures on Turntable, was published in 2012. She has participated in various artist residencies including the CEC Artslink/Back Apartment residency in St. Petersburg, Kunstmeile Krems sound artist residency in Austria, The Kitchen in New York and the Royal Academy of Music in Denmark. Her work has been exhibited internationally, including at HeK – haus der elektronischen Künste-Basel, INKONST Art Center, Sweden, The Judd Foundation, Marfa, Texas, The Brooklyn Museum of Art, The Getty Museum, Black Mountain College Museum, Asheville, NC and Documenta14 in Kassel.
Lesley Flanigan is an experimental electronic musician living in New York City. Inspired by the physicality of sound, she builds her own instruments using minimal electronics, microphones and speakers. Performing these instruments alongside traditional instrumentation that often includes her own voice, she creates a kind of physical electronic music that embraces both the transparency and residue of process — sculpting sound from a palette of noise and subtle imperfections. Her work has been presented at venues and festivals internationally, including The Red Bull Music Festival at Saint John the Divine (New York), Sonar (Barcelona), The Pritzker Pavilion at Millennium Park (Chicago), the Guggenheim Museum (New York), The Kitchen (New York), The Broad Museum (Los Angeles), ISSUE Project Room (Brooklyn), TransitioMX (Mexico City), CMKY Festival (Boulder), the Roskilde Museum of Contemporary Art (Denmark) and KW Institute for Contemporary Art in Berlin.
MICHAEL J. SCHUMACHER
Saturday, September 22
Michael J. Schumacher will present excerpts from a new set of pieces, "Variations, Set 2", that applies the classical idea of variation to spatialization techniques. Sounds - sonorities, motifs, phrases - are transformed through placement in a variety of sonorous spaces, which act somewhat like filters, emphasizing specific perceptual aspects. In contrast to the classical method there are no clearly stated "themes", but rather a continual process of spatial redistribution.
Michael J. Schumacher has worked with spatialized sound, computers, and electronics since the 1980s, creating multi-channel, generative "Room Pieces" presented in galleries, museums, concert halls, public and private spaces. XI records has published a DVD set of five sound installations as computer applications, playable on up to eight speakers, which may be installed on a computer to create sound environments in the home. His most recent project is the Portabe Multi-channel Sound System, a 12 channel sound system that fits in a suitcase. “Variations,” a set of pieces created for the system, is available online through Richard Garet’s Contour Editions label.
NINO CAIS, CARLA CHAIM
Saturday, September 22
Carla Chaim and Nino Cais present their first performance live together. Both artists work in São Paolo, Brazil, where they collaborate frequently and participate in an educational project with young artists. Chaim often puts her body in conflict with drawing concepts and materials, filming herself in actions and indoor video-performances while thinking about different aspects of a line, the geometric figure, and organic movements. Cais' practice examines the image and photographic support using collage and installation, combining it with materials such as glass, wood, and ordinary objects. This performance activates poetic concepts using the artists' bodies and a pair of scissors to reveal a drawing/sculpture on the floor. Using just clothes, their hands, and a pair of scissors, the artists examine the presence of a sculptural moment that places the absence of the artist’s body as a complementary element to the final object.
Nino Cais (Born in Brazil, 1969) lives and works in Brazil. He studied Art at Santa Marcelina University (Fasm) in São Paulo. Since graduating in 2001, he has participated in several exhibitions in Brazil, such as the 30th International São Paulo Biennial (2012) and the 3rd Bahia Biennial (2014), as well as in Mexico, France, USA, China, Portugal and Lithuania, where his works were exhibited at Kaunas Art Biennial TEXTILE 07.
Carla Chaim (São Paulo, SP, 1983) lives and works in São Paulo. She graduated in Fine Arts at Fundação Armando Álvares Penteado (2004), where she also completed post-graduate work in Art History (2007). In 2016, Carla was shortlisted for the Future Generation Art Prize; in 2017 she presented her works at the Pinchuk Art Centre, Kiev, Ukraine and in Venice, Italy, in a collateral event during the Venice Biennale. Recent solo shows: The Little Death, Galeria Raquel Arnaud, São Paulo, Brasil (2018); White Flag, LambArts, London, United Kingdom (2017); Objetos Notáveis, Galeria do Lago, Museu da República, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil (2016). Her works are part of collections such as Ella Fontanals-Cisneros, Miami, USA; Museu de Arte do Rio – MAR, RJ, Brazil; and Pinacoteca do Estado de São Paulo, Brazil.
