Oneohtrix Point Never and Nate Boyce's Performance at MoMA PopRally
Photos by Kristy Leibowitz/elkstudios
This past weekend, MoMA presented a collaboration between electronic musician Daniel Lopatin—who records under the moniker Oneohtrix Point Never—and video artist Nate Boyce, as part of its PopRally series of art parties. While not an overly serious gathering, Boyce and Lopatin delivered an hour of strobing, structuralist-minded imagery over relentless digital throbbing. Each of the work’s sections was based upon a specific object in the MoMA’s sculpture collection and the overarching title, Reliquary House, suggested a congratulatory pat on the back for the museum. PopRally events are more often than not thematically connected to what’s concurrently on MoMA’s walls, while in this case the institution’s history was the tie-in.
The video screen displayed 3-D renderings of modernist forms by Isamo Noguchi, David Smith, Jacob Epstein, and Anthony Caro, which gyrated in “impossible” landscapes evoking the Panopticon look of the music video to Nine Inch Nail’s “Down In It.” To clarify their intention, Lopatin began each movement with details of the image being projected—dates, dimensions, curatorial texts—dictated by robotic voices a la Siri and the Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy. Within the foreboding visual environment, these came off as provocations of a sort, which gave way to beds of digital glitches and rollicking bass oscillations, positing a bleak underbelly to the neutrality of the subject material. Boyce and Lopatin, who often communicate a sense of humor about the austerity of contemporary tools and approaches in their work, perplexed the droll audience, who perhaps expected Lopatin to perform the angelic synthesizer music indicative of his latest record, Replica. Boyce and Lopatin stood ground side-by-side, facing their laptops, but more often were caught gazing up at the video screen.
Lopatin’s other recent art project, a zine ...
THE MARISA AND BEN SHOW at MONKEY TOWN
Saturday, September 30
Admission: $8
Showtimes: 7:30pm and 10pm
reservations are recommended: 718.384.1369
MONKEY TOWN
58 N 3rd St (btw Wythe & Kent)
Williamsburg, Brooklyn
Subway: L Train to Bedford
Join film festival prankster Ben Coonley and internet artist Marisa
Olson for an evening of "ubiquitous media:" PowerPoint presentation
send-ups, subversive Blogging, pro-sporting simulacra, and a host of
new media topsy-turveydom. By appropriating amateur technologies to
create innovative and amusing forms of entertainment, Ben and Marisa
give us a slice of "life as art," just maybe pointing out that the
kind of life our culture leads brings forth absurd new ways of
experiencing it. The program will consist of some never-
before-screened gems and a two-channel collaborative installation
specifically created for Monkey Town.
Website for Marisa: http://www.marisaolson.com
Website for Ben: http://www.tvchannel.tv/
Marisa Olson:
Marisa Olson's performance-based work revolves around the shared
histories of popular music, cinema, and sound recording technologies.
Her interdisciplinary practice incorporates internet art, videos,
audio recordings, drawings, and installations in tandem with live
performance, to make statements about life, communication, and the
voice in contemporary digital culture. these works are often infused
with mixed metaphors about the relations between talent, fame, and
failure.
Marisa studied art at Goldsmiths College, History of Consciousness at
UC Santa Cruz, and Rhetoric and Film Studies at UC Berkeley. Her work
has most recently been presented by the Whitney Museum of American
Art, the New Museum of Contemporary Art, the Berkeley Art
Museum/Pacific Film Archive, New Langton Arts, the Art Gallery of
Knoxville, Side Cinema-UK, and the New York and Chicago Underground
Film Festivals. While Wired has called her both funny and humorous,
the New York Times has called her "anything but stupid."
Ben Coonley:
Ben Coonley is a video and performance artist who uses comic pedagogical styles and direct audience address to explore aspects of media culture and film history. Drawing from the avant garde canon and amateur/public access video conventions, his videos are sardonic no-brow subversions of cinematic form and genre.
Born in Boston (1976), Coonley studied Art Semiotics at Brown University, and received his MFA from Bard College. His works have been screened at venues and film festivals including the International Film Festival Rotterdam, New York Underground Film Festival, Cinematexas and the Pacific Film Archive. He is a regular contributor to Movies with Live Soundtracks, a quarterly DIY film/performance series based in Providence, RI. He lives in Brooklyn.
Presented by Nick Hallett (HARKNESS A/V)
DARMSTADT presents A/V GEEKS, LOVID, FOUND FOOTAGE FEST, DEWANATRON and MIGHTY ROBOT at SPIEGELTENT!
AV GEEKS presents "School-a-delic," a collection of 16mm educational films from the late 60s and early 70s that aren't specifically about hallucinogenic drugs, but were certainly influenced by them. Trippy titles include: 200, Toes Tell, Toothache of a Clown, Fantasy of Feet, Malakapalakadoo Skip Two, Replay, The Eyes Have.. Or Do They? and more!
http://www.avgeeks.com/
http//www.avgeeks.com/bestof/press2002.pdf
FOUND FOOTAGE FESTIVAL is a hilarious showcase of 80s and 90s era videotapes that were found at garage sales, thrift stores, warehouses and trash bins throughout the USA. Highlights from the show include: a Midwestern insurance advert with brutally graphic reenactments of on-the-job accidents, an adult-oriented travel doc for Rio's Carnival featuring a young and frisky Arnold Schwarzenegger, and scatalogical outtakes from an industrial about RVs.
http://www.foundfootagefestival.com
LOVID build and perform on their own audiovisual synthesizers with "television signal scrambler" technology, using electronic sound to interrupt video signals and filter the feed into swirling, hyper-kinetic animations.
http://www.ignivomous.org/projects/lovid/index.htm
DEWANATRON with visuals by MIGHTY ROBOT
the Dewans are two cousins, inventors of unique and original analog synthesizers, and performers of populist musique concrete. The Dewantatrons are their original creations and the instruments on which they will be so excellently performing.
