Wandering, crossing borders, getting lost, fiddling with the unknown – Hypernatural Sounds # 5: Destination Unknown invites artists & speakers to perform & talk about being in transit to an unknown destination.
The artists:
Thessia Machado is a visual/sound artist, instrument builder and performer whose work plays with the physicality of sound.
Ranjit Bhatnagar makes installations and performances from sound and language, with a particular interest in improvisation.
The performances will be followed by an extended discussion round including the musician and artist Daniel Bejar.
Date: Saturday Oct 21 2017
8 pm – 10 pm
Tickets: $15
Discount Code: HARFriend
Harvestworks
596 Broadway Suite 602 New York NY 10012
Phone: 212-431-1130 Subway: F/M/D/B Broadway/Lafayette, R to Prince, #6 to Bleecker
Wandering, crossing borders, getting lost, fiddling with the unknown – are all old motifs that strongly influence the sensitivities of the time. We all find ourselves feeling unspecific longings, searching for freedom, strangely lured to the unknown but also restless and homeless. In fact, what served the inspiration for the romantic age (art of the 18th – 19th century) is now an almost painful necessity of our everyday. The demand for unlimited flexibility, both spatially and ideologically, is deeply embedded in the value structure of this world we now inhabit… and not just for artists.
In this edition of the Hypernatural Sounds we invite artists & speakers to perform & talk about being in transit to an unknown destination. Is this a way of life for our invited artists or their mandatory modus operandi in today’s world? This duality is present in their ongoing travels to present their art, but also as a possibility to extend the artistic and personal perspectives and practices, and as it’s seemingly opposite: as remaining, as the refusal of any arrival in face of a destination unknown.
In the first iteration of Hypernatural Sounds outside of Berlin, we invited sound artists Thessia Machado and Ranjit Bhatnagar whom we have intersected with our series at this original geographical point but that hereby help us expand into unknown territories.
HYPERNATURAL SERIES: THE PHILOSOPHY OF SOUNDS is a series curated by Pedro Lopes and Desiree Förster to address the overflow of musical events in large cities which do not reflect upon themselves. In order to bridge the gap in understanding the recent developments and linking them to concrete artistically practices, the series applies itself to investigations of techniques, phenomena and questions, in performances and discussions. Being more than “yet another event”, Hypernatural Sounds revolves around the philosophy of sounds, of contemporary music practices and addresses a precise exploration of a singular topic in every happening. Each event is followed by a publication in which the artists get the chance to put down their personal reflections on the topic.
Artist Bios
Desiree Förster is a Berlin based curator and researcher collaborates within various disciplines such as (synthetic) biology, computer science, philosophy and humanities. Currently writing her PhD at University of Potsdam. She gave presentations about her research on interspecies relationships, human-machine entanglements and new artistic practices at conferences worldwide.
Pedro Lopes is a turntablist metamorphosed into a percussionist by night and a Human Computer Interaction researcher by day. When playing live he deconstructs his instrument, the turntables, into a vehicle of a rapid musical dialog of analog intonation and acoustic overtones. In Pedro’s music the needles are microscopes that enable us to hear otherwise unheard micro-realities, such as the sound of a fingernail scratching a membrane or a coin revolving as it falls. Pedro’s music work has been presented at Serralves Foundation, Ljubljana jazz festival, Fylkingen, Ausland, and Goethe Institut.
Thessia Machado is a visual/sound artist, instrument builder and performer whose work investigates the physicality of sound and its effect on our perception of space. In sculptures and interactive installations that have a real-time, live component, the expressive potential is still active and changeable.
Ranjit Bhatnagar makes installations and performances from sound and language. His heaviest work is Stone Song, a 7500 pound sound sculpture at Caramoor Center for Music and the Arts; and his lightest is Pentametron, a twitter poetry miner, made of code.
Daniel Bejar is an interdisciplinary artist living and working in Brooklyn, NY. Bejar is a 2015 fellow in Interdisciplinary Work from the New York Foundation for the Arts and is currently a 2016-17 Artist-in-Residence in the Mana Residencies program at Mana Contemporary, and participating in The Drawing Center’s 2016-17 Open Sessions Program. He is also a 2014 recipient of a Franklin Furnace Grant, and 2013 recipient of the Rema Hort Mann Visual Arts Grant. Bejar’s work has been featured in publications such as the New Yorker, Harpers Bazaar HK, Magazine B, and Hyperallergic, among others.
Hypernatural Sounds is kindly supported by the Goethe-Institut Germany. This presentation is made possible in part with public funds from the New York State Council on the Arts’ 2017 Electronic Media and Film Presentation Funds Grant program, administered by The ARTS Council of the Southern Finger Lakes.
http://hypernatural-sounds.org/
https://www.facebook.com/pg/Hypernatural-Sounds-218213905178626/
Hypernatural Sounds #4: objet autre at SomoS / Sunday, 12.02.2017
