The first release from Feeding Tube’s Unknown Province reissue series of Canadian cult classics, which is being curated by liner-notes author Alex Moskos, is a time capsule from a true freak scene. Recorded in 1968 by pioneering sound-and-concrete poet Bill Bissett after arriving in Vancouver from Halifax, the album finds his sundry gang of poets,Continue reading “Bill Bissett & Th Mandan Massacre. Awake In Th Red Desert.”
Genre Archives
Sonic Acts Festival 2019: Hereafter—An Exhibition in Three Acts.
In Promised Lands, an installation by British artist Emma Wolukau-Wanambwa, alluring landscape emerges through foliage in the distance. Vegetation, lush and green, stretches all the way to hills on the horizon. Watching it makes you wish to enter that scenery, to wander around in it, to explore it up close. The camera that captures thisContinue reading “Sonic Acts Festival 2019: Hereafter—An Exhibition in Three Acts.”
Cluster New Music and Integrated Arts Festival.
Since 2010, Cluster New Music and Integrated Arts Festival in Winnipeg has been offering an annual space where musical inspiration meets modern technology and interdisciplinary art. Its tenth edition featured nearly three dozen artists presenting performances, installations, lectures, and workshops; while not explicitly stated as such, issues of identity, representation, and art as an instrumentContinue reading “Cluster New Music and Integrated Arts Festival.”
Carmen Vanderveken is full of surprises
Quebec-born composer Carmen Vanderveken was commissioned by the Dutch annual festival Gaudeamus Muziekweek to write a piece for a quartet featuring Dutch bass clarinetist Fie Schouten. An earlier piece sheds light on the shape and sound of the music Carmen Vanderveken is after. In about two and a half minutes this “very short étude,” asContinue reading “Carmen Vanderveken is full of surprises”
Pleasure Calls, by Camae Ayewa and Carmel Farahbakhsh
Pleasure Calls is a collaborative, interdisciplinary installation and performance by Camae Ayewa and Carmel Farahbakhsh that activates revolutionary ways of loving one another. The installation is the culmination of a week-long residency in early March of 2019 at the Khyber Centre for the Arts, an artist-run centre for noncommercial work located in the historic HalifaxContinue reading “Pleasure Calls, by Camae Ayewa and Carmel Farahbakhsh”
Raven Chacon’s Harmonious Language
“I loved the Beatles so much that I totally exhausted listening to their music. I wanted more.” For Raven Chacon, the answer was easy. “I recorded all of their albums on cassette, then took the tape out of the shell and flipped it so I could have all the albums in reverse. So I hadContinue reading “Raven Chacon’s Harmonious Language”
Bagpipes Blew My Mind
My partner Emily and I moved to Glasgow from Toronto a year ago. The first TV shows we saw included a pipe-band championship and a shepherding competition. Both were brilliant to listen to. We thought that’s what TV was going to be here. It isn’t. And aside from the guys on Buchanan St. playing “ScotlandContinue reading “Bagpipes Blew My Mind”
2019 Push International Performing Arts Festival.
“Art should be understood, and enjoyed, as a world that hasn’t been infected by commercialism. And within that, it should serve as a reminder that we are creatures who have the ability to access our souls.” —Helmut Lachenmann The Vancouver Push Festival’s fifteenth season featured three inspiring performances of sound art from Japan, overContinue reading “2019 Push International Performing Arts Festival.”
Ociciwan Contemporary Art Collective: in memoriam . . . Project
THE EIGHTH PROJECT initiated by the Edmonton-based Ociciwan Contemporary Art Collective, in memoriam . . . , was nominally about a performance, but soon morphed into a unique achievement of seemingly infinite layers. Its complex genesis, motivations, resonances, and residual impact on its participants transcend its basic idea. It conveys a distinctively humane and elevated notion ofContinue reading “Ociciwan Contemporary Art Collective: in memoriam . . . Project”
wnoondwaamin | we hear them
Inspired by the idea that sound travels and has purpose beyond the human ear, wnoondwaamin | we hear them is about the materiality of sound, the social implications of the transmission and reception of sound, and the politics of being or not being heard. Artists Autumn Chacon, Jeneen Frei Njootli, Melissa General, and Suzanne MorrissetteContinue reading “wnoondwaamin | we hear them”