Pauline Oliveros, Key Cage Notes
"Through Pauline Oliveros and Deep Listening
I finally know what harmony is...It's about the pleasure of making music."
--John Cage 1989
PAULINE OLIVEROS is a senior figure in contemporary American music. Her career spans fifty years of boundary dissolving music making. In the '50s she was part of a circle of iconoclastic composers, artists, poets gathered together in San Francisco. Recently awarded the John Cage award for 2012 from the Foundation of Contemporary Arts, Oliveros is Distinguished Research Professor of Music at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, Troy, NY, and Darius Milhaud Artist-in-Residence at Mills College. Oliveros has been as interested in finding new sounds as in finding new uses for old ones --her primary instrument is the accordion, an unexpected visitor perhaps to musical cutting edge, but one which she approaches in much the same way that a Zen musician might approach the Japanese shakuhachi. Pauline Oliveros' life as a composer, performer and humanitarian is about opening her own and others' sensibilities to the universe and facets of sounds. Since the 1960's she has influenced American music profoundly through her work with improvisation, meditation, electronic music, myth and ritual. Pauline Oliveros is the founder of "Deep Listening," which comes from her childhood fascination with sounds and from her works in concert music with composition, improvisation and electro-acoustics. Pauline Oliveros describes Deep Listening as a way of listening in every possible way to everything possible to hear no matter what you are doing. Such intense listening includes the sounds of daily life, of nature, of one's own thoughts as well as musical sounds. Deep Listening is my life practice," she explains, simply. Oliveros is founder of Deep Listening Institute, formerly Pauline Oliveros Foundation.
"Through Pauline Oliveros and Deep Listening
I finally know what harmony is...It's about the pleasure of making music."
--John Cage 1989
PAULINE OLIVEROS is a senior figure in contemporary American music. Her career spans fifty years of boundary dissolving music making. In the '50s she was part of a circle of iconoclastic composers, artists, poets gathered together in San Francisco. Recently awarded the John Cage award for 2012 from the Foundation of Contemporary Arts, Oliveros is Distinguished Research Professor of Music at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, Troy, NY, and Darius Milhaud Artist-in-Residence at Mills College. Oliveros has been as interested in finding new sounds as in finding new uses for old ones --her primary instrument is the accordion, an unexpected visitor perhaps to musical cutting edge, but one which she approaches in much the same way that a Zen musician might approach the Japanese shakuhachi. Pauline Oliveros' life as a composer, performer and humanitarian is about opening her own and others' sensibilities to the universe and facets of sounds. Since the 1960's she has influenced American music profoundly through her work with improvisation, meditation, electronic music, myth and ritual. Pauline Oliveros is the founder of "Deep Listening," which comes from her childhood fascination with sounds and from her works in concert music with composition, improvisation and electro-acoustics. Pauline Oliveros describes Deep Listening as a way of listening in every possible way to everything possible to hear no matter what you are doing. Such intense listening includes the sounds of daily life, of nature, of one's own thoughts as well as musical sounds. Deep Listening is my life practice," she explains, simply. Oliveros is founder of Deep Listening Institute, formerly Pauline Oliveros Foundation.
Allen S. Weiss “Ryōan-ji, Ryoanji, Where R = Ryoanji : On the Limits of Representation”
ALLEN S. WEISS is a writer, editor, translator, curator and playwright, and is the author and editor of 40 books in the
fields of performance theory, landscape architecture, gastronomy, sound art and experimental theater, including Phantasmic Radio (Duke); Breathless: Sound Recording, Disembodiment, and the Transformation of Lyrical Nostalgia (Wesleyan); and Varieties of Audio Mimesis: Musical Evocations of Landscape (Errant Bodies). He directed Theater of the Ears (a play for electronic marionette and the taped voice of Gregory Whitehead, based on the writings of Valère Novarina) and Danse Macabre (a marionette theater for the dolls of Michel Nedjar). He recently published his first novel, Le Livre bouffon (Le Seuil), and the gastronomic treatise, Autobiographie dans un chou farci (Mercure de France). He is now completing the second volume of his culinary autobiography, Métaphysique de la miette, as well as a book on Zen gardens, pottery and cuisine. He teaches in the Departments of Performance Studies and Cinema Studies at New York University.
ALLEN S. WEISS is a writer, editor, translator, curator and playwright, and is the author and editor of 40 books in the
fields of performance theory, landscape architecture, gastronomy, sound art and experimental theater, including Phantasmic Radio (Duke); Breathless: Sound Recording, Disembodiment, and the Transformation of Lyrical Nostalgia (Wesleyan); and Varieties of Audio Mimesis: Musical Evocations of Landscape (Errant Bodies). He directed Theater of the Ears (a play for electronic marionette and the taped voice of Gregory Whitehead, based on the writings of Valère Novarina) and Danse Macabre (a marionette theater for the dolls of Michel Nedjar). He recently published his first novel, Le Livre bouffon (Le Seuil), and the gastronomic treatise, Autobiographie dans un chou farci (Mercure de France). He is now completing the second volume of his culinary autobiography, Métaphysique de la miette, as well as a book on Zen gardens, pottery and cuisine. He teaches in the Departments of Performance Studies and Cinema Studies at New York University.
Presenters and performers
G. DOUGLAS BARRETT’s work considers music as part of a critical arts
practice in which performance and conceptuality figure as integral
components. Drawing equally from the contemporary gallery arts and
the performing arts traditions, he has exhibited, performed and
published throughout North America and Europe. In 2009 he received a
DAAD research grant to Berlin. Barrett has obtained advanced degrees
from CalArts (MFA) and the SUNY at Buffalo (PhD).
ROBERT BEAN is an artist, writer and teacher living in Halifax, Nova
Scotia. Born and raised in Saskatchewan, he moved to Nova Scotia in
1976 to pursue a career in contemporary art and education. He
obtained a BFA from the Nova Scotia College of Art and Design (NSCAD
University) in 1978, and an MA in Cultural Studies from the University of
Leeds, England, in 1999. He is currently an Professor at NSCAD
University. Bean has exhibited his work in solo and group exhibitions in
Canada, the United States, Europe, South America and New Zealand.
