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SONIC CIRCUITS PRESENTS QUEERING SOUND 13 FIN
DE SIÉCLE AN EVENING OF SOUNDS + SPOKEN WORD +
DIGITAL ARTS FROM LGBTQ ARTISTS + ALLIES SATURDAY 01 JUNE 7:00 PM PYRAMID ATLANTIC ARTS CENTER 8230 GEORGIA AVENUE SILVER SPRING MD 20910 USA QUEERING SOUND gathers together artists –
with a non-exclusive curatorial focus towards gay, lesbian and
post-gender-identified participants – who explore alternative avenues of
expression through audio, the digital arts, performance art and spoken word.
The annual event – now in its thirteenth year – features live performances
from established and upcoming local and touring talents as well as seeks to
introduce Washington DC audiences to new sounds and challenging visions from
across the globe through digital contributions. LIVE PERFORMANCES +
SPOKEN WORD ARTHUR
LOVES PLASTIC ● BLK w/BEAR + BERNARD WELT ● DÌ TUĪ PIÀN DUÀN ● JOSEPH ROSS ● DAN VERA DIGITAL CONTRIBUTORS NICK
LOPATA ●
LOWERED ● NOWHEREIANS ● O.F.F. STUDIO TORINO + ALMAGEST! |
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© Intangible
Arts |
ARTHUR LOVES PLASTIC
is Bev Stanton, who was born in the Bahamas and raised near Walt Disney
World. She has won over a dozen Washington Area Music Awards in the Electronica
category. Her music has appeared in shows on the Discovery Channel, VH1, MTV and other cable television networks. Stanton is
one of 24 female electronic artists and deejays profiled in Pink Noises: Women in Electronic Music and
Sound (Tara Rodgers; Duke University Press, 2010), alongside Anne
Lockwood, Ikue Mori, Pauline Oliveros,
Le Tigre and Mira Calix. Stanton recently released
a 30-minute download EP influenced and created with iPhone apps. She has also
made loops of her music available as themes for the Mikrosonic
SPC sketchpad app for Android. [ LIVE
PERFORMANCE ] |
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© Intangible
Arts
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BLK w/ BEAR
– JS Adams; Doug Poplin; Renée Shaw; and PD Sexton – first garnered glowing reviews
and international airplay for the thought-provoking and moving ‘Wish for a
World without Hurt’ collaboration with London's Rothko and the limited
edition ‘fahrenheit_drafts’ 12-inch single (Trace Recordings). Their audio
has accompanied film/video projects in NYC and London and selections from
‘Wish for a World’ were used in the Discovery Channel's poignant ‘The Flight
that Fought Back’ program. The four-track 'Version 3' extended play is
available for download at the Long Division with Remainders ‘14 versions of
the same EP’ project site and also available in a box-set collection with all
fourteen versions plus an additional digital-download outtakes EP including a
21-minute remix of BLK w/ BEAR’s
Version 001. The mini-album ‘Sorry about your (remixes)’ was released on
Front & Follow (UK) in 2011. Additional material has been released
through Ultra-red’s free download site Public Record, Little Red Squirrel
Collective (UK), Cohort Recordings and Sonic Circuits’ District of Noise
imprint. In 2013, the group contributed two remixes to ‘Total Fears: Bronze
Eye Reinterpreted’ (Ōnyūdō). Future
releases include a remix/reconstruction project for Cracked Rabbit (UK) and
contribution to a planned compilation of musical interpretations of William
Blake's poetry. “...like Basic Channel at their most
abstract, and after a severe nervous breakdown” – Wire Magazine “...representative of the modern
experience, of commercial horror and the machines that drive it” [ LIVE PERFORMANCE ] ►
BLK
w/BEAR promo film by Renée Shaw Bernard Welt joins BLK w/BEAR as a special guest. Welt is Professor, Arts and Humanities at the Corcoran College of Art + Design and author of Mythomania: Fantasies, Fables, and Sheer Lies in Contemporary American Popular Art (Lammy Award nominee). He has contributed to art catalogues including Splat! Boom! Pow! The Influence of Cartoons in Contemporary Art and Raymond Pettibon: A Reader, and to poetry anthologies including The Best American Poetry 2001. His poem, “I stopped writing poetry...” was selected by a reader poll at poets.org as the best American poem of the year 2000. He has received a National Endowment for the Arts Individual Fellowship in Writing. A former member of the board of directors of the International Association for the Study of Dreams, he contributes a continuing series of essays on classic dream-related films to its member magazine, Dream Time, and has recently written the article on cinema and dreams for The Encyclopedia of Sleep and Dreams (Deirdre Barret and Patrick McNamara, eds., Praeger Press, forthcoming January 2012). With co-authors Kelly Bulkeley and Phil King, he has recently completed Dreaming in the Classroom: Practices, Methods, and Resources in Dream Education (State University Press of New York, 2011), the first major academic study of the use of dreams in education. [ SPOKEN WORD ] |
