Saturdays
February 4 & 11
6 pm - midnight
Al Margolis & Katherine Liberovskaya
III. WHAT MAKES A SOUND? (argument)
music: Al Margolis
Coming at composing from the recording medium, most of my works begin in a "fixed" form. Having recently been getting back into live performing, many of the recorded compositions are used as the basis for the performance. They are stripped backwards into their component elements and the elements become the backing tracks, the canvas, on which the rest of the performance is "painted". (I have been describing my work as sound painting for years). Every work devolves into multiple versions and are often combined with other works. Thus leaving the recorded version as the "true" version, yet leaving space for many variations of a work.
The work(s) heard here are all parts of larger compositions. The sounds that you hear are either removed from their original contexts or combined with sound sources from different compositions. The compositions or portions of are Gitkleingit, What Makes a Sound Argument 2, Xylo 2, Lisa flutes, Linguido, and Tattooed Love Muffins. The source materials include the voices of Lisa Barnard, Laura Biagi, Dan Andreana, and Joan from Barcelona.
Thanks to Michael
J. Schumacher for the Max patches.
TAKE-OFF
2005, 24 minutes
video: Katherine
Liberovskaya
music: Al Margolis
Take-off originated
with a musical work-in-progress that composer Margolis proposed to video
artist Liberovskaya as a point of departure for a collaborative piece.
Margolis's drone evoked for Liberovskaya a series of images which she
shot and began to put together. From this point on, over some 12 months,
both the music and video evolved in additions and substractions, at times
in reaction to one another, at times on their own. The piece is thus the
result of a back-and-forth dialogue between image and sound where flying
machines flutter and flying creatures rumble in flickering bombinating
juxtaposed layers.
Katherine Liberovskaya is
a Canadian video and media artist based in Montreal and New York. She
has been working predominantly in experimental video since the late eighties.
Over the years, she has produced many single-channel videos and video
installation works, some of which have earned awards and mentions in Europe
and North America. Her works have been presented at a wide variety of
artistic venues and events around the world. She has held numerous grants
and arts awards in Canada and in France where she studied media arts.
In addition to her art practice she has concurrently been involved in
the programming and organization of diverse media art events, notably
with Studio XX in Montreal (of which she was programming coordinator from
1996-98 and president from 2001 to 2003), Espace Videographe, Montreal,
Experimental Intermedia, NY (Screen Compositions 2005 & 2006). In recent
years her work mainly revolves around collaborations with new music composers,
notably Phill Niblock ('Babel-On', 2004, 5-channel video-audio installation,
'Painting the Painting', 2003, single-channel video, 'Topolo: de Passato
a Avvenire', 2005, multiple projection & sound installation), as well
as Al Margolis/IF BWANA, Margarida Garcia and David Watson. In 2003 she
began exploring live video mixing, using MAX/MSP and Jitter, in improvisation
with live new music/sound. Since, she has performed live video at a variety
of venues in NY, Montreal and Europe with a number of music/sound artists
including: o.blaat, Toshio Kajiwara, Shelley Hirsch, David Watson, Margarida
Garcia, Barry Weisblat, Vortex (Satoshi Takeishi + Shoko Nagai), Mary
Halvorson, Tiziana Bertoncini, Thomas Lehn, Urkuma, Angelica Castello,
Micheal Delia, Antonio Della Marina, Giuseppe Ielasi, Renato Rinaldi,
Martine Crispo, TV Pow, Boris Hauf, Matt Pass, Richard Geret, Gil Sanson,
Gill Arno, Ben Owen, Andre Goncalves...
Al Margolis was one of the prime movers in the legendary cassette underground scene of the 1980s (between 1984 and 1991 his Sound Of Pig label released over 300 cassettes of music by the likes of Merzbow, Costes, Amy Denio, John Hudak and Jim O'Rourke) and is the eminence grise behind twenty years of music under the name If, Bwana. He is the man behind the Pogus label, as well as label manager for Deep Listening, XI Records, and Mutable Music. He has recorded and/or performed with Pauline Oliveros, Ione, Joan Osborne, Adam Bohman, Ellen Christi, Fred Lonberg-Holm, Jane Scarpantoni, Ulrich Krieger, David First, Dave Prescott, Hal McGee, Sarah Weaver, Hudson Valley Soundpainting Ensemble, and Amoeba (Raft) Boy, among others.
A recent review of MargolisŐs work says: "Let it be declared that Al Margolis/If, Bwana is some sort of evil genius working with raw materials which are never adapted to a genre or a context, because they create one in that very moment. Those sources are radically altered up to an utterly unrecognizable state, anarchic manifestations moving in compact determination." (Massimo Ricci, Touching Extremes)
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