Commissions include the Royal Architectural Institute of Canada and the
Toronto Photographers Workshop (Gallery TPW). He has published
articles on photography, art and culture, written catalogue essays and
undertaken curatorial projects. Bean has served on peer review juries
for the Canada Council for the Arts and has received grants and awards
from the Canada Council for the Arts, the Ontario Arts Council and the
Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada. Bean’s
work is in public and private collections, including the Nova Scotia Art
Bank, the Canada Council Art Bank, the Art Gallery of Nova Scotia and
the Canadian Museum of Contemporary Photography.
BARBARA BROWNING teaches in the Department of Performance
Studies, Tisch School of the Arts, New York University. She is the author
of two academic books (Samba: Resistance in Motion and Infectious
Rhythm: Metaphors of Contagion and the Spread of African Culture),
and three ficto-critical novels (Who Is Mr. Waxman?, an audionovel, and
The Correspondence Artist and I’m Trying to Reach You). She also makes
music and dance videos for YouTube.
ANTJE BUDDE M.A., PhD (Humboldt-University Berlin) taught previously
at Humboldt-University in Berlin and the Academy for Film and
Television “Konrad Wolf” (HFF) in Potsdam-Babelsberg, Germany. From
1990 to 1991 and 1994 to 1995 she conducted research and artistic
projects in Beijing, China (Central Academy of Drama and National
Experimental Theatre Company), followed by several short study trips
to P.R. China. Prof. Budde works both in the academic and the artistic
field of performance studies. From 2005 to 2011, she was crossappointed
at UC Drama and the Centre for Comparative Literature.
Since 2012, she is a full faculty member of the Centre for Drama,
Theatre and Performance Studies and an affiliated faculty member of
the Centre for Comparative Literature, Cinema Studies and the Joint
Initiative in German and European Studies at the Munk Centre.
She published her first book in 2002: Antje Budde/ Joachim Fiebach
(Ed.) Herrschaft des Symbolischen. Bewegungsformen gesellschaftlicher
Theatralität in EUROPA –ASIEN – AFRIKA (The power/ruling of symbols.
Processes of societal theatricality in Europe, Asia, Africa; Vistas Verlag,
Berlin, 2002). This book was followed by her recent publication: Theater
und Experiment in der VR China. Kulturhistorische Bedingungen, Begriff,
Geschichte, Institution und Praxis (Theatre and Experiment in P.R. China.
Socio-Cultural conditions, concept, history, institution and practice;
VDM Verlag Dr. Müller. 2008. 780 p.).
DAVID CECCHETTO is Assistant Professor of New Media (History and
Criticism) in the Faculty of Liberal Arts & Sciences at OCAD
University. David has published articles in Theory, Culture and Society,
Mosaic: a Journal for the Interdisciplinary Study of Literature and Radical
Musicology. He has also authored a chapter in Transdisciplinary Digital
Art: Sound, Vision, and the New Screen (Springer, 2008),
coedited Collision: Interarts Practice and Research (CSP, 2009), and has
a monograph titled Humanesis: Sound, Discourse and Technological
Posthumanism forthcoming on the Posthumanities series of the
University of Minnesota Press. As an artist working with sound, David’s
work has been presented in Canada, the United States, the United
Kingdom, Mexico and Russia.
JENN COLE is a PhD candidate at the University of Toronto’s Centre for
Drama, Theatre and Performance Studies. She is a visual artist,
contemporary dancer and choreographer. She revels in collaborative
and site-specific work, especially with musicians and sculptors new to
dance. Her academic interests lie in inarticulacy and the force of
stammering, as well as in 19th-century cultural history and the
performances of hysteria at the Salpêtrière.
DARREN COPELAND is a soundscape composer, radio artist, sound
designer and concert producer. He has studied electroacoustic
composition under Barry Truax (Simon Fraser University) and Dr. Jonty
Harrison (University of Birmingham). His concert works have received
mentions in competitions (Vancouver New Music, Luigi Russolo,
Hungarian Radio, La Muse en Circuit and Phonurgia Nova) and appeared
on compilation CD releases (Storm of Drones, Radius #3, DISContact I &
II, Lieu – Non Lieu and Soundscape Vancouver). Rendu Visible, a CD
devoted to his work, is available on the empreintes DIGITALes label.
In addition to composing, he has written articles about listening and
environmental sounds for Electronic Cottage, Musicworks, Contact!
(CEC), Soundscape: Journal of Acoustic Ecology, and The Journal for
Electroacoustic Music (Sonic Arts Network) as well as CD, concert and
book reviews for Musicworks, the Whole Note, and Soundscape: The
Journal of Acoustic Ecology. As a producer and administrator, fond
memories lie with Wireless Graffiti, a live-to-air radio extravaganza in
1993 co-produced by Rumble Theatre and Vancouver Pro Musica. After
active histories with Vancouver Pro Musica, the Standing Wave
Ensemble, and the Communauté électroacoustique
Canadienne/Canadian Electroacoustic Community (CEC) from 1990 to
1996, he now serves on the board of the Canadian Association for
Sound Ecology (CASE) and is the Artistic Director for New Adventures in
Sound Art.
JOE CULPEPPER is a PhD candidate in Comparative Literature at the
University of Toronto. His dissertation is titled “Reception and
Adaptation: Magic Tricks, Mysteries, Con Games”. His latest article
“Births, Deaths, and Reincarnations of Reception Theory” appears in
Frame 24.1 (May 2011). His most recent magic performance “Exits and
Entrances” took place at New Gendai Workstation in Toronto
(November 2011).
JACOB GALLAGHER-ROSS is a doctoral candidate in the dramaturgy and
dramatic criticism department at the Yale School of Drama. An associate
editor of Theater, his essays have appeared in TDR, PAJ, TheatreForum,
Theater and Canadian Theatre Review. He is a guest co-editor of “Digital
Dramaturgies,” Theater’s special issue on theater and new media. He is
a regular contributor to the Village Voice’s theater section, and works as
a dramaturg at the Stratford Shakespeare Festival.
