Thursday, October 7 at 8pm.
Sublime Frequencies Film Screening
& Robert Millis Solo Performance
with vinyl interludes by Angela Sawyer
Presented by End of an Empire.
$5-$10 sliding scale.
Robert Millis is a founding member of the influential Seattle unit Climax Golden Twins and a frequent contributor to the Sublime Frequencies and Dust-to-Digital record labels. His previous films include Phi Ta Khon: Ghosts of Isan and My Friend Rain and he was the co-author of Victrola Favorites, released via Dust-to-Digital in 2008.
For his upcoming tour, Millis will screen a new film in progress about his recent trip to India..
This WORLD is UNREAL like a SNAKE in a ROPE.
55 minutes.
A collage of sights and sounds from the eternal never-ending collage that is INDIA: Hindu trance ceremonies, free jazz nagaswaram improvisations, impossibly loud cities, processions, devotion, color, abstractions, music and more. India is impossible to know, but offered here is one perspective, subjective and flawed, as it should be, hanging by a thread, captured live and in the moment. Not quite ethnography. Not quite documentary.
Here’s a preview: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1iIpPPccNVc
Additionally, Millis will perform solo, airing old murder ballads, free hillbilly field recording, confused raga guitar meandering, half remembered drones, suspended animation and more!
www.etuderecords.com/robertmillis.htm
www.climaxgoldentwins.com
www.subimefrequencies.com
Spectacle
17 Edinboro Street #3
October 5th 2010, 8pm.
Suggested donation $4
This program features three filmmakers whose respective works explore a variety of environments as well as the formal properties of the film medium. Though working independently, their films culminate in an examination of the film material as a true document of past and present. Each artist calls attention to the process of separation and recombination through the use of discarded View-master cells, appropriated 16mm nature footage, and a kaleidoscopic amalgam of the new and old world.
Steve Cossman
“HHOOWWLL”, 16mm, color, sound, 7 min, 2010
Shot on a Kodak Cine II special effects camera, a collection of recognizable masks are captured and layered on film. The screaming colors fuse together in a choir of haunting forms, slipping and melting on the screens surface.
“CRUSHER”, video transferred to 16mm, silent, 11 min, 2010
An unabridged photograph translated from its still print. Read left to right, pixel by pixel, CRUSHER mechanically sequences single color as single frame creating organic waves of color.
“TUSSLEMUCLE” 16mm, color, sound, 5 min, 2007-2009
The work presented is a reflection on humanity’s ecological relationship and the ritual of restoration. The violent pulse speaks with a sense of urgency and chaotic struggle while the hypnotic arrangement keeps us in blinding awe us to its condition. TUSSLEMUSCLE is composed of 7,000 single frames, which were appropriated from view-master reel cells. Each frame was hand-spliced to create a linear film-strip.
Ross Nugent
“tonal tide”, 16mm, color, sound, 9 min, 2009
This camera-less film was conceived as a darkroom performance to expose the potential and vulnerability of the color film stock at hand. Both the image and sound were created by flashing raw stock; a peculiar pattern emerged in the soundtrack area as light was scattered by the edge of the film base.
“Spillway Study/ Carpe Diez”, 16mm X 3, b&w + color gels, sound, 8 min, 2010
This three-projector piece was created as a color separation project using 16mm Kodachrome nature photography footage from the late ‘70s as its source. The original was optically printed onto three strands and arranged to simultaneously abstract and call attention to the forces at hand. Using a primary color filter on each projector (R-G-B) and some precise hand-jiving, I combine the images and tease out a range colors.
Fern Silva
“Sahara Mosaic”, 16mm, color, sound, 10 min, 2009
An orientalist kaleidoscope that constitutes a geographically complex yet cinematic whole. From Egypt to Las Vegas: the old and the new world are reflected and doubled in this experimental travelogue.
