Piet-Jan van Rossum with Paul Clipson (Photos by Louie Metzner)

Subtwine – Entwine’s speakeasy-like downstairs space that has hosted musical-artists-in-residence such as Toucan (as profiled in the New York Times), video art exhibitions curated by CoWorkers Projects— for a limited time is home to the West Village’s only ongoing experimental sound art event, KINEMATIC Thursdays. Presented by Yulia Topchiy of CoWorker Projects, Kinematic Thursdays is curated by Helen Homan Wu of Opalnest. This is such a unique series of events blending video art, experimental music and sound art that I asked Helen for a bit of the backstory.

Noveller

Heike Baranowsky 'Monfahrt' (courtesy of Galerie Barbara Weiss, Berlin)

Helen founded Opalnest to provide exposure for artists — artists who work with time-based media — that do not necessarily fit into the typical art gallery structure here in the U.S.  She explains that in European cities like Berlin, interdisciplinary contemporary art such as sound art is a robust, thriving genre regularly reviewed and written about by theorists in the same manner of the traditional fine art disciplines of painting or sculpture. Continue Reading More »

"Shared Frequencies"

Kabir Carter is a performance and installation artist based in NY. His work could be described as an eloquent study on the interactions and interpolations between sound, space and the body.  I was introduced to his work while doing research for the book Transmission Arts: Artists and Airwaves and I was intrigued by the physicality of his creative method as well as his attentiveness to the spaces he uses for his work.  Kabir Carter will be performing tomorrow Tuesday, October 18th, at the Transmission Arts: Artists and Airwaves book celebration at Issue Project Room.

"Report"

When did you start to develop a sensibility about space in all its different manifestations (public, private, indoors and outdoors). What was the first interaction/experiment or project that sparked this idea in your head and consequently in your work?

What set me to actively consider space in my own work was Shared Frequencies. Several years ago, I received a grant to go out on New York City sidewalks and set up a loose array of radio scanners, signal routers, and analog synthesizer modules atop a pair of folding tables. My first few realizations of the work required me to rethink my relationship to sound in space on the fly. Continue Reading More »

Photos: Gabriella Radujko

In an extraordinary performance of “Inuksuit” at the Park Avenue Armory in New York, composer John Luther Adams turned noise into “site-determined” music.  Describing the Armory as an environment like no other, Adams accepted the challenge of scaling a performance, which originally premiered outdoors at the Banff Centre in the Canadian Rockies, for the “pristine emptiness” of the 55,000 square foot Wade Thompson Drill Hall. Continue Reading More »