CLAIRE GALLANT is from Halifax, Nova Scotia. As a musician and chef
she is interested in the intersection between performance and food. A
cellist since the age of eight, she received a BMus from Wilfred Laurier
University in 2003 and an MMus in Cello Performance from the Royal
Northern College of Music in Manchester in 2004. Subsequently, as a
freelance cellist, she has been drawn to classical and popular repertoire.
Her group, The String Quartet Collective, was Young Quartet in
Residence at the 2007 Scotia Festival of Music. She has also performed
with bands and solo musicians, including The Heavy Blinkers, Anne
Murray, Matt Mays, hey rosetta! and Kanye West.
As a chef, Claire apprenticed under Eric Tucker at the renowned
Millennium Restaurant in San Francisco. She has run her own catering
company and published a vegan cookbook. In Toronto she worked at
Fressen Restaurant as well as being a stagiaire at Colborne Lane. Most
recently she worked under Chef Dennis Johnston at FID Resto, a
critically lauded locavore restaurant in Halifax.
DAVID GRUBBS is Associate Professor in the Conservatory of Music at
Brooklyn College, CUNY, has released 11 solo albums and appeared on
more than 150 commercially-released recordings. He is known for his
cross-disciplinary collaborations with writers such as Susan Howe and
Rick Moody, and with visual artists such as Anthony McCall, Angela
Bulloch and Stephen Prina. His work has been presented at the Solomon
R. Guggenheim Museum, MoMA, the Tate Modern, and the Centre
Pompidou. Grubbs is currently completing the book Records Ruin the
Landscape: John Cage, The Sixties, and Sound Recording for Duke
University Press.
PETER JAEGER is a Reader in the Department of English and Creative
Writing at Roehampton University in London. He is the author of six
books, including ABC of Reading TRG: Steve McCaffery, bpNichol and the
Toronto Research Group (2000), Prop (2007), and The Persons (2011).
His next book, a critical monograph on the interface of Buddhist
philosophy and ecological concerns in the work of John Cage, is set to
be published by Continuum Press next year.
MATT JONES is a writer, dramaturg and doctoral student at the Centre
for Drama, Theatre and Performance Studies at the University of
Toronto. He holds a BA and an MA in English literature from Concordia
University in Montreal. His research concerns problems of theatrical
representation of the War on Terror and his latest play, Death Clowns in
Guantanamo Bay, will be staged at the Drama Centre in March 2013.
EUNSU KANG is an international media artist from Korea. She and her
collaborators, Diana Garcia-Snyder and Donald Craig, create interactive
spaces that embrace people, penetrating and transforming them using
interactive video, spatialized sound, site-specific installation and
performing art idioms. Kang earned her PhD in Digital Arts and
Experimental Media at the University of Washington. Kang is currently
an Assistant Professor of New Media at the University of Akron in Ohio,
USA. Her team, an interdisciplinary group consisting of a media artist
(Eunsu Kang), a choreographer/dancer (Diana Garcia-Snyder) and a
software developer/composer (Donald Craig), seeks to know how we
communicate with a space, how we connect into it, and how we and a
space reshape each other.
MARCIN KEDZIOR is an experimental musician, dancer and artist who
studied art and architecture in England, Italy and China. Kedzior has
exhibited widely and has performed in dozens of shows setting up
collective spatial experiments, most recently as part of AIM Toronto. He
received a BFA from Queen’s University and a MArch from the
University of Toronto.
ALEX MCLEAN was born in Montreal and raised in Dartmouth, Nova
Scotia. He is the director of Halifax’s Zuppa Theatre Co., with whom he
has cowritten and directed 11 original shows, most recently Five Easy
Steps (to the end of the world). Zuppa’s shows have toured
internationally and played at major festivals across Canada. He was also
a founding member of Number Eleven Theatre, with whom he
cocreated and performed The Prague Visitor and Icaria (1998–2006).
Alex’s approach to theatre derives from his experience training with
Double Edge Theatre, Primus Theatre and Philippe Gaulier. He has
worked on projects with numerous theatres in Nova Scotia, and was a
lead artist in the 2006 Moving Stage Lab, a project of the International
Theatre Institute in Copenhagen. As a writer, he has published in
Canadian Theatre Review, Works, New Canadian Drama and New
Canadian Realism(s). He has a BA from The University of King’s College
and an MA from the University of Toronto’s Centre for Drama, Theatre
and Performance Studies, where he is currently a PhD student.
CHRISTOF MIGONE is an artist, curator and writer. His work and
research delves into language, voice, bodies, performance, intimacy,
complicity and endurance. He coedited the book and CD Writing Aloud:
The Sonics of Language (Los Angeles: Errant Bodies Press, 2001) and his
writings have been published in Aural Cultures, S:ON, Experimental
Sound & Radio, Musicworks, Radio Rethink, Semiotext(e), Angelaki, Esse,
Inter, Performance Research, etc. He obtained an MFA from NSCAD in
1996 and a PhD from the Department of Performance Studies at the
Tisch School of the Arts of New York University in 2007. He has released
seven solo audio CDs on various labels (Avatar, ND, Alien 8, Locust,
Oral). He has curated a number of events: Touch that Dial (1990), Radio
Contortions (1991), Rappel (1994), Double Site (1998), stuttermouthface
(2002), Disquiet (2005), START (2007), STOP.(2008) and Should I Stay or
Should I Go (Nuit Blanche 2010 - Zone C), and 11 others for the
Blackwood Gallery. He has performed at Beyond Music Sound Festival
(Los Angeles), kaaistudios (Brussels), Resonance FM (London), Nouvelles
Scènes (Dijon), On the Air (Innsbruck), Ménagerie de Verre (Paris),
Experimental Intermedia (NYC), Méduse (Québec), Images Festival
(Toronto), Send+Receive (Winnipeg), Kill Your Timid Notion (Dundee),
Victoriaville Festival, Oboro, Casa del Popolo, Théâtre La Chapelle, etc.