Mighty Robot are Brooklyn's legendary visuals squad, implementing the techniques of the 60s Psychedelic Lightshow as well as a deconstruction of found footage, evoking the spirit of 60s-era expanded cinema to dizzying effect.
http://www.dewanatron.com
http://secretprojectrobot.org/
Darmstadt "Classics of the Avant Garde," the Brooklyn-based contemporary music outfit lead by Zach Layton and Nick Hallett, presents a special series of concerts for the Speigeltent. Internationally acclaimed chamber ensembles
play contemporary music by young composers and classic 20th Century works by Cage and Xenakis. Major figures from New York's leading experimental new media community present live real-time improvisatory electronic audio-visual performances. Homemade synthesizers, oddball educational films and psychedelic visuals round out the series. A downtown premiere series sure to be unlike anything you've ever seen at the South Street Seaport.
Darmstadt reviewed in the New York Times, not once, but twice:
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/08/30/arts/music/30ice.html?\_r=1&oref=slogin
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/08/23/arts/music/23spieg.htmlex57688000&enOe995b257a85ad6&eiP70
event info:
DARMSTADT and INIV OMOUS present
AV GEEKS, FOUND FOOTAGE FESTIVAL, LOVID, and DEWANATRON with visuals by MIGHTY ROBOT
MONDAY, SEPTEMBER 18
10 PM - 1 AM
TICKET PRICE: $10
ALL AGES
SPIEGELTENT AT FULTON FISH MARKET
SOUTH STREET UNDER THE BROOKLYN BRIDGE
(2, 3, 4, 5, J, Z, or M to Fulton Street; A and C to Broadway-Nassau)
Ticketing services provided by Ticket Central, 212 279-4200, Noon to
8pm Daily.
Book online at http://www.spiegelworld.com
HARKNESS A/V SALON one-year anniversary/MONSTER ISLAND ARTS & MUSIC FESTIVAL
from sunset until 10 pm, visuals by:
MIGHTY ROBOT
BRADLEY EROS
SETH KIRBY
TOM DEXTER
and visiting guest artist: BORIS (MODUL8 team)
maybe others!!
info on the festival: http://www.secretprojectrobot.org
music by members of ONEIDA, BARRY LONDON, HOME, and others curated by TODD P.
theater and movement by LIVE WITH ANIMALS and AVANT FLOOR
art exhibition at SECRET PROJECT ROBOT and KAYROCK SCREENPRINTING
this and more (vegan barbeque?). plus free!
1-YR HARKNESS ANNIVERSARY
as part of MONSTER ISLAND ARTS & MUSIC FESTIVAL
210 KENT AVE (at METROPOLITAN)
gas tanks on river street
saturday, september 16 from 2PM - 10 PM
HARKNESS SALON starting at 8 PM
DANCEPOD
On September 9th at 11pm in Portland, 12 am in Guadalajara, 2am in New York City, 3am in Mexico City and 7am in Berlin, dancepod will present an entirely new kind of sculpture. A sculpture composed of simultaneous, web-connected dance parties. The parties, coordinated and developed in conjunction with artists and presenters from each city, will utilize identical dancepod installations. The installations will become the core of a shared physical and virtual experience, supporting streaming video and music as well as live DJ
MAISON DU CHIC at SPIEGELTENT!!
For our latest installment, we are featuring:
DYNASTY HANDBAG, the one-woman tour-de-force performance project of Jibz Cameron, who takes the most absurd banalities of life and exaggerates them into a side-splitting philosophic rant involving music, video, as well as an aerobics routine or two...
http://www.dynastyhandbag.com
HELOISE AND THE SAVOIR FAIRE, a Cyndi Lauper meets Toni Basil romp, a genre study in 80s camp stylings. Her neo-new wave is anything but cold. Expect full-on wailing from Heloise, and electric-synchronic moves from her glamazonian crew.
http://www.heloisemusic.com
visuals by ENGLISH KILLS
plus trapeze courtesy of cecilia grimm and fawn doe, video art, sublebrity DJs, and a surprise or two from emcee, NICKLCAT!!
MAISON DU CHIC
featuring DYNASTY HANDBAG, and HELOISE + THE SAVOIR FAIRE
Friday, August 18 at Midnight
at the SPIEGELTENT @ FULTON FISH MARKET
SOUTH STREET UNDER THE BROOKLYN BRIDGE
(2, 3, 4, 5, J, Z, or M to Fulton Street; A and C to Broadway-Nassau)
$15 regular ticket price
Ticketing services provided by Ticket Central, 212 279-4200, Noon to 8pm
Daily.
Book online at www.spiegelworld.com