1993 Artists In Residence

Awarded Artists:

Laetitia Sonami

Sonami’s sound performances, live film collaborations and sound installations focus on issues of presence and participation. She has devised new gestural controllers for performance and applies new technologies and appropriated media to achieve an expression of immediacy through sound, place and body.

Recent collaborations include an improvisation duo, Sparrows and Ortolans, with James Fei; and She is a Butcher in my dreams for Zeena Parkins.

Sonami has performed at numerous festivals across the United States, Canada, Europe, Japan, and China. Awards include the Alpert Award in the Arts (2002), Foundation for Contemporary Performance Arts Award (2000), the Civitella Ranieri Fellowship (2000), Studio Pass-Harvestworks Residency (2001), and a Creative Work Fund Award (2000) for a collaboration with Nick Bertoni and the Tinkers Workshop. Sonami lives in Oakland, California and was a guest professor in the Music Department at Mills College, CA until its demise in the spring of 2023.

LOVELY MUSIC is to release Sonami’s double CD “Dangerous Women” featuring her works from 1985-2005. The CD is available here:

Frank Ortega

Frank Ortega for the recording of the radio show, “Toward Akaba.” This audio journal will track a personal journey through the Middle East during the “Gulf Crisis,” starting in Istanbul on the back of a Bedford truck and ending in Cairo on a “flying coffin.” “The soldier watches the border, that absurd cyclone fence representing a new line on the map, a change of stationary.” The show will be offered to Pacifica Program Service, NPR, and American Public Radio as well as individual radio stations.

Charlie Ahearn

“Kiki Smith: Signs and Wonders” is a soundtrack for a film documentary of contemporary visual artist Kiki Smith, whose imagery primarily concerns the human body. The result will be a multi-layered free-flowing assemblage of sound and image.

Amy Chen

“Memoirs of Women Ghosts” is an audio installation and work for radio that examines the issue of violence against women in China by juxtaposing personal essays, fiction, poetry, advertisements, radio and movie soundtracks. Installations are planned at Art in General, Artists Space, Los Angeles Contemporary Exhibitions (L.A.C.E.) and Artspace (S.F.). It will be broadcast on National Public Radio and Pacifica Network.

Garland Farwell

“Pipe” is an art performance incorporating puppets, performers and interactive video. Garland means to examine the Anita Hill/Clarence Thomas case and the appointment of Judge Thomas as Supreme Court Justice. Performances are scheduled for Rhode Island School of Design, Dance Theater Workshop, and the Atlanta Center for Puppetry Arts.

Coco Gordon

“Dreaming Borders Dreaming: Life of a Hops Yard, Gteiermart & Slovenia” is an audio art installation which may be appreciated by visitors to the hops yard (on the border of Austria and Slovenia), as well as people driving through. The project will integrate collected audio from local people invited to dream and relate their dreams into an audio installation on site at the hops vineyard in September and October 1993.

Kato Hideki

“Utility” involves tracking, mixing, sequencing and musicians in collaboration in both Tokyo and New York. The music combines digital sequencing and live performance. Album to follow.

Victor Wong Huey

“Rocking the Great Wall” is a video documentary on Chinese popular musicians. Over three years, Victor traveled to China to interview, live with and record performances of Chinese musicians, chronicling the difficulties in working in a popular medium not always in government favor. Premiere at Downtown Community Television, May 1993.

Brenda Hutchinson

“Violet Flame” is an experimental audio documentary on the Church Universal and Triumphant (Elizabeth Clare Prophet). Sound is uniquely favored in this Montana-based cult whose members chant, sing and use sound and music to heal and alter physical and spiritual imbalance. Gathering material by living with the group for three months, Ms. Hutchinson will explore the religious and political philosophy through interviews, recordings of chanting, services, and excerpts from Church literature and teachings. Plans for broadcast include New American Radio and National Public Radio.

Dan Jaffee

“Disposable Homeplace” is an experimental documentary exploring the interstate solid and hazardous waste trade in the U.S., which targets poorer rural communities and those of color. The program will focus on a Native American community in Oklahoma, a Latino farmworker town in California, a group of Appalachian citizens in Kentucky, and a predominately African-American community in Georgia and will be narrated by and written in collaboration with citizen leaders who are successfully resisting “toxic racism and classism.” The program will be broadcast on “Earth on the Air,” a weekly environmental issues program.

Kumiko Kimoto

“Hands On” is sound design for a collaborative/improvisational dance piece to be formed at the Center for New Dance Development, Arnheim, the Netherlands. Kumikos choreography is a horizontal/non-hegemonic attempt to elicit content through mutual collaboration. Performances are scheduled throughout Europe and the US in 1993.

Dan Reeves

“Obsessive Becoming” is a video autobiography concerned with childhood and adult rituals and the longing for meaning and connection. The work is less about personality or personal history, but offers rather a vehicle for looking deeply into the roots of dysfunction, suffering and abuse. Working a rich vein of personal narrative (and copious archives) it uncovers the insight and wisdom that can be the fruit of hardship and passage through difficult times.

Ayalet Sela

“Singing Wood” is a multiple module radio series on tuned keyboard percussion (i.e. marimba) around the globe. Tuned keyboard percussion is a family of instruments that range from arc marimbas of Nicaragua to the Gamelon orchestras of Bali. Research and interviews were conducted over the past three years with the most historically notable musicians alive today and contemporary innovators in the field. NPR broadcasts begin fall 1993.

Mary Anne Toman

“The Female Offender” is a black and white film that takes a subjective look at the cultural mythology surrounding female criminals. The starting point is the 19th century criminology textbook “The Female Offender” by Cesare Lombroso which was an attempt to link physiognomy with criminal predisposition. The film explores provocative ideas related to womens social conditioning and the difficulty of those who reject it in favor of a life of crime.

1993 Programming Residency