Migone’s installations have been exhibited at the Banff Center,
Rotterdam Film Festival, Gallery 101, Art Lab, eyelevelgallery, Forest
City Gallery, Studio 5 Beekman, Mercer Union, CCS Bard, Optica. He has
collaborated with Lynda Gaudreau, Martin Tétreault, Tammy Forsythe,
Alexandre St-Onge, Michel F. Côté, Gregory Whitehead, Set Fire To
Flames and Fly Pan Am. A monograph on his work, Christof Migone --
Sound Voice Perform, was published in 2005. In 2006, the Galerie de
l’UQAM in Montreal presented a mid-career survey of his work
accompanied by a catalog and a DVD entitled Christof Migone — Trou.
He currently lives in Toronto and is a Lecturer in the Department of
Visual Studies at the University of Toronto Mississauga and the
Director/Curator of the Blackwood Gallery.
The focus of DIDIER MORELLI’s artistic practice lies in will-less acts of
self-affirmation around space (public and private), duration, repetition,
endurance, identity and ‘otherness.’ The body becomes the site for his
exploration, while repetition, endurance and friction test the physical
and emotional boundaries of his corporeal matter. Extending it beyond
its natural capacity through irregular acts of unconventional gesture and
exertion, Morelli pushes through painless strain, to ultimate failure.
Working at the edges of discomfort and vulnerability, he continuously
reevaluates the threshold of his body as it breaks down and rebuilds to
become a site for change and exchange.
OTTO MULLER is a composer and educator, teaching music, aesthetics
and interdisciplinary arts in the Individualized Studies program at
Goddard College, an institution with a history of radical pedagogy. He
received his PhD from the University at Buffalo (SUNY) and degrees in
philosophy and music composition from Northwestern University. His
music has been performed across the United States, Europe, and Israel
by ensembles such as Duo Stump-Linshalm, Alea III, and the
International Contemporary Ensemble.
YOU NAKAI is a PhD student in Musicology at New York University,
where he researches, among other things, the electronic music of David
Tudor. His relocation to NYC was funded by Fulbright. He also creates
music performances as part of NO COLLECTIVE
(http://nocollective.com). Recent works include CONCERTOS, a book
describing and prescribing a concert prepared and performed two years
ago, in the form of a playscript (published from Ugly Duckling Presse).
You also worked as a robot operator for the Trisha Brown Dance
Company from 2006 to 2009.
Soprano HELEN PRIDMORE was born in England and grew up in Canada,
where she began her musical studies. She obtained her BMus in Voice
from the University of Saskatchewan and the MMus in Voice from the
University of Toronto. She also holds the Licentiate Diploma in Piano
from Trinity College of Music, UK. At the Eastman School of Music in
Rochester, NY she earned the Doctor of Musical Arts degree, studying
with Carol Webber, and she taught for both the Voice and Theory
Departments. Helen Pridmore served on the Voice Faculties at the State
University of New York (Fredonia) and at Nebraska Wesleyan University
before joining the Music Department at Mount Allison.
Pridmore has performed across Canada and the US as both soloist and
chamber musician. In concert she has performed works ranging from
Handel’s Messiah to Schoenberg’s Pierrot Lunaire. With a special
interest in new music, she has premiered and sung many works by
Canadian and American composers, including Helen Hall, Martin Arnold,
Jim O’Leary, alcides lanza, Emily Doolittle and many others. Upcoming
engagements for 2012–13 include a guest appearance performing with
renowned UK composer Michael Finnissy and Aventa Ensemble in
Victoria, B.C., and a solo recital tour which will visit Edmonton, Calgary,
Vancouver, Victoria and Seattle. Her first solo CD, Janet, has recently
been released on the Canadian Music Centre’s Centrediscs label.
In addition to her performing career, Pridmore also pursues research in
extended vocal techniques and new music for voice. She has presented
papers and recitals at conferences of the College Music Society, the
Canadian University Music Society and the National Association of
Teachers of Singing (NATS), and has had her work published in the NATS
Journal of Singing.
ALIZA SHVARTS is a PhD candidate in Performance Studies at NYU,
where she writes on figuration, failure and doom. Her artwork has been
shown at the Slought Foundation in Philadelphia, at the LOOP
International Film Festival in Barcelona and at the Tate Modern in
London. She currently edits Ampersand, the experimental section of
the feminist theory journal Women & Performance.
JEREMY STRACHAN is a PhD Candidate in Musicology at the University
of Toronto. His research is focused on Udo Kasemets and the
mobilization of experimental music in Toronto during the 1960s. Jeremy
has published review essays in Intersections, MLA Notes, and the
Journal of American Folklore. In 2011 he won the SOCAN/George
Proctor Prize at the Canadian University Music Society annual
conference. He performs frequently as a guitarist and reed player in and
around Toronto.
PAUL WALDE is a multidisciplinary artist, musician and curator. Walde’s
eclectic body of work suggests unexpected interconnections between
landscape, identity and technology and includes painting, photography,
printmaking, sculpture, installation and audio. Recently his work was
seen at Toronto’s Music Gallery (2011) and at Open Ears Festival of
Music and Sound in Kitchener, Ontario (2011).
Walde is a graduate of the University of Western Ontario (BFA) and New
York University (MA). He is the winner of the Prescott Fund Award from
the National Arts Club in New York City, and has recently received
awards from the Canada Council for the Arts and the Ontario Arts
Council. In addition to his studio practice, Walde is an active lecturer,
curator, teacher and writer and has attended residencies at Pouch Cove,
Newfoundland, and the Banff Centre for the Arts.
As the Artistic Director and visual arts curator of LOLA, the London
Ontario Live Arts festival, Walde has presented projects by such
international artists as Brian Eno (UK), blackhole factory (DE), Yoko Ono
(US) and Paul D. Miller aka DJ Spooky (US). Often blurring the lines
between producer and curator he has also presented the work of such
Canadian artists as: Michael Snow, Kelly Mark, Dave Dyment, Gordon
Monahan and Michelle Gay. Walde is also a founding member of Audio
Lodge, a Canadian experimental sound art collective and most recently
took up a full-time teaching position at the University of Victoria in
Victoria, BC.
