From Artvoice: Infringement Festival 2011 is upon us, which means that marginalized artists of every shape, size and genre will come out of the woodwork to showcase the off-beat, unexpected, unheard-of art that has made this festival a focal point of the summer since 2005. For 11 days, Allentown and the surrounding area becomes ground-zero for musicians, poets, dance troupes, media artists, theatre groups, street performers, and anyone else that falls between the cracks of conventionality to put themselves, and their art, on display. This year’s festival lineup boasts 1,200 performances in 52 venues across Buffalo, with group events running the gamut from the College Street Block Party, Broadway Market Extravaganza, Squeaky Wheel Film Fest, and Bike-In Movie Night at the Elmwood Co-op. The mayhem starts Thursday (July 28), as unofficial BIF headquarters, Nietzsche’s, hosts the opening ceremonies in Olympic-style fashion with a jam-packed night featuring performances by MC Vendetta, Pam Swarts, Ginger James, Scantron, Harold Black and the Entire Planet, DJ Medison, the Zombettes, Reverend Soapbox and the Rabble Rousers, and many more on both the front and back stages from 7pm until deep into the night. It’s festivals like this that prove Buffalo is a hotbed for under-the-radar art, and that there’s no shortage of artists who are willing to push the envelope to experiment, be controversial, and above all, make art on their own terms. —jon wheelock. Read the rest here.
It is Big Orbit Gallery's pleasure to announce, There Has to be Another Way Out of This F. Scott, an exhibition of paintings by artist Zack Boehler. Zach Beohler is a native of Buffalo, NY and a graduate of Buffalo State College. He is currently pursuing a MA in Art Education at the college. While Zach has displayed his work in numerous group exhibitions around Western New York, this will be his first gallery solo exhibition. Boehler is also a respected teaching artist who works extensively with children from the Boys and Girls Clubs of Buffalo through the Essex Street Arts Center's Simon Griffis Studio for Youth.
Artist Statement: When creating my work I often think of the Oscar Wilde quote "We are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars." I feel my work often examines the condition the individual faces in the built environment. People constructed the urban environment to house and move large groups. The singular individual often is left to feel isolated by the constructed system and though surrounded by others at all times and continuously visually stimulated, one finds a stunning lack of meaning.
The title of this show is derived from this lack of meaning. Looking at the great literary minds of the Lost Generation and comparing their thirst for life's meaning and also their feeling of imminent collapse many lines of similarity can be drawn to the experience I have witnessed of those today. While the Hemingways and Fitzgeralds of the 1920's were disillusioned by World War I, we are not so much disillusioned as we are over-illusioned. The constant stimulus of our society has left many of the digital natives to become numb to any stimulus at all, and left voided in meaningless. Coupled with the loss of meaning is a fear of anonymity. We are left to feel that notoriety in any respect is a necessity of success, of happiness, and will cure our voids. Notoriety can only force us to delve further into the culture that has left us numb.
When we are forced to confront these feelings, and the realization that we experience them together, we find a sense of exploration. By embracing the idea of self-manifested destiny one can shake free of the over stimulation to once again perceive humanly, through curiosity and discovery. My imagery depicts these moments, where we discover meaning and feel possibility. The white flags depicted in this show are not a symbol of being beaten, they are instead a call to take action and surrender ourselves from the society that has forced unfounded mediocrity onto our shoulders. We can be pioneers; we can own these nights, manifest our histories, raise our flags and find that our anonymity is our greatest virtue while we live the legends we were born to chase.
COST: $7, all proceeds go towards touring artists and art space.ORIENTAL RUGS is a Chicago three piece that utilizes analog synthesizers, cassette tapes and a VHS mixer to convey a synesthetic collage. Members consist of John Shin, Mark Lee, and Ron Ewert.
http://www.facebook.com/Or ientalRugsMusic
http://soundcloud.com/orie ntal-rugs
MMCIII is fantasy electronic music hailing from Denver, Colorado. Milton Melvin Croissant does video projections of 3D animations while playing homemade (as well as pre-made) instruments with light, color, and motions sensors, and magic wands. Sounds like Terminator 2 meets Beyond the Mind Eye.
http://www.mmciii.com/
http://www.foxydigitalis.c om/foxyd/?p=11408
D.U.G.O.U.T.C.A.N.O.E. uses a deep wealth of field recordings as well as dense layers of guitar and vocals to do positive mind poems. Reminds MMCIII of Nobukazu Takemura.
http://dugoutcanoe.bandcam p.com/
Local DJ Jake Gittes (real name: Jake Mikler) will be sharing his comprehensive music library with you all, sprinkling it like gold dust in between sets, in between universes: early outer space, post-atomic punk, minimal electronik, past and current kraut, art-punk, etc. Listen and levitate!