PHILL NIBLOCK
Sunday, September 23
Phill Niblock (b. 1933, USA) is an artist whose fifty-year career spans minimalist and experimental music, film, and photography. Since 1985, he has served as director of Experimental Intermedia, a foundation for avant-garde music based in New York with a branch in Ghent, and curator of the foundation’s record label XI. Known for his thick, loud drones of music, Niblock’s signature sound is filled with microtones of instrumental timbres that generate many other tones in the performance space. In 2013, his diverse artistic career was the subject of a retrospective realised in partnership between Circuit (Contemporary Art Centre Lausanne) and Musée de l’Elysée. The following year Niblock was honoured with the prestigious Foundation for Contemporary Arts John Cage Award.
ABIGAIL LEVINE, YVETTE JANINE JACKSON
Sunday, September 23
Choreographer Abigail Levine and composer Yvette Janine Jackson collaborate in an improvised exploration of sound in motion and moving objects.
Abigail Levine is a New York-based choreographer whose work is rooted in dance and draws on visual and performance art. She is Mellon Artist-in-Residence at the Center for Performance Research and a 2018 MacDowell Fellow, currently performing with Yvonne Rainer in the Judson Dance Theater retrospective at the Museum of Modern Art. She is at work on her Restagings series—No. 1: Choreographing LeWitt (2017, Fridman Gallery); No. 2: Of Serra (to movement) (2018, Fridman Gallery and Vox Populi.) She often works in close collaboration with composers, including Derek Bermel, Paula Matthusen, Judith Berkson, Dave Ruder, and Tyshawn Sorey.
Yvette Janine Jackson is a composer and sound installation artist who combines electroacoustic music and chamber improvisation to focus on historical events and contemporary social issues. Her works have recently been featured at the Cube at Virginia Tech; Tonband Fixed Media Festival in Stockholm; Spreckels Organ in Balboa Park; the San Diego Art Institute; San Francisco International Arts Festival; Stockholm’s Kulturnatten festival; the Borealis Festival in Bergen; and a residency at Elektronmusikstudion (Stockholm EMS). Her composition Atlantic Crossing was read by the Naples Philharmonic in 2016 with support of the American Composers Orchestra and Cannot Be (Unrung) for carillon and electronics was co-commissioned in 2018 by the University of Chicago and University of Michigan for Tiffany Ng. Yvette holds a B.A. in Music from Columbia University and a Ph.D. in Music-Integrative Studies from the University of California, San Diego. She is the Valentine Visiting Assistant Professor at Amherst College for 2018-19.
CARVER AUDAIN
Sunday, September 23
Carver Audain (b 1981) composes music in the Acousmatic tradition, which, as defined by French composer and theorist Pierre Schaefer, refers to “a sound that one hears without seeing the causes behind it.” Materially, he produces audio using digital signal processing and editing techniques on a variety of environmental and instrumental recordings. He is a self taught pianist, his recent works continue to explore harmonic structures utilizing the “slow change music’ method. In a live setting, he arranges and manipulates this material into situation-specific compositions. Sonically, he produces an array of slowly shifting sound fields that merge and transform within their physical surroundings.
OCTOPHONIC PERFORMANCES: CHUCK BETTIS, ED BEAR
Monday, September 24
Chuck Bettis, Chaotic Reflective Light (2018)
An infinitity mirror to illuminate your inner psyche
Chuck Bettis has performed live collaborations with John Zorn, Fred Frith, Matmos, Yoshimio, Mephista and Afrirampo to name a few, recorded & played live with; Ikue Mori, Nautical Almanac, Berangere Maximin, Yellow Swans, Toshio Kajiwara, Jad Atoui, etc, plus a long history of punk bands he was in (most notably the experimental punk band Meta-matics as well as the enigmatic All Scars). Bettis has also created soundtracks for short films by Motoko Fukuyama & provided live music for the Move Move Collective dance performances. His current working groups are; Snake Union with Dave Grant, Die Trommel Fatale with Brandon Seabrook/Marika Hughes/Eivind Opsvik/Henry Fraser/Dave Treut/Sam Ospovat, Overishins with Mick Barr, Johnny DeBlase, Mike Pride and Mossenek with Mick Barr & Colin Marston, as well as improvising, recording, or composing with an array of musicians from around the world.