Bios
Steve Cossman received his BFA in Sculpture from Albright College and went on to study Animation in the Czech Republic at FAMU. After returning to the United States, he worked as artist assistant to John Chamberlain from 2006-2009 during which his focus turned primarily to film and video work. Currently he lives and works in Brooklyn, NY. There he is founder/director of Mono No Aware, an ‘annual exhibition of expanded cinema’ showcasing contemporary artists who incorporate live projections as part of their work. Cossman believes that ‘time is constantly moving within a framework of units and that this irrepressible motion is the nexus of human experience’. Working to create a resonating interval, he often re-structures a familiar sequence within a patterned visual language causing the viewer to give thought to established perceptional relationships. Recent film screenings of his work include Ann Arbor Film Festival, Chicago Underground Film Festival, Milwaukee Underground Film Festival, Seattle International Film Festival, and VideoEx in Zurich. His work can be found in the collections of the University of Seattle, WA, University of Hartford Art School, and The Len Lye Foundation, New Zealand. A solo show of his video works will be held in March 2011 at Trinity College, CT.
Ross Nugent hails from wilds of Western Pennsylvania. He earned a BA in Film Studies at the University of Pittsburgh and studied film and video production at Pittsburgh Filmmakers, where he began working in media exhibition in 2003. Ross served as the Exhibition Coordinator from 2005-2008, and matriculated to the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee to pursue an MFA in Film. He is also the Program Manager of the UWM Union Theatre, the Faculty Advisor for the Milwaukee Underground Film Festival, and an instructor in the Film Dept.
His film, video, installation, and sculptural work is rooted in using process-oriented techniques of film production, including contact and optical printing, and examines nostalgia and decay as mediated through cinema. Poetic gestures emerge through hand-manipulation of film material, which serves as the impetus for many of his artistic endeavors. His current work includes live cinema projects. Exhibitions of these multi-projector performances include The Museum of Modern Art (NYC) as part of a group show utilizing Analyst projectors, Mono No Aware (NYC), and recently at the Onion City Experimental Film and Video Festival (Chicago).
Since 2005, Fern Silva has been an active filmmaker whose personal journeys and impulsery disposition give rise to his visionary process. He has created a body of film, video, and projection work that conveys a congruent existence through the aesthetics of reflections and detriments within controlled microcosms. His work has been screened and performed at various festivals, galleries, and cinematheques including International Film Festival Rotterdam, New York Film Festival, Anthology Film Archive, Images Festival, IndieLisboa International Film Festival, Bangkok Experimental Film Festival, Biennale Bandits-Mages Festival, Roulette Gallery, Millennium Film Workshop, White Box Gallery, 119 Gallery, and P.S.1. Fern Silva is from central Connecticut, he received a BFA from Massachusetts College of Art and his MFA from Bard College. Fern will be screening two works as part of this years Views from the Avant-Garde.
Friday September 24, 9pm.
Byron Westbrook (b. 1977) is an artist working with the dynamic quality of physical space using multi-channel sound and images. His audio/video performances under the name CORRIDORS involve the distribution of processed instrumental and environmental recordings through a multi-channel environment with a focus on energy distilled from sound and light. He has presented at venues such as Tonic, Roulette, The Stone, Diapason Gallery …, Issue Project Room, Experimental Intermedia, Exit Art Gallery, (NYC), Les Voûtes (FR), Wien Konzerthaus (Austria), Non-Event (Boston), Sonic Circuits Festival (DC), Institute of Intermedia (CZ). He has shared performance bills with Tony Conrad, Phill Niblock, Jandek, Sawako, Heribert Friedl, Stefan Tcherepnin, Maria Chavez, Alessandro Bosetti, Jason Kahn, Jon Mueller, Tetuzi Akiyama, among many others. Westbrook has also collaborated with Paris-based composer and former Kitchen curator Rhys Chatham in the drone metal group Essentialist (Table of the Elements), as well as performed in the ensembles of Phill Niblock, Rhys Chatham, Glenn Branca, Duane Pitre, David Watson and Jonathan Kane. He has worked as technical coordinator of Phill Niblock’s Experimental Intermedia Foundation since 2004. In 2007, he was the recipient of the Jerome Foundation Emerging Artists Commission through Roulette Intermedium. In 2008 he was an artist in residence at Hotel Pupik at Sclhoss Schrattenberg. A cd will be released in Fall 2010 on Sedimental Records. He currently lives and works in Brooklyn, NY
http://www.myspace.com/corridors
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ocsxR3L5wng http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qr7nXhXJMJk
“To call Byron Westbrook a composer of breathtakingly beautiful ambient pieces and drone works is reasonably accurate but painfully reductive; Westbrook, whose work under the name Corridors has involved acoustic instruments, field recordings, spatialized playback and lighting, is the kind of artist for whom the old, mostly disused term intermedia was coined.” -TimeOut New York
Mike Wexler is a self-taught guitarist and singer whose long-form songs incorporate extended instrumental fingerstyle guitar passages, a post-lyric lyrical sensibility and the desire to reconcile the demands of song structure to those of recent investigations into the nature of acoustic phenomena à la the spectral school of composition. His musical inquiries probe the progression, the drone, the single tone as a complex of sounds–in short, to make of the tension between harmonic movement and stasis something more than an equilibrium. Wexler also draws inspiration from songwriting auteurs past and present who bring to bear the influence of forward looking musicians and writers on their work (Scott Walker, Robert Wyatt and Annette Peacock spring to mind as spiritually kindred, although not particularly apt as comparisons).