Nate Wooley has a compound identity as a trumpeter. On one hand, he's created a body of work in free improvisation (as a soloist and in duos with Paul Lytton, Chris Forsyth and Peter Evans) preoccupied with exploring the trumpet's sonic possibilities and issues of space, duration and free interaction. Conversely, he's also a sideman in some highly creative but more traditional jazz groups, like the Daniel Levin Quartet and Harris Eisenstadt's Canada Day. Wooley's own quintet dates from 2008, and it clearly represents a coming-together of those interests, an attentiveness to both the minutiae of sound and the exploration of group relations within loose forms, the combination creating profoundly nuanced work.Wooley has played Soundlab many times: 10/17/04 Blue Collar (Nate Wooley/Steve Swell trombone/Tatsuya Nakatani), Padhermlardbacz Horn Trio + Drums (Ravi Padmanahba/Mike Hermanson/Mike Allard/Steve Baczkowski); 04/09/05 Nate Wooley/Chris Forsythe, Open Music Foundation; 05/13/06 Cor Fuhler, Nate Wooley, Newtown Armstrong; 09/30/06 SILO: Nate Wooley, Audrey Chen.
With roots in metal, modern composition, jazz, indie pop and Early Music, Charlie Looker’s music has always been an intuitive synthesis of diverse influences. A core member of the notorious Brooklyn “brutal chamber” group Zs, Looker formed his own band Extra Life in 2007 to explore more fully his vocal writing, folk-based forms and synthetic instrument sounds. Other notable projects and credits include work with Dirty Projectors, John Zorn, William Parker, Tyondai Braxton, Daniel Carter, Elliott Sharp, Christian Wolff, Seductive Sprigs and Time of Orchids.Charlie Looker played the old Soundlab with his group Lavender on 08/10/02 (also on the bill: John Long, Tassels from a Day Sale live original soundtrack to Dziga Vertov's Three Songs of Lenin). On 08/23/06 he played the new Soundlab with Seductive Sprigs, Nat Baldwin.
Pianist Marilyn Nonken is performing Triadic Memories on June 4 in Philadelphia as part of “American Sublime,” a festival devoted to the works of Morton Feldman. Marilyn was kind enough to tell us a bit about working on Feldman’s music, as well as some of her other upcoming projects.
In the early 2000s, saxophonist Michel Doneda was putting out an astonishing number of recordings (about 25 between 1999 and 2005 by my count), but since then, he's been relatively quiet. So it's good to see this strong batch of recent work hit. Doneda's 2004 collaboration with Tatsuya Nakatani and Jack Wright on soseditions was a stunner, so it's great to see Nakatani inaugurate his new label with a duo he and Doneda recorded in New York in September 2007.On 01/18/04, Soundlab hosted the Jack Wright/Tatsuya Nakatani/Michel Doneda trio along with the trio of Blaise Siwula/ Adam Lane/Toshi Makihara. Nakatani and Wright have visited several times since.
This massive selection is from a 62 CD set called "The History of Electroacoustic Music" that was floating around as a torrent, reputedly curated by a Brazilian student. It's sketchy. The torrent vanished and the collection has long been unavailable. It's a clearly flawed selection: there's few women and almost no one working outside of the Western tradition (where are the Japanese? Chinese? etc.). However, as an effort, it's admirable and contains a ton of great stuff. Take it with a grain of salt, or perhaps use it as a provocation to curate a more intelligent, inclusive, and comprehensive selection.
In their first year, Burlington, Vermont’s the Vacant Lots did what most indie rock bands strive to do over the span of an entire career. That is, self release three full-length albums. Tapping into the dark side of the pop spectrum, the duo of Jared Artaud and Frank Zammiello recently signed to New York City’s Mexican Summer record label to release their singles “Confusion” and “Cadillac,” two psychedelic, yet black and white garage rock burners. Its not out of the ordinary to find the Vacant Lots compared to bands like the Black Angels, Spacemen 3, the Stooges or Bo Diddley, but their sound still remains their own, combining retro-rock with grunge and indie. The Vacant Lots will bring their retro-psychedelic rock to Soundlab on Saturday (July 9). Local garage rock band the Auras and indie-pop band the Bird Day open the show.