Ed Bear and collaborators premiere ensemble work realized on the 64 channel radioOrgan, a hand-crafted modular FM transmission system built from obsolete electronics.
Marginally legal, the radioOrgan is 64 individual low power radio stations which can work in tandem to desperately fight for the attention of single radio receivers, completely occupy radio bands, and create non-compliant transmissions unavailable using commercial hardware. As the radioOrgan is 100% recycled, this work teases historic durational music compositions with the almost transhuman material half-life of disposable electronics and a few nice, old boomboxes.
Ed Bear (b. 1983) is an American performing artist and engineer. His work with robotics, sound, video, transmission and collective improvisation investigates the questionable calibration of perception. As an educator and designer committed to an open source world, he researches and practices material reuse as a civil responsibility. He has toured extensively in North America and Europe as a performer and teacher, working with organizations such as The Mattress Factory, The Montreal Pop Festival, Oberlin Conservatory of Music, and Renssalaer Polytechnic Institute. He is currently working with littleBits, Inc. to revolutionize modular electronics.
OCTOPHONIC PERFORMANCES: RICHARD GARET, DANIEL NEUMANN
Monday, September 24
Richard Garet and Daniel Neumann
Farewell Topophony
- an octophonic duo for Fridman Gallery
The artists are continuing their collaborative work with this multi-channel structured performance to sonify the architecture of 287 Spring. This will be a personal ritual of saying goodbye - a farewell topophony - to this space, to which they have had an ongoing connection over the past 5 years.
Richard Garet 's approach to working with sound live focuses on creating processes that interact and activate sonic material. Garet's preparations for each presentation evolve from studio practice to establish and explore materiality, approach, and set of possibilities to articulate the nuances of listening in a dedicated space. Richard Garet holds an MFA from Bard College, NY. Recent projects include CIFO Grants & Commissions Program Exhibition 2017, Florida, USA; RED-Splice, Fridman Gallery, NYC; Midnight Moment, site specific work created for the electronic billboards of Times Square, NY; International Biennial of Contemporary Art of Cartagena de Indias, Cartagena, Colombia; Queens International, Queens Museum of Art, Queens, New York; to name a few. His sonic constructions have been published through sound art platforms such as 23five, And-Oar, Non Visual Objects, Winds Measure Recordings, Unframed Recordings, Con-V, Leerraum, White_Line Editions, OBS, Line Imprint, and Contour Editions.
http://www.contoureditions.com
Daniel Neumann is a Brooklyn-based sound artist, organizer and audio engineer. He holds a masters degree in media art from the Academy of Visual Art Leipzig and also studied electronic music composition. A main focus of Neumann is how sound interacts with space and how spaces can be shaped by sound. In his artistic practice he is working in hybrid installation-performance formats. He understands sound as an intersubjective field enabled by audio procedures. Curatorially he runs an event series in New York City [CT::SWaM] that engages in spatial sound works. He was the acoustic designer for The World Is Sound exhibition at the Rubin Museum and works as a sound engineer for Diamanda Galás, Oneotrix Point Never, David Guetta, and Alarm Will Sound.
SARMISTHA TALUKDAR
Monday, September 24
Colonization is a fifteen-minute-long audio-visual piece developed by cancer research scientist, activist, composer, artist and performer, Dr. Sarmistha Talukdar. Cancer is the uncontrolled growth of abnormal cells anywhere in a living body. The data from cancer molecular genetics can provide a lot of information about the cancer type, predicting its behavior and possible targeted therapeutic strategies. One of causes of morbidity in cancer, is the ability of malignant cancer cells to spread from its point of origin to other areas of the body. This often leads to large scale death and devastation in the body, as the cancer spreads at the cost of the native tissue cells. One of the cellular mechanisms that the cancer cells utilize in this process is called autophagy, meaning, eating one-self. Autophagy occurs in a cell often in reaction to stress, the cell breaks down parts of itself to survive the stressful conditions. These dysregulated processes are tightly controlled by certain critical molecules in the cells. Life tends to repeat itself, starting from small molecular patterns, to much larger “civilization” systems. The ways in which cancer cells spread and colonize different parts of the body, is mirrored in the way white supremacy has spread globally, causing mass devastation in the colonized countries. The way the cells eat themselves reflects in the ways how marginalized members of our society have to often erase parts of themselves to just survive.