ALEXANDER WATERMAN is a founding member of the Plus Minus
Ensemble, based in Brussels and London, specializing in avant-garde and
experimental music. In New York he performs with the Either/Or
Ensemble. Alex has worked with musicians such as Robert Ashley,
Richard Barrett, Helmut Lachenmann, Keith Rowe, Marina Rosenfeld,
Anthony Coleman, Elliot Sharp, Ned Rothenberg, Gerry Hemingway,
David Watson, Chris Mann, Alison Knowles, Thomas Meadowcroft and
Michael Finnissy. He has performed as guest musician with numerous
ensembles, including Trio Event (Berlin), Champs d’Action-Antwerp, QO2-
Brussels, and Magpie Music and Dance Company. Waterman has
made music for numerous European ballet and modern dance
companies including Freiburg Ballett/Pretty Ugly, Scapino Ballet,
Nederland Dans Theater III and others. In 2007 Alex curated two
exhibitions in New York, one on experimental music and poetics: Agapê
(June 2–July 28th, 2007) at Miguel Abreu Gallery; and the other on
graphic notation, Between Thought and Sound: Graphic Notation in
Contemporary Music (September 7–October 20, 2007) at The Kitchen in
Chelsea. Publications for Between Thought and Sound and Agape are
available.
Alex is presently working on his PhD in Musicology at NYU as well as
writing a book about the composer Robert Ashley with the designer and
writer Will Holder. Alex participated in Dexter Sinister’s residency at the
Armory for the 2008 Whitney Biennial writing a new work based upon
Herman Melville’s Bartleby the Scrivener. Alex Waterman and Beatrice
Gibson’s collectively written and scored film, A Necessary Music,
narrated by Robert Ashley and with original music by Waterman,
premiered at the Whitney Museum ISP show and won the Tiger Prize for
Best Short Film at the Rotterdam Film Festival in 2008. Alex lectured and
performed as part of the exhibition The Possibility of Action at the
Museum of Contemporary Art in Barcelona in 2008, and was in
residence at the ICA in May 2009 with his ensemble, in addition to
performing solo works. He installed a permanent 12-speaker sound
installation out in Napa Valley in July of 2009 at the residence of Norah
and Norman Stone, and is presently working on the sound track for a
new film project by Cameron Gainer in Vieques, and launching his
record label (D.S. al coda). His writings have been published by Dot Dot
Dot, Paregon, FoArm, Bomb and Artforum.
practice in which performance and conceptuality figure as integral
components. Drawing equally from the contemporary gallery arts and
the performing arts traditions, he has exhibited, performed and
published throughout North America and Europe. In 2009 he received a
DAAD research grant to Berlin. Barrett has obtained advanced degrees
from CalArts (MFA) and the SUNY at Buffalo (PhD).
ROBERT BEAN is an artist, writer and teacher living in Halifax, Nova
Scotia. Born and raised in Saskatchewan, he moved to Nova Scotia in
1976 to pursue a career in contemporary art and education. He
obtained a BFA from the Nova Scotia College of Art and Design (NSCAD
University) in 1978, and an MA in Cultural Studies from the University of
Leeds, England, in 1999. He is currently an Professor at NSCAD
University. Bean has exhibited his work in solo and group exhibitions in
Canada, the United States, Europe, South America and New Zealand.
Commissions include the Royal Architectural Institute of Canada and the
Toronto Photographers Workshop (Gallery TPW). He has published
articles on photography, art and culture, written catalogue essays and
undertaken curatorial projects. Bean has served on peer review juries
for the Canada Council for the Arts and has received grants and awards
from the Canada Council for the Arts, the Ontario Arts Council and the
Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada. Bean’s
work is in public and private collections, including the Nova Scotia Art
Bank, the Canada Council Art Bank, the Art Gallery of Nova Scotia and
the Canadian Museum of Contemporary Photography.
BARBARA BROWNING teaches in the Department of Performance
Studies, Tisch School of the Arts, New York University. She is the author
of two academic books (Samba: Resistance in Motion and Infectious
Rhythm: Metaphors of Contagion and the Spread of African Culture),
and three ficto-critical novels (Who Is Mr. Waxman?, an audionovel, and
The Correspondence Artist and I’m Trying to Reach You). She also makes
music and dance videos for YouTube.
ANTJE BUDDE M.A., PhD (Humboldt-University Berlin) taught previously
at Humboldt-University in Berlin and the Academy for Film and
Television “Konrad Wolf” (HFF) in Potsdam-Babelsberg, Germany. From
1990 to 1991 and 1994 to 1995 she conducted research and artistic
projects in Beijing, China (Central Academy of Drama and National
Experimental Theatre Company), followed by several short study trips
to P.R. China. Prof. Budde works both in the academic and the artistic
field of performance studies. From 2005 to 2011, she was crossappointed
at UC Drama and the Centre for Comparative Literature.
Since 2012, she is a full faculty member of the Centre for Drama,
Theatre and Performance Studies and an affiliated faculty member of
the Centre for Comparative Literature, Cinema Studies and the Joint
Initiative in German and European Studies at the Munk Centre.
She published her first book in 2002: Antje Budde/ Joachim Fiebach
(Ed.) Herrschaft des Symbolischen. Bewegungsformen gesellschaftlicher
Theatralität in EUROPA –ASIEN – AFRIKA (The power/ruling of symbols.
Processes of societal theatricality in Europe, Asia, Africa; Vistas Verlag,
Berlin, 2002). This book was followed by her recent publication: Theater
und Experiment in der VR China. Kulturhistorische Bedingungen, Begriff,
Geschichte, Institution und Praxis (Theatre and Experiment in P.R. China.
Socio-Cultural conditions, concept, history, institution and practice;
VDM Verlag Dr. Müller. 2008. 780 p.).
