FRIDMAN GALLERY

NADJA VERENA MARCIN, OPHELIA

Friday, February 2

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OPHELIA is an architectural, interdisciplinary live performance incorporating sculpture, sound and text by Nadja Verena Marcin. The piece will draw on masterworks from art history—such as John Everett Millais’s painting of the same name, “Three Ball Total Equilibrium Tank” (Jeff Koons, 1985), and “The Werld” (Daniil Kharms, 1939).​ Floating in a salt-water solution in a life-size stainless steel sarcophagus, wearing a breathing mask and Ophelia’s dress, the artist Nadja Verena Marcin will quote text from Daniil Kharms’ "The Werld" about our limited human subjective perception. The image of a nineteenth-century Ophelia, supported via a breathing mask and reconfigured within a technologically constructed reality, becomes a metaphor for our current state of existence in the Anthropocene Period.

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Marcin’s work has been presented at: ZKM - Museum for Art and Media, Karlsruhe; Garage Museum of Contemporary Art, Moscow; Zendai MOMA, Shanghai (Himalajas Museum); Museo National de Arte, La Paz; Veneto Videoart Archive, Verona; Museum Ludwig, Cologne; Berkeley Art Museum, Berkeley; ICA Philadelphia; Kunstmuseum, Bonn; 5th Moscow International Biennale for Young Art, Moscow; Palacio Portales, Cochabamba; Haus der Kunst, Munich, and other venues. 

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This work was made possible, in part, by the Franklin Furnace Fund supported by Jerome Foundation, the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs in partnership with the City Council; and with general operating support from the New York State Council on the Arts.

http://www.nadjamarcin.com

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JAKOB KUDSK STEENSEN, AQUAPHOBIA

Friday, February 2

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AQUAPHOBIA uses VR to connect inner psychological landscapes with exterior ecosystems. The work is inspired by studies of the treatment of aquaphobia – fear of water – as an entry point to transform perceptions of our relationship to future water levels and climates. AQUAPHOBIA is a full-scale replica of Louis Valentino Jr. Park and Pier in Redhook, Brooklyn, an area greatly compromised by climate change with hurricanes and rising sea levels. While journeying through the landscape, mud, water, subterranean infrastructures, roots and plants intertwine with one another to form a symbiotic landscape. 

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Jakob Kudsk has exhibited at Carnegie Museum of Art, Museum of Modern Art, FRIEZE, London Science Museum, Sundance and TriBeCa film festival. His work has been featured in MOUSSE Magazine, Artnet, The Art Newspaper, Hyperallergic, Spike Art Quaterly, ARTREPORT, Politiken, Information, Worm, NEO2, VICE, NY Times, WIRED and TSOEG.

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https://jakobsteensen.squarespace.com

STEPHEN VITIELLO / TAYLOR DEUPREE

Saturday, February 3

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Stephen Vitiello is an electronic musician and media artist. CD releases have been published by New Albion Records, Sub Rosa, 12k and Room 40. His sound installations and multi-channel works are in the permanent collections of the Museum of Modern Art, the Whitney Museum and the Museum of Contemporary Art, Lyon. Over the last 25 years, Vitiello has collaborated with such artists and musicians as Pauline Oliveros, Ryuichi Sakamoto, Taylor Deupree, Scanner, and Steve Roden. In 2012, Australian Television produced the documentary, Stephen Vitiello: Listening With Intent. Originally from New York, Vitiello is now based in Richmond, VA where he is a professor of Kinetic Imaging at Virginia Commonwealth University. 

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As a duo, Taylor Deupree and Stephen Vitiello released the double 10" LP, Captiva on 12k; May 18/Loops To Clouds on Champion Version; and a digital release with Ryuichi Sakamoto for Kizuna World. They performed last at PS 1/MoMA as part of Semiotext(e) presents The Return of Schizo-Culture.