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© Mei Mei Chang |
DÌ TUĪ
PIÀN DUÀN
/ 遞推片段
(“Recursive Frame Fragmentation”) is a collaboration
between Mei Mei Chang (live video, light, objects)
and Cory O'Brien (snare drum, electronics). Recursion is presented as
infinite audio and video feedback. Fragmentation is the alteration and
destruction of objects, sound and light. The subject of fragmentation is the
internal perception, mental frame, memory, or idea. Performances are
real-time and improvised, using snare drum and infrared CCTV
camera as the main instruments. Sustaining textures and motifs allow close
inspection of the viewers own perception of the work. The result is
simultaneously visceral, organic, frightening, and encompassing. [ LIVE PERFORMANCE ] |
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LOWERED – a duo of
multi-instrumentalist Katie English (Isnaj Dui) and guitarist Chris Gowers (Karina ESP) – began at the start of 2012 and
ended the year with a live debut performance at Café OTO
for a Hibernate show and now, a debut album called ‘Lost Seas.’ Work on the
album began in February during a wind-swept afternoon sourcing field
recordings on Brighton beach. The majority of the album was then recorded
using cello, piano, and cymbal during a single day in March at both a London
studio and an empty church. In the months that followed gongs, clarinet and
field recordings from the beach were added. Lowered create
pared-down arrangements using reductive playing processes and avoid using
digital effects, instead relying on experiments with microphone placement and
naturally reverberant spaces. The resulting sound focuses on the pure tonal
qualities of the instruments, and the narrative of the album, which
references Donald Crowhurst in the opening track
title, is reflected through its slow, melancholic cello drones, dark swells
of piano and sparse melodies. "…a sombre
and pensive meditation for remote seashores and abandoned lighthouses" –
Fluid Radio “…a masterwork of textural drone, and is,
perhaps, the perfect soundtrack for darkest nights on the empty sea” – Futuresequence [ DIGITAL CONTRIBUTORS ] ►
LOWERED
: HIBERNATE RECORDS online |
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NICK LOPATA creates and edits video for Blowoff, the popular
deejay event thrown by Bob Mould and Richard Morel, first staged in
Washington D.C. and now held across the nation including residencies in NYC,
San Francisco, San Diego, Provincetown and Chicago. In addition to his video
work, Nick’s other projects include photography, lighting design and
independent film. QUEERING SOUND will present his video to “Let’s Go Back to
Morse Code” by Elite Barbarian. [
DIGITAL CONTRIBUTORS ] ► BLOWOFF online ► ELITE BARBARIAN online |
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© Diana
Jarvis |
NOWHERIANS is the
solo ambient, drone project from London-based sound engineer/ editor and
bassist Crawford Blair. He performs in Rome Pays Off formed by original Rothko
members Mark Beazley and Blair in February 2010, with Chris Gowers from Karina ESP now joining them on treated
electric guitar. Blair: “All Nowherians music is created as quickly as time
will allow, and destroyed immediately after mixing. Nowherians music makes me
think of the patterns I see when I close my eyes and push my eyeballs in
slightly, not the actual dots drifting past but the warmth and childlike
familiarity of that feeling.” His debut solo EP “that is not an acceptable
lullaby” comes out in May on Trace Recordings. [ DIGITAL
CONTRIBUTOR ] |
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© Giorgia Mannavola |
SOUND INSTALLATION DESIGNED BY O.F.F.
