no.229 | Gallery Sitting
Concert for One, New Pod, Rebecca Bengal and Nate Heiges
After a flurry of installation activity, I found a little stool, set up the recorder, grabbed the guitar I had borrowed from Blain Kennedy, and recorded about 4-5 improvisations. The space is super reverberant. You can hear the street noise from Franklin Street, some indecipherable gallery banter, and the sound of Oleg’s heels moving through the space.
This is the last week of the show in New York. Recently, we watched Daniel Gordon’s Art 21 video and I was again struck when he lamented how little time he spends with the finished work, so it was great to have a moment to be in the space.
This installation was only prefigured by flat photoshop mock-ups and was created in real-time in the space. I had no idea if it would work or not. The process is a lot like making one of the pieces for PSO. I start with a germ of an idea and see where it goes.
Video: Courtesy of Rob Hult
I am not jazz-trained nor do I have much formal music training outside learning the French Horn in middle school, a handful of guitar lessons in a strip mall in Spring, Texas, where Gerard, who would later quit to join the band Winger, taught me both Rush solos and Big Mouth Strikes again by The Smiths. When I bought a guitar at a pawn shop with my first paycheck earned lifeguarding, I picked up an Ernie Ball book of chords, and the rest I learned by making up three-chord songs and covering the Clash and U2 in our high school band, the Young Suburbanites (shout out Paul, Tony, and Dave!). So, long story long, when I say I don’t know where the tune is going to end up, I really mean it!
I am so grateful to Ingrid, Sam, Rob, and Oleg at Klaus for supporting this work.
NEW PODCAST WITH ZURIEL WATERS
Did you miss last week’s collaborative piece of dueling clarinet lines recorded under the Broadway Junction Subway overpass?? You are in luck, because you can listen to that piece in addition to my conversation with Zuriel and two bonus tracks from Zuri’s plastic mind on no.228 Double Talk with Zuriel Waters.
RECOMMENDED READING and LISTENING
Strange Hours: Photography, Memory, and the Lives of Artists
Selected Writings by Rebecca Bengal
The Selection Committee Internet Radio Show with Nate Heiges
I have been meaning to read Bengal’s book ever since it came out. After listening to her great playlist and conversation with Selection Committee Radio host (and friend) Nate Heiges, I finally picked up a copy.
Heiges invites artists, writers, and curators to create playlists of music and then, after listening to tracks from the list, chats elegantly about the significance of their work and how the music they chose informs their lives. It is amazing how the context of these conversations alters the imaginative theater one plays in one’s mind while listening to music. Friend to PSO Emily Mae Smith relates industrial/goth to the mechanization of painting on deadline, feminist rage, the beauty of bones, and the emotional texture of the absence of “painterly” gesture. NIN never sounded better! And, even though I thought I knew a lot about the devil that Phil Spector was, these recordings are forever changed by Nate’s conversation with artist, curator, writer, and Spector truther Jarrett Earnest about Spector’s perennial Wall of Sound.
In Bengal’s conversation with Heiges, she talks about how Prince destroyed Alec Soth’s childhood home, Margaritas at the Mall, and the power of protest. The book covers a lot of what I might call photography with a capital “P,” meaning images made in a mostly documentary style. The book kicks off with a great piece about my all-time favorite, and arguably the most unsung portrait photographer of all time, Judith Joy Ross. There is also a short story based on Justine Kurland’s work, which is amazing, along with wonderful stories about Eggleston and Paisley Park.
i have always attributed that Judith Joy pic to Sally Mann. Thank you for setting me straight.