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Stephen Vitiello: http://www.stephenvitiello.com 

Taylor Deupree: https://www.taylordeupree.com

GUST BURNS / THE RHYTHM METHOD, STRING QUARTET OBSTRUCTIONS

Saturday, February 3

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String Quartet Obstructions is a performance by a string quartet with recordings.  It comprises three sets of variations, in which excerpted recordings of canonical string quartets have been variously selected and edited with relation to excerpts of identical duration performed 'live' on stage.  The live performers' version of the repertoire are obstructed by those played back over a PA system.  Upon "hearing" relations between the live and the recorded (simultaneous performances), which in this context function mostly as 'visible' and 'audible', respectively, attention here is focused on the prescribed (dis)articulation of the faculties.  As a "denaturalization" of reified sense, this aspect of the performance ultimately must answer to the same shortcomings of all "critiques," artistic or otherwise.  But we wager that the arrangement might also contribute to a pre-figuration of modes of "hearing" (?) beyond the foreclosure of listening, as the later has been performed and enacted throughout the twentieth century in music, art, and media.

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Gust Burns composes performances of music. Drawing on his experience as a pianist, contemporary art practices, and 20th century composition, Burns’ works blur differentiations between performance, score, recording, and text.

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The Rhythm Method strives to reimagine the string quartet in a contemporary context. Founded in 2014, the group has given soulful, spirited performances in New York, Chicago, Vienna, and Paris, tackling works ranging from classics by Ligeti and Webern to newer works/premieres by Tonia Ko, Dai Fujikura, and other living composers, including members of the ensemble.

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Gust Burns: http://gustburns.us

The Rhythm Method: http://www.therhythmmethod.nyc

PHILL NIBLOCK

Sunday, February 4

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Phill Niblock is an intermedia artist using music, film, photography, video and computers. He makes thick, loud drones of music, filled with microtones of instrumental timbres which generate many other tones in the performance space. Simultaneously, he presents films / videos which look at the movement of people working, slides, or computer driven black and white abstract images floating through time. 

The combination of apparently static surface textures and extremely active harmonic movement generates a highly original music that, while having things in common with early drone-based Minimalism, is utterly distinct in sound and technique. Niblock's work continues to influence a generation of musicians, especially younger players from a variety of musical genres. 

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http://phillniblock.com

KATHERINE LIBEROVSKAYA / TIM SHAW

Sunday, February 4

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Katherine Liberovskaya is an intermedia artist based in New York City and Montreal, Canada. Involved in experimental video since the 80s, she has produced many single-channel videos, video installation works and video and music performances which have been presented at a wide variety of events and venues around the world. Among these: MOMA PS1 PrintShop NYC; The Duolun Museum and The Aurora Museum, Shanghai, China; The Museum of Arts and Design, NYC; Medialab-Prado, Madrid, Spain; Museo Centro del Carmen, Valencia, Spain; The Bitola Museum, Macedonia (FYROM); and The Museum of Contemporary Art, Valdivia, Chile. Concurrently she curates and organizes the Screen Compositions evenings at Experimental Intermedia, NYC, since 2005 and, since 2006, the OptoSonic Tea salons with Ursula Scherrer at Diapason, NYC, and in various nomadic locations, in New York, North America and Europe.

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Tim Shaw is an artist interested in the relationship between site and technology. Presenting work through musical performances, installations and site-responsive interventions his practice attempts to expose the mechanics of systems and to reveal the hidden aspects of machines. Tim has presented artwork all across Europe, in the USA, Canada, Australia and Hong Kong. He currently works as a lecturer in Digital Media at Culture Lab, Newcastle University. Collaboration plays a central role in his approach, he has been lucky enough to make artistic work with Chris Watson, John Bowers, Jacek Smolicki and Sébastien Piquemal. Shaw has recently presented work at BALTIC, UK (2017), Sanctuary Festival, UK (2017), Glasgow Film Festival, UK (2016), ARC, Switzerland (2017), Stereolux, France (2016), Eastern Bloc, Canada (2016), FACT Liverpool, UK (2016), The Wired Lab, Australia (2016) and Cafe OTO, UK (2015).

