In early 2011 I began taking photos with my iPhone of the ground outside the studios of artists I visited. I saw this act as a way to document shared moments of vulnerability between two people as well as to create a representation of the artist. I posted (and still post) the photos to social media with the spare title, “Before studio visit with X” and “After studio visit with X.”
York Chang, Gustavo Raynal, On Confrontational Aesthetics, digital video (00:06:40), 2012
Lady Noise and their display of sonorous bend played at a rock club last week, opening for Lee Ranaldo Band.
Prior to this event I have only felt the Lady Noise in the contexts of art venues. The first time I experienced Lady Noise was at the Barker Hanger in Santa Monica during Art Los Angeles Contemporary in 2010, situated amongst shipping crates, each player sitting at different eye levels. I procured a copy of their first CD recording, the cover art a visual nod to Neu.
Lady Noise and I have collaborated on a few performances (Feminist Schaudenfreude and This Is Why We Can’t Have Nice Things/Material Utterances) at LACE and Human Resources. I appreciate the aperture that the collective affords me—they provide the soundtrack to the space with anxious staccato bursts and undulating fissures creating a sonic canvas upon which to be ugly and vulnerable. Collaborating with Lady Noise is like panicking at the water rising in an air-sealed phone, a brass ring for performance artists.
In A Composite Field, Yann Novak and Taisha Paggett create a site-specific performance based on the MAK Center’s Mackey Garage Top. Incorporating sound, movement and projected light in three intimate performances over the course of one evening, their collaboration takes up sensory materials as objects to be manipulated, re-framed and re-contextualized. Novak utilizes sound recordings from the Mackey Garage Top as a point of departure. These recordings are then digitally altered to emphasize the unique characteristics of the space itself. Drawing on her ongoing interest in the cultural process of vision, seeing and being seen, Paggett constructs and performs a chain of actions inspired by the layered organic and artificial elements of both the space and the sound.
Curated by Dino Dinco
Footage: Ashley Hunt
Video: Yann Novak
Staalplaat Soundsystem in residence at LACE
(Source: vimeo.com)
