Performance and Interactive Media Arts (PIMA)

Hats off to Chloë Bass for “If you hear something, free something” and this fabuloous piece about it in the NY Times. Brooklyn College’s PIMA MFA program is always tremendously proud to count Chloë — and also Jeremy Toussaint-Baptiste, who did sound design for the project — among our graduates. https://www.nytimes.com/2025/09/06/arts/design/subway-announcements-art-mta-chloe-bass.html

Delighted to see this great conversation with Anthony McCall in which he talks about incorporating sound into his work and our collaboration:

Light Artist Anthony McCall Is Adding Music to His Works for the First Time Pioneering light artist Anthony McCall has works on view in three plays at Sprüth Magers, the Guggenheim Bilbao, and Tate Modern.

London! Anthony McCall's exhibition "Raised Voices," for which I've contributed the soundtrack, opens September 12 at Sprüth Magers. Full info here (and don't miss Anthony's retrospective currently on view at the Tate Modern):https://spruethmagers.com/pdf/webpressrelease/McCall_SMLondon_2024.pdf

Congrats to Jeremy Toussaint-Baptiste on receiving the inaugural Triple Canopy Fellowship -- fantastic news. Jeremy is now on the faculty at Virginia Commonwealth University, but Brooklyn College is always proud to count him as a graduate of the Performance and Interactive Media Arts (PIMA) MFA program.

Creating soundtracks for Josiah McElheny's exhibition "From Red Black to Black, from Blue Black to Black" last fall at Corbett vs. Dempsey was one of the most rewarding collaborations I can imagine. CvsD has recently posted a series of short walk-through videos with Josiah that introduces the work beautifully. I hope that more people will have a chance to see these artworks in the future; if you don't mind me saying so, they're really something else:

Josiah McElheny 2023 on Vimeo Join the web’s most supportive community of creators and get high-quality tools for hosting, sharing, and streaming videos in gorgeous HD with no ads.

Tonight at Blank Forms -- Candace Hill-Montgomery and Fred Moten in conversation:

A Conversation with Candace Hill-Montgomery and Fred Moten Capacity is limited and entry is first-come, first-served. RSVPs do not guarantee entry.

Incredibly excited about this one: on April 16 Luke Fowler and I are at Giorno Poetry Systems in NYC to pay homage to Brunhild Ferrari with Luke's film "N'Importe Quoi (for Brunhild)" plus a first-time duo performance with recordings that Brunhild has prepared for us: https://giornopoetrysystems.org/222-bowery/events/brunhild-ferrari

Such a privilege yesterday to read with the marvelous translator Martin Richet in a bilingual presentation from "Now that the audience is assembled" at EXC Librairie. Crossing fingers that his translation will find the right home. (Photo: Junya Murakami)

"Your Music Encountered in a Dream" is my first duo album with the marvelous Sydney-based guitarist Liam Keenan, and it's now up for pre-order from Room40. I couldn't be more pleased that this is coming your way soon -- CD/digital release on February 23. Stream an excerpt from "Gemini Cluster" now:
https://room40.bandcamp.com/album/your-music-encountered-in-a-dream

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Remember hearing music while dreaming, fully confident that you’ll be able to reconstruct it once awake? Music that, as it turns out, you were the sole witness. In retrospect, why ruin the experience by something so vulgar as hearing it a second time, much less having to share it? We don’t mean to alarm you, but David Grubbs and Liam Keenan have returned from the dark side of the pillow bearing Your Music Encountered in a Dream.

How did they do it?

They did it by meeting to record a series of electric guitar duets in Sydney just as summer was turning to fall. They did it because Grubbs was limber and uncharacteristically chill after a couple of weeks in Australia playing shows and not playing shows. Sydney resident Liam Keenan’s comfort zone gravitates toward singing and songwriting under the moniker Meteor Infant, and on this session one genuinely senses an unabashed spirit of discovery. It’s happening, it’s really happening in these three generously scaled improvisations. Maybe The Necks—as well as solo recordings by Tony Buck and Chris Abrahams—count as unconscious reference points. From the juggling and interplay of pitches in isolation, to the ecstatic speaking-together of strings, to guitar music as electronic music, there’s little in the way of searching for endings in this revelatory meeting. No hastening the dream’s end. Hail the first encounter.
credits
releases February 23, 2024

David Grubbs: electric guitar
Liam Keenan: electric guitar

Recorded April 14, 2023 by David Akerman with Yianni Adams at Lost Sound, Sydney.

Your Music Encountered in a Dream, by David Grubbs & Liam Keenan 4 track album

Susan Howe and I have work in the exhibition "The Weight of the Tongue," opening tomorrow at the Grazer Kunstverein in Graz, Austria. This sound exhibition also features pieces by CAConrad, Katalin Ladik, Tomaso Binga, Nat Marcus, Bryana Fritz, Hanne Lippard, and Patrizia Vicinelli, and is presented as an adjunct to "The Weight of Concrete," a retrospective exhibition of the work of Ezio Gribaudo.

The Weight of the Tongue - Grazer Kunstverein The Weight of the Tongue is a sound program that is presented in the framework of The Weight of the Concrete by Ezio Gribaudo.

I've served as director or co-director of the Performance and Interactive Media Arts (PIMA) MFA program for the majority of my eighteen years at Brooklyn College, and I'm tremendously proud of what's emerged from this unique program, in which student work is produced collaboratively and most of the required courses are team-taught by faculty from multiple departments. Thus I'm happy to welcome in my stead incoming co-directors Professors Jennifer McCoy and John Jannone, who have taught in the program from its inception, and I look forward to the new ideas that they'll bring to PIMA. For more info on the program, please visit http://www.brooklyn.cuny.edu/.../interd.../graduate/pima.php