A tall slight man carried a blank sign through the sea of seated people silencing them in his wake. Then Liz Harris, of the music project Grouper, trickled through the crowd and the sounds began cascading down from the cement balconies that comprise the University of Berkeley’s Art Museum. Grouper’s installation performance piece SLEEP is part two of four Friday night ‘Gatherings’ curated by David Wilson at the Berkeley Art Museum. In this performance Liz Harris uses tape-collage, live instruments and the cavernous architecture of the Berkeley Art Museum to create a ‘downward-pulling current, lulling with the hiss and resonating pulse of watery sound and light’.
This week’s featured artist is an extended interview focusing on the work of multi-media visual artist Joshue Ott.
Joshue Ott is one of those innovative artists who visualizes new media in a broader spectrum. Having created superDraw, a platform in which he customized to become his visual instrument, along with multiDraw and Thicket, both interactive projects, Josh is constantly at the forefront. Working with soundscapes, his distinct style of visuals experiments with the basic qualities of form, texture and movement. Since 2005 Josh has been creating live visuals for numerous musicians and various performances around the world. I first experienced Josh’s work live at the 2010 Unsound Festival in New York. We had this conversation in his studio in Brooklyn where he lives with his wife and two children.
Helen Homan Wu: Okay, let’s talk about how you started superDraw. How long ago was it?
Joshue Ott: It was…years ago. Morgan Packard and Ezekiel Honig released Early Morning Migration and I played at the release party. It was some sort of debut. The first time I did superDraw live in front of people and called it superDraw.
This Saturday’s Warm Up event at PS1 MoMA will be a good one. The line-up includes Animal Collective, Blondes, Prince Rama, Oneohtrix Point Never, CFCF, and Babe Rainbow. The set starts from 2PM to 9PM. See the full schedule here.
Beautiful churches always stop me on my track. Situated on a peaceful residential street, the Christ Church of Cobble Hill may not necessarily stand out next to all the brownstones, but the postcard that said “Playthings Of The Gods” caught my eye. This seductive title drew me to go see one of the shows on Thursday. Produced by the Vertical Player Repertory or VPR, the “Playthings Of The Gods” series is the vision of producer/director Judith Barnes. I had little idea of what to expect for the show except for what’s given in its title–Love’s Labyrinth: Music of the Spanish Baroque. It was a gracious excuse for me to take a respite from the heat and chaos. The music was performed by Anima Baroque Music Ensemble featuring a soprano singer. Thirty minutes into the performance, my mind began to drift to a different time and place. Or as my friend described it, the whole experience was timeless and placeless.
Yesterday was Mr. Marshall McLuhan’s birthday. Anyone who read the cult classic The Medium is the Massage: An Inventory of Effects knows that Marshall McLuhan is the godfather of philosophical media analysis. He did deep studies about how the media could effect an individual, and although those theories were written in the 60s it can easily by applied to what’s happening now. This video interview is a good introduction to Mr. McLuhan’s work and would perhaps inspire us to question our own role in today’s machine-obsessed world.
I’m really excited about launching this new “featured artists” series as it will bring a different focus on Artcards Review. There are so many talented artists here in New York, and it’s usually the fresh and emerging who need to voice out, which is where we will focus the spotlight. Our first Featured Artist of the Week is Kevin Cyr. For this fabulous encounter between Kevin and I, we met at his latest show entitled “Gimme Shelter,” a group exhibition currently at Mixed Greens Gallery.
When I first saw Kevin’s Camper Kart I was as excited as a child walking into a toy store. Not quite hippy, nor scientifically geeky, this installation hit me in a profoundly personal way. The exterior is only a fraction of the entire piece. First the combination of a shopping cart with a Chinese-Mongolianesque shaped tent is one of the craziest juxtapositions I’ve seen. Then reality starts to seep away as I peek inside the little windows and imagine a life inside this romantic place.
The anticipated LUSH LIFE opened this past Thursday in nine galleries spanning through the Lower East Side. The curators of this project Franklin Evans and Omar Lopez-Chahoud cleverly used the novel written by Richard Price as a connecting thread. Each of the nine galleries represent a different chapter in Lush Life (2008), which is a psychologically gripping tale about a murder investigation and concerning the gentrification of lower Manhattan. Basically it reveals some of the ugliness behind today’s yuppified Lower East Side. This is the neighborhood where I first landed as child, so I can definitely relate to those changes first hand. Now that the bodegas, hosiery and leather shops have moved on to be replaced by pricey wine bars and boutiques, it’s nice to see a new wave of galleries coming in. Which brings in a whole different dynamic to the area, and you can feel it while walking down the streets at any time of the day, it’s such a unique mixture of energies in the LES that is unlike anywhere else, because it has gone through so many layers of changes, just like those stickers plastered everywhere. And this exhibition is unique in a sense that these galleries have created a sort of ensemble, which attracted a flood of people, some who had never been to any of those galleries before. Of course the artists and the work matters just as much, but what’s more remarkable is the unity of the event as a whole–the bigger picture. Perhaps it is what the downtown galleries need right now, to generate some action, especially since those hungry sharks in the bigger art market usually gets all the attention. If you haven’t seen the show yet I advise starting from Chapter One: Whistle at Sue Scott Gallery. Closing dates vary depending on the gallery, but here’s the list: Sue Scott Gallery, On Stellar Rays, Invisble-Exports, Lehmann Maupin, Y Gallery, Collette Blanchard, Salon 94, Scaramouche, Eleven Rivington. Don’t be overwhelmed, there is a free map that you can pick up at any of those galleries. (more pics after the jump…)
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