Jamie Stewart (Xiu Xiu) tossed cymbals, banged gongs, and blew bird whistles into a microphone on Friday night at the Berkeley Art Museum as part four of the Gatherings series curated by David Wilson. Stewart aimed to create sounds inspired by “the night, animal calls, and quietness.” His performance was completely chaotic seeming to be propelled by nothing more than Stewart’s impulses creating an animalistic element.  The crashing cymbals, that even Stewart plugged his ears for, induced a shock that hastened heart rates, increased anxiety levels and seemed to put its listeners on edge. Upon closing my eyes a primal feeling arose inside me as if I were an animal being hunted in the night.

Stewart’s performance “ask(ed) us to fill in the (quiet) spaces with our own imagination and observation” (David Wilson). However, Stewart’s performance was saturated with sound, whether it was the shuffling of his shoes  in the microphone or the faint and dying vibrations of a gong. These vacant and silent spaces may have strengthened the performance by giving a stronger juxtaposition to the noises he was creating. That being said, the performance lacked the artist’s statement which has enriched the previous Gatherings. Without the artist explanation it created confusion and an incompleteness to the performance. Stewart’s performance brought a potent experience to his audience, but fell short of an explanation.

]]> http://artcards.cc/review/the-hunt-a-lte-friday-gathering-at-bampfa/1358/feed/ 0 http://artcards.cc/review/sleeping-in-public/1122/ http://artcards.cc/review/sleeping-in-public/1122/#comments Fri, 30 Jul 2010 04:26:50 +0000 Megan Seelie http://artcards.cc/review/?p=1122

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 effect is created by situating speakers on all levels of the building that spill and mix sound into the echoing void below. This creates a soft swelling ominous noise that shifts and changes as you move through the museum. An underwater effect was created by projecting light onto a cluster of silver streamers casting dim shimmers onto various parts of the museum walls. Harris certainly put her crowd into a sleepy dreamworld and created an open-ended environment letting the audience experience and explore their own rendition of sleep.

Photos courtesy of Kanoa Zimmerman and Mariko Reed