Sarmistha Talukdar is an audio-visual artist, activist and scientist. Talukdar explores the interaction between data, sound, and visuals through sonification of her research data, merging live granular synthesis with evocative audio-reactive visuals in a perspective that highlights the struggles of marginalized communities in the world. The work is inspired by concepts of Indian classical music, and generative art. Her personal aim as artist is to amalgamate science, art and music in a form, that engages the audience, compels them towards action instead of apathy, as well as provides space for catharsis, nostalgia and dreams.
HAT (HATIM BELYAMANI)
Tuesday, Sepember 25
In his one-of-a-kind live show, HAT is as an orchestra conductor from the future, beaming traditional musicians from the four corners of the world onto a big screen, and shaping them harmoniously into new electro beats. All images and sounds you see and hear at a HAT live show are derived from videos of traditional musicians shot by HAT and his remix ←→ culture crew. Like never before, you’ll see that there is but one step from the rhythms of our ancestors to tomorrow’s electro.
Hatim (aka HAT), while growing up in Morocco, was an award-winning classical pianist, a guitarist, and surrounded by sounds of the country’s Arabic, Amazigh, and Sub-Saharan African origins. At Harvard, he studied sociology and music, and embraced electronic music as the key to unifying his eclectic influences. Since 2015, HAT has performed live remixes of the videos shot by the collective at various festivals and venues worldwide. Hatim is now shifting his attention to the diverse musical heritage of various immigrant communities in NYC, with whom several collaborations are in the works.
VALENTINA KVASOVA
Tuesday, September 25
Valentina Kvasova was born in Rostov-on-Don, the capital of the Don Cossack region of Russia, in a family of musicians. After completing her education at choreographic and music schools, she performed as a soloist with the world-famous Don Cossacks Song and Dance Ensemble for 5 years.
Having relocated to the U.S. in the year 2000, Valentina has performed with prominent folkloric groups, such as the iconic Riverdance, the Russian folk group Barynya, the Bulgarian trio Yasna Voices, the late star of Russian-Gypsy music Zhenya Shevchenko, and many others.
The rare sound of Valentina's deep, rich contralto adds unique folkloric character to any serious world-music project or event. Her diverse repertoire includes Cossack, Bulgarian and Russian-Gypsy songs, arranged and performed with respect for tradition.
VITCHE-BOUL RA
Tuesday, September 25
This investigation, Hera-kli in the Moon Cane, is a lamentation and a declaration of solitude. The work engages solo performance as a means of sequestering...playing with abandonment, betrayal, and studly-ness within the single body. To generate power, it uses vocal abstraction of contemporary--culture-blurred--text and song as a tool to open/trigger the performing body. Here, performance practice becomes a means of misplacing myth and reality to generate new folkloric space.
Vitche-Boul Ra is an interdisciplinary performance practitioner, receiving his BFA in Interdisciplinary Fine Arts (Sculpture concentration) from The University of the Arts in 2018. Primarily focusing on performance practices in the field of dance, he additionally studied under Donna Faye Burchfield in the UArts School of Dance. In Philadelphia, he has shown solo works at Vox Populi Gallery, Little Berlin Gallery, and Hightide Gallery; Most recently his work was selected for the Center for Performance Research’s Spring Movement Festival 2018 in Brooklyn, New York. Winning the Edna Andrade Travel Scholarship from The University of the Arts in 2017, he studied Balinese dance in Bali, Indonesia to expand his movement practice and theatrical vocabulary.
http://www.youtube.com/channel/UCgpfkwB7EDdswBSjXNPsnZQ