http://www.myspace.com/mikewexler
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iMKd-CcWSbs
Presented by End of an Empire
UNFACT
UnFact is the solo bass project of David Wm. Sims. Using electric bass guitars and an array of effects and looping devices, unFact creates improvised instrumental canvases of noise and melody that encompass fragile shards of memory and harrowing cascades of chthonic fury. Sims is known for his work in the rock bands Scratch Acid and the Jesus Lizard. He has toured as the bassist for Sparklehorse In 2009, Sims participated …in the 200-guitar ensemble that performed Rhys Chatham’s “A Crimson Grail” at the Lincoln Center. He is currently collaborating on recording projects with various artists including Big Sir, Paul Amlehn, and Teledubgnosis. Sims lives in New York City and is a recovering Certified Public Accountant.
http://www.davidwmsims.com/
http://www.myspace.com/unfact
NOVELLER
Noveller is the solo project of Brooklyn-based guitarist and filmmaker Sarah Lipstate. Using looped guitar phrases, Lipstate creates an ecosystem of sound populated by colors and textures that parallel her 16mm hand-painted visuals. She has performed in Rhys Chatham’s Guitar Army, and as a member of Glenn Branca’s 100 guitar ensemble. In March 2008, Lipstate joined Brooklyn art-rock outfit Parts & Labor as their guitarist. She contributed to the band’s critically-acclaimed release Receivers and completed several U.S. and European tours before leaving the band in July 2009. Noveller has toured supporting Xiu Xiu, the Jesus Lizard, and Emeralds. Lipstate is currently working with Carla Bozulich (Evangelista) on an improvised duo release for No Fun Productions.
http://www.sarahlipstate.com/
http://www.myspace.com/noveller
ANIMAL HOSPITAL
Kevin Micka (Lives in Jamaica Plain)
http://www.myspace.com/animalhospital
Non-Event and Spectacle present
KOUHEI MATSUNAGA
(Raster-Noton/Monochrome Vision/Important Records)
with Ppalmm
KOUHEI MATSUNAGA makes music that ranges from harsh, blistering noise to beautifully abrasive techno. He grew up in Osaka, Japan, studied architecture, and listened to hardcore techno and rap music. He started making music of an abstract, experimental sort in 1992, releasing his first album on the legendary experimental techno label, Mille Plateaux. In the past he’s collaborated with artists like Merzbow, John Waterman, Asmus Tietchens, rlw, Rudolf eb.er, Anla Courtis, Greg Davis, Conrad Schnitzler, Lesser, Calros Giffoni, Mika Vainio (Pan Sonic), Mr Maloke (Puppetmastaz), Sean Booth (Autechre) and Sensational (ex Jungle Brothers). He also performs as NHK (with Toshio Munehiro) and as Internet Magic (with Max Turner). He currently lives in Berlin and Osaka.
PPALMM is Paul Morse. It is present tense sound. Live sounds differ from show to show. Each set is meant to be presented as a new aural texture, distinctly different from the last. It is our job to roll with the punches, in most facets of daily life. Change is embraced. Sounds collage from different origins to pulse, move, drone, absorb, reflect, warp, and brighten our days.