STUDIO TORINO, MUSIC & SOUNDS BY ALMAGEST! In 2007 the
“artiste extraordinaire” Ernesto Tomasini and
fellow Italian musician Fabrizio Modonese Palumbo – a.k.a. ( r ) and member
of the cult band Larsen – released the album “Canes Venatici”
(for US label Blossoming Noise and sporting on the front cover a picture by
award winning photographer Giulia Caira). An alternative
mix of “Trattato Sulla Natura
Delle Stelle Per Voce e
Harmonium”, one of the tracks from the album, was then used as soundtrack for
a touring exhibition on Klaus Nomi. The following
year, with Evor Ameisie
(NG / Northgate and Camerata Mediolanense)
and Paul Beauchamp (Blind Cave Salamander), they took a live version of the
album to several European music festivals including shows at the Auditorium Serralves in Portugal, historical locations in Italy and
the Torino LGBT film festival. More concerts were
staged and in 2011 they toured Germany, performing at The Volksbuhene
in Berlin, the Kampnagel in Hamburg and the
Dortmund Schauspielhaus. At the end of
2010, Italian experimental label Chew-z released their first album as a four
piece band, “The Hunting Dogs of Boötes the
Herdsman”, a live and revised version of “Canes Venatici”
featuring remixes by Khan, Andrew Liles and 9cento9. The
band spent most of its life without a name, billed mainly as “Palumbo/Tomasini's Canes Venatici live”
and in 2010 they progressed to “Palumbo/Tomasini's
Almagest!” and in 2012, with the release of their new full length studio
album “Messier Objects” (composed and performed by all band members and
produced by Marco Milanesio) they will officially
become Almagest! (named after the 2nd-century
mathematical and astronomical Ptolemy treatise on the apparent motions of the
stars and planetary paths but with a final exclamation mark just like Neu! and John Foxx's Ultravox!). “Messier
Objects” will be released by Texas-based label Tourette
Records in 2013 with an original cover artwork by London artist Dan Hillier. “...traditional
dances from a place that does not exist” – Baby Dee “...like peering
out of a window of Doctor Caligari's Cabinet” –
Maurizio Blatto [ DIGITAL CONTRIBUTORS
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© Intangible
Arts |
JOSEPH ROSS is the
author of two poetry collections: Meeting
Bone Man (2012) and the forthcoming, Gospel
of Dust (2013) His poems appear in many anthologies and literary journals
including Poet Lore, Tidal Basin Review and Drumvoices
Revue. He has received three Pushcart Prize nominations and is the winner of
the 2012 Pratt Library / Little Patuxent Review
Poetry Prize. He teaches English at Gonzaga College High School in
Washington, D.C. “Not too many
people are residing on the same floor with Ross when it comes to writing
about race...The words of Ross demand a sacred place. His poems honor the
dead and instruct the living.” – E. Ethelbert Miller; Director, African
American Resource Center, Howard University [ SPOKEN WORD ] |
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© Intangible
Arts |
DAN VERA is a
writer, editor and literary historian living in Washington, D.C. His areas of
academic study have included history, anthropology, theology, and justice
& peace studies with abiding interests in history, art and architecture.
After working in church-based homeless and LGBT
non-profit work, he's edited the gay culture journal White Crane and its Gay
Wisdom project for the last ten years. He is the author
of two collections of poetry Speaking Wiri Wiri, inaugural winner
of the Letras Latinas/Red Hen Poetry Prize (Red
Hen, 2013), and The Space Between Our
Danger and Delight (Beothuk Books, 2008). His poetry has appeared in
publications and outlets including Notre Dame Review, Beltway Poetry
Quarterly, Gargoyle, Delaware Poetry Review, Little Patuxent
Review, Naugatuck River, the anthologies Divining
Divas: 100 Gay Men on Their Muses, Full
Moon On K Street: Poems About Washington, D.C., Dog Blessings, and D.C.
Poets Against the War. Vera has been a featured reader at poetry readings
around the country and his work has been featured on the Library of
Congress's broadcast Poet and the Poem, Pacifica Radio's nationally broadcast
Peace Watch and Sirius Satellite Radio's Writers on Writing. Vera has been a
frequent panelist on literary history, literary diversity, alternative
publishing, political poetics, LGBT history and LGBT writing. He's had writing residencies at the
Virginia Center for the Creative Arts and Soul Mountain Retreat He's also curated
poetry readings and community events in the Washington area through the
poetry incubator Poetry Mutual of America. He's the co-creator of the literary
history website, D.C. Writer's Homes and serves on the board of Split This
Rock Poetry. He's published the work of other poets through Vrzhu Press and Souvenir Spoon Books and served on award
juries for the DC Commission on the Arts and Humanities and Arlington County
Cultural Affairs Division. [ SPOKEN WORD ] |
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SONIC CIRCUITS
is a Washington D.C. area promoter for experimental music. Sonic Circuits
seeks to expose audiences to cutting edge contemporary music that defies
genres, and offer artists new platforms to present their music and
opportunities to network and collaborate with artists from around the world.
In addition to organizing an annual festival since 2001, Sonic Circuits
programs performances year round. Sonic Circuits is presented in part by
Improv Arts Inc., a non-profit 501(c)3 organization
dedicated to supporting the artistic and career development of artists and
creating new markets for contemporary music. |
