Performance and Interactive Media Arts (PIMA)

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

Pleased to shout from the rooftops that "Braintrust of Fiends and Werewolves," a first-time duo album by Alan Courtis and David Grubbs, is available for pre-order from Ryley Walker's Husky Pants label -- out Sept 8 -- with the title track now streaming:

https://huskypantsrecords.bandcamp.com/album/braintrust-of-fiends-and-werewolves

Here's the scoop:

Alan Courtis & David Grubbs, Braintrust of Fiends and Werewolves

On Braintrust of Fiends and Werewolves the Buenos Aires-based Alan Courtis—composer and artist, Reynols mainstay, prolific collaborator—enters the studio in Brooklyn with David Grubbs, himself in unprecedented form after a wild run of duos with Ryley Walker, Manuel Mota, and Jan St. Werner. Anyone who’s scratched the surface of Alan’s discography knows he’s a monster guitarist (dig, for example, his duo with Tetuzi Akiyama), but also a soulfully sensitive monster guitarist. Evidently those endless hours of playing guitar while watching television in 2020 did Grubbs good—like Erik Satie deciding in middle age to study medieval music. If Grubbs formerly was a quintessential songwriter surrounded by improvisers, now it seems he just plays.

Here’s how David describes the session: “Alan was in town and we went for it. We had shared a bill before, had listened to one another’s work forever, but never had the opportunity to pick up instruments and go at it. The pandemic made me take seriously the fact that we live more than 5,000 miles apart, so don’t assume that chances will always come again. I was amazed by the sounds that Alan squeezed out of a junior-sized Squier Strat (exactly the kind that Loren Connors plays now) his brother scored for him for ease of travel. He’s always ready to go with whatever he has at hand—that’s part of his vision. The miracle of the recording studio suited us well; each time we stopped and started again it was a different gig, a different situation. Even after laying down a couple of hours of recordings, we could have kept going and going.”

The pieces on Braintrust of Fiends and Werewolves range from spontaneous pop and earworm music to monolithic riffing to acoustic tracery to distortion texture study to delicately hypnotic balancing act. Stunning cover artwork by Graham Lambkin sets the tone for the session.

Braintrust Of Fiends And Werewolves, by Alan Courtis & David Grubbs 6 track album

Marvelous feature on PIMA graduate Andrew Goldberg on the occasion of his new full-time position at University of Arts London’s (UAL) Wimbledon College of Arts:

Ph.D. in hand, longtime theater director starts a second act A 2022 graduate turns from the stage to the lecture hall.

The final PIMA thesis performance for this year takes place next weekend -- recommended!

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DO 🍆 DREAM OF ELECTRIC 🍑?
retro-futurist robo-q***r variety show

ONE NIGHT ONLY!
Saturday May 13th
Life World BK - RSVP for address
$10, doors @ 7:30

Featuring performances by
Choreo Horror
Miss Olithea
Blu Morpho
hole-god Grim
Blaque Fridae
VHS Activism Archive
and more!

Do [Eggplant] Dream of Electric [Peach]? is a retro-futurist robo-clown variety hour exploring digital nostalgia and q***r collective memory. CHOREO HORROR returns from 1000 years ahead, bringing with her unearthed future folk songs and memories long digitized, played and pause and record and rewind -fast forward: What does future memory look like? What becomes of the corporeal cyborg and her outsourced memory machinery? Where will her hyper-mutating digital appendages go? Who will sing the new body electric? Will her robotic heart go on? But I thought the old lady dropped it into the ocean in the end…

Well baby, CHOREO HORROR went down and got it for you!!

Tix: https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSeENjTlx6etMCFRVhEs9SaAdTqSanW0xw11YD7szHnb9r8ymQ/viewform

Sound sculptures by Jesse McFadden as part of his MFA thesis exhibition for Brooklyn College’s PIMA program.

Second-year PIMA student Jesse McFadden will present his thesis project New American Gothic this Saturday, May 6 at the Living Gallery (1094 Broadway, Brooklyn):

Schedule:

New American Gothic is a collection of sculptures that make sound.

They will be available for viewing all day Saturday May 6th, 1pm-10pm.

There will be an activation of the space and performance of Electroacoustic music at 7pm.

About the work:

Using synthesizers, field recordings, musical instruments, ceramics, stones, and everyday objects in combination with motors and sensors, Jesse McFadden creates a dynamic bricolage of work that is equal parts sculptural, kinetic, and sonic.

Playing into both humankind’s socialized and instinctual perceptions of sound, Jesse alludes to feelings of grief, trauma, and healing through the layering of sounds coming from the sculptural systems playing together as an ensemble. New American Gothic addresses our perceptions of the passing of time and natural change, and the processing of and reconciliation with loss of love and life. Jesse highlights materials from or pertaining to the earth or ground including clay, stones, and more.

About the artist:

Jesse McFadden is a composer, performer, and interdisciplinary artist from Providence, Rhode Island.

Jesse pushes the limit of traditional synthesized sounds, emphasizing sonic destruction and deconstruction of electronic music and exposure of process as he transitions in and out of minimalist and maximalist moments of his compositions by using a modular synthesizer and sampler performance system of his own design.

Out of an interest in exploring the spiritual and psychological breadth of the sonic experience as its own medium beyond a musical framework, and replacing the performer, Jesse also develops systems for interactive and immersive sound installation with synthesizers, field recordings, musical instruments, and everyday objects in combination with computing and robotics technologies such as sensors and motors.

By designing and engineering these systems, Jesse creates auditory experiences that interact with environment and audience while exploring visceral and emotional perception of sound as it pertains to the human condition and humankind’s ancestral and instinctual sensory perception of the environment.

Students in the Sonic Arts MFA program at Brooklyn College are doing tremendous work. This Friday at 411 Kent there's a free concert showcasing a smattering of it -- recommended!

Congratulations to PIMA graduate Jared Mezzocchi on his second Obie Award:

https://tdps.umd.edu/news/jared-mezzocchi-wins-second-obie-award

Jared Mezzocchi is part of a team recognized for digital+virtual+hybrid production on the play “Russian Troll Farm,” which he co-directed. The play was produced in partnership with TheatreSquared, TheaterWorks Hartford and The Civilians, and the team also includes writer Sarah Gancher and Mezzocchi’s co-director Elizabeth Williamson.

“Russian Troll Farm” was a digital production inspired by the Russian trolling campaign on social media that was said to have boosted Donald Trump's successful run for the White House in 2016.

Mezzocchi noted that the production stemmed from research completed at the University of Maryland for TDPS’ 2020 production of “She Kills Monsters” and involved numerous TDPS alumni and faculty. Andrés Poch (M.F.A. '22) and Taylor Verrett (M.F.A. '22) worked on media design, and alum Peter Leibold (M.F.A. '19) and faculty members Amith Chandrashaker and Andrew Cissna worked on lighting design. An in-person production of the show is currently underway.

In 2017, Mezzocchi won an Obie Award for projection design on “Vietgone” at Manhattan Theatre Club.

Read more about the 66th Obie Award Recipients in Playbill: www.playbill.com/article/winners-of-66th-obie-awards-celebrating-2020-2022-seasons-announced

Winners of 66th Obie Awards, Celebrating 2020-2022 Seasons, Announced The awards honor Off-Broadway and Off-Off-Broadway theatre, and the Broadway-bound Fat Ham reigned supreme.