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Katherine Liberovskaya: www.facebook.com/liberovskaya

Tim Shaw: https://tim-shaw.net

POETIC X / JASON LUCAS

Monday, February 5

Poetic X is a native of Shreveport, LA. He is a poet/author/recording artist with a sincere passion and appreciation for arts and education. Audiences across the United States have taken a liking to his subtle style and delivery. His ability to draw a person, place, or object into a poetic setting with metaphysical attachments is what sets Poetic X in a different culture than most poets. He has an absolute love for nature and the many hidden subjects, matters, properties, and particulars within. Poetic X performs at schools, colleges, universities, churches, festivals, conferences, and private events. Poetic X's latest performance "Art-illery" was well received at MASS MoCA where he was a 'responding artist' to Visual Artist Nick Cave's "UNTIL" Exhibition. Poetic X is also launching "Gold Deposit Tour" for 2018. Poetic X's poetic works can be heard and purchased online.

Poetic X: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eq7dkiH0Oec

YVETTE JANINE JACKSON, Destination Freedom

Monday, February 5

Destination Freedom begins in the cargo hold of a tall ship transporting Africans to the Americas and traverses time in search of freedom. It is a radio opera - a meditative electroacoustic experience. Destination Freedom is a fixed media, multichannel composition. It features members of the Invisible People ensemble: Judith Hamann (‘cello), Tommy Babin (double bass), Nick Lesley (drums), Malesha Jessie Taylor (voice), and Yvette Janine Jackson (piano). 

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Yvette Janine Jackson is a composer and sound installation artist who combines electroacoustic music, improvisation, and voice to focus on historical events and contemporary social issues. Her works have recently been featured at the Tonband Fixed Media Festival in Stockholm; Organ for the Senses series at the Spreckels Organ in Balboa Park, San Diego; Stockholm’s Kulturnatten 2017 festival; and the Borealis Festival in Bergen, Norway. She has contributed to Nutida Musik and is a recipient of San Francisco's Dean Goodman Choice Award for Sound Design and Theatre Bay Area’s Eric Landisman Fellowship.  

http://www.yvettejackson.com

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CALLING IN OR CALLING OUT FOR RACIAL JUSTICE, a workshop focused on accountability and action 

Tuesday, February 6

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As the political climate of the world heats up, it is necessary that people with white privilege begin to take direct action against systems. Systems that oppress marginalized communities yet secure our well-being and safety. The workshop is run by 19 year-old Kaya Fridman, a Filipina student at SUNY Purchase who stresses that "Allyship is a behavior, not a badge." Please come prepared to share, listen and learn about the behaviors of true allyship. We will be discussing a myriad of topics, such as, white privilege, fragility, savior complexes, intersectionality, colonialism, and more.

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The workshop will also feature Carver Audain who will be speaking about Redlining, which is the subject of his newest body of work. Redlining refers to the practice of designating specific geographic regions generally determined by demographic and racial constitutions to receive significantly less than adequate access to financial resources. Redlining was first implemented in 1934, as a subversive response to the National Housing Act legislation which was established as a part of the New Deal, and later enhanced by The Housing Act of 1937. Audain posits a direct correlation between the practice of redlining and the current waves of gentrification and displacement.

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Carver Audain is a multi-disciplinary artist whose practice has centered around immersive environments for nearly a decade. Audain's media works are the result of multiple rigorous digital signal processes and editing techniques on a variety of aural and visual stimuli. By contrast, Audain's physical and object based works often align common materials with metaphor and narrative, underscoring authorship and semiotical relationships between the viewer, the work, and the subject of the work. In 2017, his work was exhibited in a solo show at Microscope Gallery, and a group show at We Buy Gold in Brooklyn, resulting in write ups in the New York Times, Cultured Magazine, Numeró, and Bomb Magazine. He was the first recipient of Issue Project Room’s “Emerging Artists Commission” courtesy of the Greenwall Foundation and also received Roulette’s “Emerging Artist’s Commission” funded by the Jerome Foundation. He has performed solo compositions at Issue Project Room, Roulette, Eyebeam, Outpost Artist Resources, Fridman Gallery in New York, among others. His works have been broadcast on WFMU, Clocktower Radio, Wavefarm as well as on stations in Germany, France and Slovenia. Grants include a Jerome Foundation Travel Grant and the Community Arts Fund Grant from the Brooklyn Council of the Arts/New York City Department of Cultural Affairs. Audain lives and works in Brooklyn, New York.