DAVID CECCHETTO is Assistant Professor of New Media (History and
Criticism) in the Faculty of Liberal Arts & Sciences at OCAD
University. David has published articles in Theory, Culture and Society,
Mosaic: a Journal for the Interdisciplinary Study of Literature and Radical
Musicology. He has also authored a chapter in Transdisciplinary Digital
Art: Sound, Vision, and the New Screen (Springer, 2008),
coedited Collision: Interarts Practice and Research (CSP, 2009), and has
a monograph titled Humanesis: Sound, Discourse and Technological
Posthumanism forthcoming on the Posthumanities series of the
University of Minnesota Press. As an artist working with sound, David’s
work has been presented in Canada, the United States, the United
Kingdom, Mexico and Russia.
JENN COLE is a PhD candidate at the University of Toronto’s Centre for
Drama, Theatre and Performance Studies. She is a visual artist,
contemporary dancer and choreographer. She revels in collaborative
and site-specific work, especially with musicians and sculptors new to
dance. Her academic interests lie in inarticulacy and the force of
stammering, as well as in 19th-century cultural history and the
performances of hysteria at the Salpêtrière.
DARREN COPELAND is a soundscape composer, radio artist, sound
designer and concert producer. He has studied electroacoustic
composition under Barry Truax (Simon Fraser University) and Dr. Jonty
Harrison (University of Birmingham). His concert works have received
mentions in competitions (Vancouver New Music, Luigi Russolo,
Hungarian Radio, La Muse en Circuit and Phonurgia Nova) and appeared
on compilation CD releases (Storm of Drones, Radius #3, DISContact I &
II, Lieu – Non Lieu and Soundscape Vancouver). Rendu Visible, a CD
devoted to his work, is available on the empreintes DIGITALes label.
In addition to composing, he has written articles about listening and
environmental sounds for Electronic Cottage, Musicworks, Contact!
(CEC), Soundscape: Journal of Acoustic Ecology, and The Journal for
Electroacoustic Music (Sonic Arts Network) as well as CD, concert and
book reviews for Musicworks, the Whole Note, and Soundscape: The
Journal of Acoustic Ecology. As a producer and administrator, fond
memories lie with Wireless Graffiti, a live-to-air radio extravaganza in
1993 co-produced by Rumble Theatre and Vancouver Pro Musica. After
active histories with Vancouver Pro Musica, the Standing Wave
Ensemble, and the Communauté électroacoustique
Canadienne/Canadian Electroacoustic Community (CEC) from 1990 to
1996, he now serves on the board of the Canadian Association for
Sound Ecology (CASE) and is the Artistic Director for New Adventures in
Sound Art.
JOE CULPEPPER is a PhD candidate in Comparative Literature at the
University of Toronto. His dissertation is titled “Reception and
Adaptation: Magic Tricks, Mysteries, Con Games”. His latest article
“Births, Deaths, and Reincarnations of Reception Theory” appears in
Frame 24.1 (May 2011). His most recent magic performance “Exits and
Entrances” took place at New Gendai Workstation in Toronto
(November 2011).
JACOB GALLAGHER-ROSS is a doctoral candidate in the dramaturgy and
dramatic criticism department at the Yale School of Drama. An associate
editor of Theater, his essays have appeared in TDR, PAJ, TheatreForum,
Theater and Canadian Theatre Review. He is a guest co-editor of “Digital
Dramaturgies,” Theater’s special issue on theater and new media. He is
a regular contributor to the Village Voice’s theater section, and works as
a dramaturg at the Stratford Shakespeare Festival.
CLAIRE GALLANT is from Halifax, Nova Scotia. As a musician and chef
she is interested in the intersection between performance and food. A
cellist since the age of eight, she received a BMus from Wilfred Laurier
University in 2003 and an MMus in Cello Performance from the Royal
Northern College of Music in Manchester in 2004. Subsequently, as a
freelance cellist, she has been drawn to classical and popular repertoire.
Her group, The String Quartet Collective, was Young Quartet in
Residence at the 2007 Scotia Festival of Music. She has also performed
with bands and solo musicians, including The Heavy Blinkers, Anne
Murray, Matt Mays, hey rosetta! and Kanye West.
As a chef, Claire apprenticed under Eric Tucker at the renowned
Millennium Restaurant in San Francisco. She has run her own catering
company and published a vegan cookbook. In Toronto she worked at
Fressen Restaurant as well as being a stagiaire at Colborne Lane. Most
recently she worked under Chef Dennis Johnston at FID Resto, a
critically lauded locavore restaurant in Halifax.
DAVID GRUBBS is Associate Professor in the Conservatory of Music at
Brooklyn College, CUNY, has released 11 solo albums and appeared on
more than 150 commercially-released recordings. He is known for his
cross-disciplinary collaborations with writers such as Susan Howe and
Rick Moody, and with visual artists such as Anthony McCall, Angela
Bulloch and Stephen Prina. His work has been presented at the Solomon
R. Guggenheim Museum, MoMA, the Tate Modern, and the Centre
Pompidou. Grubbs is currently completing the book Records Ruin the
Landscape: John Cage, The Sixties, and Sound Recording for Duke
University Press.
PETER JAEGER is a Reader in the Department of English and Creative
Writing at Roehampton University in London. He is the author of six
books, including ABC of Reading TRG: Steve McCaffery, bpNichol and the
Toronto Research Group (2000), Prop (2007), and The Persons (2011).
His next book, a critical monograph on the interface of Buddhist
philosophy and ecological concerns in the work of John Cage, is set to
be published by Continuum Press next year.
MATT JONES is a writer, dramaturg and doctoral student at the Centre
for Drama, Theatre and Performance Studies at the University of
Toronto. He holds a BA and an MA in English literature from Concordia
University in Montreal. His research concerns problems of theatrical
representation of the War on Terror and his latest play, Death Clowns in
Guantanamo Bay, will be staged at the Drama Centre in March 2013.
EUNSU KANG is an international media artist from Korea. She and her
collaborators, Diana Garcia-Snyder and Donald Craig, create interactive
spaces that embrace people, penetrating and transforming them using
interactive video, spatialized sound, site-specific installation and
performing art idioms. Kang earned her PhD in Digital Arts and
Experimental Media at the University of Washington. Kang is currently
an Assistant Professor of New Media at the University of Akron in Ohio,
USA. Her team, an interdisciplinary group consisting of a media artist
(Eunsu Kang), a choreographer/dancer (Diana Garcia-Snyder) and a
software developer/composer (Donald Craig), seeks to know how we
communicate with a space, how we connect into it, and how we and a
space reshape each other.
MARCIN KEDZIOR is an experimental musician, dancer and artist who
studied art and architecture in England, Italy and China. Kedzior has
exhibited widely and has performed in dozens of shows setting up
collective spatial experiments, most recently as part of AIM Toronto. He
received a BFA from Queen’s University and a MArch from the
University of Toronto.
ALEX MCLEAN was born in Montreal and raised in Dartmouth, Nova
Scotia. He is the director of Halifax’s Zuppa Theatre Co., with whom he
has cowritten and directed 11 original shows, most recently Five Easy
Steps (to the end of the world). Zuppa’s shows have toured
internationally and played at major festivals across Canada. He was also
a founding member of Number Eleven Theatre, with whom he
cocreated and performed The Prague Visitor and Icaria (1998–2006).
Alex’s approach to theatre derives from his experience training with
Double Edge Theatre, Primus Theatre and Philippe Gaulier. He has
worked on projects with numerous theatres in Nova Scotia, and was a
lead artist in the 2006 Moving Stage Lab, a project of the International
Theatre Institute in Copenhagen. As a writer, he has published in
Canadian Theatre Review, Works, New Canadian Drama and New
Canadian Realism(s). He has a BA from The University of King’s College
and an MA from the University of Toronto’s Centre for Drama, Theatre
and Performance Studies, where he is currently a PhD student.
CHRISTOF MIGONE is an artist, curator and writer. His work and
research delves into language, voice, bodies, performance, intimacy,
complicity and endurance. He coedited the book and CD Writing Aloud:
The Sonics of Language (Los Angeles: Errant Bodies Press, 2001) and his
writings have been published in Aural Cultures, S:ON, Experimental
Sound & Radio, Musicworks, Radio Rethink, Semiotext(e), Angelaki, Esse,
Inter, Performance Research, etc. He obtained an MFA from NSCAD in
1996 and a PhD from the Department of Performance Studies at the
Tisch School of the Arts of New York University in 2007. He has released
seven solo audio CDs on various labels (Avatar, ND, Alien 8, Locust,
Oral). He has curated a number of events: Touch that Dial (1990), Radio
Contortions (1991), Rappel (1994), Double Site (1998), stuttermouthface
(2002), Disquiet (2005), START (2007), STOP.(2008) and Should I Stay or
Should I Go (Nuit Blanche 2010 - Zone C), and 11 others for the
Blackwood Gallery. He has performed at Beyond Music Sound Festival
(Los Angeles), kaaistudios (Brussels), Resonance FM (London), Nouvelles
Scènes (Dijon), On the Air (Innsbruck), Ménagerie de Verre (Paris),
Experimental Intermedia (NYC), Méduse (Québec), Images Festival
(Toronto), Send+Receive (Winnipeg), Kill Your Timid Notion (Dundee),
Victoriaville Festival, Oboro, Casa del Popolo, Théâtre La Chapelle, etc.
Migone’s installations have been exhibited at the Banff Center,
Rotterdam Film Festival, Gallery 101, Art Lab, eyelevelgallery, Forest
City Gallery, Studio 5 Beekman, Mercer Union, CCS Bard, Optica. He has
collaborated with Lynda Gaudreau, Martin Tétreault, Tammy Forsythe,
Alexandre St-Onge, Michel F. Côté, Gregory Whitehead, Set Fire To
Flames and Fly Pan Am. A monograph on his work, Christof Migone --
Sound Voice Perform, was published in 2005. In 2006, the Galerie de
l’UQAM in Montreal presented a mid-career survey of his work
accompanied by a catalog and a DVD entitled Christof Migone — Trou.
He currently lives in Toronto and is a Lecturer in the Department of
Visual Studies at the University of Toronto Mississauga and the
Director/Curator of the Blackwood Gallery.
The focus of DIDIER MORELLI’s artistic practice lies in will-less acts of
self-affirmation around space (public and private), duration, repetition,
endurance, identity and ‘otherness.’ The body becomes the site for his
exploration, while repetition, endurance and friction test the physical
and emotional boundaries of his corporeal matter. Extending it beyond
its natural capacity through irregular acts of unconventional gesture and
exertion, Morelli pushes through painless strain, to ultimate failure.
Working at the edges of discomfort and vulnerability, he continuously
reevaluates the threshold of his body as it breaks down and rebuilds to
become a site for change and exchange.
OTTO MULLER is a composer and educator, teaching music, aesthetics
and interdisciplinary arts in the Individualized Studies program at
Goddard College, an institution with a history of radical pedagogy. He
received his PhD from the University at Buffalo (SUNY) and degrees in
philosophy and music composition from Northwestern University. His
music has been performed across the United States, Europe, and Israel
by ensembles such as Duo Stump-Linshalm, Alea III, and the
International Contemporary Ensemble.
YOU NAKAI is a PhD student in Musicology at New York University,
where he researches, among other things, the electronic music of David
Tudor. His relocation to NYC was funded by Fulbright. He also creates
music performances as part of NO COLLECTIVE
(http://nocollective.com). Recent works include CONCERTOS, a book
describing and prescribing a concert prepared and performed two years
ago, in the form of a playscript (published from Ugly Duckling Presse).
You also worked as a robot operator for the Trisha Brown Dance
Company from 2006 to 2009.