KARA ROONEY AND COLLABORATORS, BUT FOR WHAT'S MY AXIS? PART 2. DESIRE

Wednesday, February 7

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'Desire' calls into question the physical, emotional, and linguistic conditions that frame our meeting with self/other—of the socially constructed paradigms that determine and define our sense of longing, taste, and sexual expression, articulate our relationship to success, to language and each other, as well as informs notions of class, gender, geography, even time. 

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Having witnessed boxers jumping rope during training sessions in Eastern Europe, I became fascinated with the elegance, endurance, and inevitable failure of the action as a metaphor for this complex term ‘desire.’ Does one jump beyond themselves, beyond their limits, or are we in fact prisoners of a vicious cycle from which there is no escape? Are there asymmetrical power relations implicit in the act of self-competition and its drives? Does desire, a necessary condition of human experience, limit or free us from the constraints of internalized linguistic pressures?

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"Part 2. Desire" is part of the larger trilogy "But For What’s My Axis?," a multidisciplinary work made in collaboration between visual artist Kara Rooney, composer Fatrin Krajka, and Brooklyn-based poets Betsy Fagin, Laura Henriksen, and Marine Cornuet. Through the development of three performative event/actions—Empire, Desire, and Origins (Blue)— this collaborative project grapples with, de-centers, and disassembles the largely invisible spectre of linguistic oppression, one whose static vernacular tropes continue to infiltrate as well as amplify our historical, relational, and sociopolitical entanglements. 

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Kara Rooney is a Brooklyn-based artist and writer working in performance, sculpture and new media installation. Her visual work has been exhibited in international and domestic venues including Fridman Gallery, NY; Driscoll Babcock Gallery, NY; A.I.R. Gallery, NY; the Chelsea Art Museum, NY; the Jersey City Museum, NJ; the Montclair Art Museum, NJ; the Pera Museum, Istanbul, Turkey; and the Karamay Museum, Xin Jiang, China. 

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Fatrin Krajka is an award winning composer and pianist based in New York City. In addition to composition, Fatrin's work as a soloist and chamber musician have been showcased on numerous international concert stages including Carnegie Hall and Merkin Hall. 

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Betsy Fagin is the author of All is not yet lost (Belladonna, 2015) and Names Disguised (Make Now Press, 2014) as well as a number of chapbooks. She was named a 2017 NYSCA/NYFA Artist Fellow in Poetry.

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Marine Cornuet is a poet, translator, and arts administrator based in Brooklyn, NY. She is a member of the Sweet Action poetry collective, and has performed at venues such as the Bowery Poetry Club, the Montauk Club, Ideal Glass, Station Independent Projects, and FiveMyles Gallery.

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Laura Henriksen’s poems and reviews have appeared in or are forthcoming from P-Queue, The Brooklyn Rail, Jacket2, and High Noon, among other places. Her first chapbook, Agata, was just released by Imp. In April she will participate in the 92nd Street Y’s annual reading, The Tenth Muse.

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http://www.karalrooney.com

BRIAN CHASE: DRUMS AND DRONES / URSULA SCHERRER

Wednesday, February 7

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Drums & Drones, an approach to listening/viewing as an experiential process, began as Brian's solo venture and has since expanded to include the video projection of Ursula as a key component of the experience.  The project takes its initial inspiration from La Monte Young and Marian Zazeela's Dream House, a legendary on-going sound and light installation in TriBeCa, NYC.  With this, the notion came to investigate the more subtle acoustic properties of drums and percussion as a medium for 'going inside the sound:' expansive soundscapes are constructed, like aural snapshots of tone, uncovering the richness of sonic depth hidden within the resonance of these instruments.  Similarly, the visual component investigates and reconstructs elements of found forms, whether in filmed objects or light itself.  In the live video projections, an architectural abstraction continues to emerge and re-evolve, and layers stack to reveal shifting fields of depth and perception.  The music and visuals function to bring on what La Monte has termed a "Drone State of Mind."