Soprano HELEN PRIDMORE was born in England and grew up in Canada,
where she began her musical studies. She obtained her BMus in Voice
from the University of Saskatchewan and the MMus in Voice from the
University of Toronto. She also holds the Licentiate Diploma in Piano
from Trinity College of Music, UK. At the Eastman School of Music in
Rochester, NY she earned the Doctor of Musical Arts degree, studying
with Carol Webber, and she taught for both the Voice and Theory
Departments. Helen Pridmore served on the Voice Faculties at the State
University of New York (Fredonia) and at Nebraska Wesleyan University
before joining the Music Department at Mount Allison.
Pridmore has performed across Canada and the US as both soloist and
chamber musician. In concert she has performed works ranging from
Handel’s Messiah to Schoenberg’s Pierrot Lunaire. With a special
interest in new music, she has premiered and sung many works by
Canadian and American composers, including Helen Hall, Martin Arnold,
Jim O’Leary, alcides lanza, Emily Doolittle and many others. Upcoming
engagements for 2012–13 include a guest appearance performing with
renowned UK composer Michael Finnissy and Aventa Ensemble in
Victoria, B.C., and a solo recital tour which will visit Edmonton, Calgary,
Vancouver, Victoria and Seattle. Her first solo CD, Janet, has recently
been released on the Canadian Music Centre’s Centrediscs label.
In addition to her performing career, Pridmore also pursues research in
extended vocal techniques and new music for voice. She has presented
papers and recitals at conferences of the College Music Society, the
Canadian University Music Society and the National Association of
Teachers of Singing (NATS), and has had her work published in the NATS
Journal of Singing.
ALIZA SHVARTS is a PhD candidate in Performance Studies at NYU,
where she writes on figuration, failure and doom. Her artwork has been
shown at the Slought Foundation in Philadelphia, at the LOOP
International Film Festival in Barcelona and at the Tate Modern in
London. She currently edits Ampersand, the experimental section of
the feminist theory journal Women & Performance.
JEREMY STRACHAN is a PhD Candidate in Musicology at the University
of Toronto. His research is focused on Udo Kasemets and the
mobilization of experimental music in Toronto during the 1960s. Jeremy
has published review essays in Intersections, MLA Notes, and the
Journal of American Folklore. In 2011 he won the SOCAN/George
Proctor Prize at the Canadian University Music Society annual
conference. He performs frequently as a guitarist and reed player in and
around Toronto.
PAUL WALDE is a multidisciplinary artist, musician and curator. Walde’s
eclectic body of work suggests unexpected interconnections between
landscape, identity and technology and includes painting, photography,
printmaking, sculpture, installation and audio. Recently his work was
seen at Toronto’s Music Gallery (2011) and at Open Ears Festival of
Music and Sound in Kitchener, Ontario (2011).
Walde is a graduate of the University of Western Ontario (BFA) and New
York University (MA). He is the winner of the Prescott Fund Award from
the National Arts Club in New York City, and has recently received
awards from the Canada Council for the Arts and the Ontario Arts
Council. In addition to his studio practice, Walde is an active lecturer,
curator, teacher and writer and has attended residencies at Pouch Cove,
Newfoundland, and the Banff Centre for the Arts.
As the Artistic Director and visual arts curator of LOLA, the London
Ontario Live Arts festival, Walde has presented projects by such
international artists as Brian Eno (UK), blackhole factory (DE), Yoko Ono
(US) and Paul D. Miller aka DJ Spooky (US). Often blurring the lines
between producer and curator he has also presented the work of such
Canadian artists as: Michael Snow, Kelly Mark, Dave Dyment, Gordon
Monahan and Michelle Gay. Walde is also a founding member of Audio
Lodge, a Canadian experimental sound art collective and most recently
took up a full-time teaching position at the University of Victoria in
Victoria, BC.
ALEXANDER WATERMAN is a founding member of the Plus Minus
Ensemble, based in Brussels and London, specializing in avant-garde and
experimental music. In New York he performs with the Either/Or
Ensemble. Alex has worked with musicians such as Robert Ashley,
Richard Barrett, Helmut Lachenmann, Keith Rowe, Marina Rosenfeld,
Anthony Coleman, Elliot Sharp, Ned Rothenberg, Gerry Hemingway,
David Watson, Chris Mann, Alison Knowles, Thomas Meadowcroft and
Michael Finnissy. He has performed as guest musician with numerous
ensembles, including Trio Event (Berlin), Champs d’Action-Antwerp, QO2-
Brussels, and Magpie Music and Dance Company. Waterman has
made music for numerous European ballet and modern dance
companies including Freiburg Ballett/Pretty Ugly, Scapino Ballet,
Nederland Dans Theater III and others. In 2007 Alex curated two
exhibitions in New York, one on experimental music and poetics: Agapê
(June 2–July 28th, 2007) at Miguel Abreu Gallery; and the other on
graphic notation, Between Thought and Sound: Graphic Notation in
Contemporary Music (September 7–October 20, 2007) at The Kitchen in
Chelsea. Publications for Between Thought and Sound and Agape are
available.
Alex is presently working on his PhD in Musicology at NYU as well as
writing a book about the composer Robert Ashley with the designer and
writer Will Holder. Alex participated in Dexter Sinister’s residency at the
Armory for the 2008 Whitney Biennial writing a new work based upon
Herman Melville’s Bartleby the Scrivener. Alex Waterman and Beatrice
Gibson’s collectively written and scored film, A Necessary Music,
narrated by Robert Ashley and with original music by Waterman,
premiered at the Whitney Museum ISP show and won the Tiger Prize for
Best Short Film at the Rotterdam Film Festival in 2008. Alex lectured and
performed as part of the exhibition The Possibility of Action at the
Museum of Contemporary Art in Barcelona in 2008, and was in
residence at the ICA in May 2009 with his ensemble, in addition to
performing solo works. He installed a permanent 12-speaker sound
installation out in Napa Valley in July of 2009 at the residence of Norah
and Norman Stone, and is presently working on the sound track for a
new film project by Cameron Gainer in Vieques, and launching his
record label (D.S. al coda). His writings have been published by Dot Dot
Dot, Paregon, FoArm, Bomb and Artforum.