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Brian Chase is a drummer and composer living in Brooklyn.  His diverse range of work/play includes that with rock band Yeah Yeah Yeahs, the community of the New York improvised/experimental music scene, and Drums & Drones, an electro-acoustic project focusing on the application of just intonation to drums and percussion.  In addition to the drums, Brian is a regular practitioner of Ashtanga yoga.  

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Ursula Scherrer is an internationally recognized video and installation artist. Based in New York City, her solo video pieces have taken her across the world, having presented throughout Europe, North America, South Korea, and China.  As a performance video artist, collaborations have included those with notable musicians such as Shelley Hirsch, David Watson, Kato Hideki, and Flo Kaufmann. 

Brian Chase: http://www.chasebrian.com 

Ursula Scherrer: http://www.ursulascherrer.com

LESLEY FLANIGAN, SUBTONES AND VOICE

Thursday, February 8

Lesley Flanigan presents a special preview of an upcoming project for subtonal frequencies and solo voice for the final evening of Fridman Gallery's New Ear Festival. In her first performance with synthesized sound, Flanigan steps back from the timbral complexity of her work with speaker feedback instruments. Paring her sound material down to the bare elements of tone, she layers clusters of pitch from her voice alongside pure sine wave tones from dual oscillators (output through panned subwoofers), creating a focused meditation on the resonance she finds between voice and electronics.

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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 Sonar (Barcelona), The Pritzker Pavilion at Millennium Park (Chicago), Guggenheim Museum (New York), The Kitchen (New York), ISSUE Project Room (Brooklyn), The Stone (New York), TransitioMX (Mexico City), the Roskilde Museum of Contemporary Art (Denmark) and KW Institute for Contemporary Art in Berlin.

Lesley Flanigan: http://lesleyflanigan.com

JACOB KIRKEGAARD, THRUM 

Thursday, February 8

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Thrum is a sound portrait of an industrial section within Africa’s largest outdoor market, Merkato, in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. While being an essential hub for trading, a significant part of Merkato is also based on recycling. This piece is composed of nearby field recordings, extracted from the thrumming ‘iron and metal section,’ where hundreds of men spend all day reshaping oil drums by hammering on them with all their might. 

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Jacob Kirkegaard (born 1975) is an artist and composer who works in carefully selected environments to generate recordings that are used in compositions, or combined with video imagery in visual, spatial installations. His works reveal unheard sonic phenomena and present listening as a means of experiencing the world. Kirkegaard has recorded sonic environments as different as subterranean geyser vibrations, empty rooms in Chernobyl, Arctic calving glaciers and tones generated by the human inner ear itself. Kirkegaard's work is also represented in the permanent collection of LOUISIANA - Museum of Modern Art in Denmark and he is a founding member of the sound art collective freq_out.

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Jacob Kirkegaard: http://fonik.dk

KATINKA FOGH VINDELEV, a voice in a voice in a voice in a voice

Thursday, February 8

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A voice in a voice in a voice in a voice performance. 

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The piece consists of a handful of voice compositions capturing a voice’s multifaceted sound quality as well as textual potential. Through repetitions, patterns and multiplications, the voice resolves into new forms. The work is composed with samples of Katinka’s own voice and four speakers. Katinka will performe in a mix of both playing her sampled voice, as well as singing live on top. 

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Katinka Fogh Vindelev  (born 1984) educated classical singer, composer and sound artist. Katinka's work is based on the voice as primary source of sound and material. Katinka just had her first solo exhibition My voice is your voice, that portrays the human voice through three installations, all of which have alienation as a thematic focal point. Katinka is a key member of the Danish quartet We like We, who recently released their second full length album Next to the entire all on the Berlin-based label Sonic Pieces. In parallel with her own work, Katinka works closely with artist and composer Jacob Kirkegaard. In 2016 Katinka and Jacob performed Eustachia for 2 voices at Louisiana Museum and Fridman Gallery in NYC. 

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Katinka Fogh Vindelev: http://katinkafoghvindelev.dk/