performance collaborations (not Spectralina)
I bring my visual practice into the music space and the music into the visual arts space.
I work in two distinct modes when it comes to the integration of musical practice into my visual practice. I bring musicians into my pieces installed within a visual art context for improvised performances and in the music world I collaborate with musicians creating projections as visual music as part of an ensemble. Improvised music in particular is very interesting to me because of how it contrasts with my studio practice. Improvised music isn’t about presenting something that is complete, but it is about the actual process of creation- we are all there together witnessing it as it is happening.
The performative aspect of my work is very important to me – performing with musicians I play my videolah- a videosynthesizer that allows me to create animations in real time and sometimes I sing. This part of my practice is always improvised and allows me to access a mode of creation that is immediate and in response to my collaborators and the room in a very direct way.
When my work is exhibited in art institutions I usually also curate performances to take place inside my installations as part of the exhibition. For this I bring together local musicians to improvise inside my installations, in conversation with my work. These performances activate the space in a direct way and they also allow me to create a platform for the musicians and to expose the visual arts audience to this art form.
Having this improvisation within my installations gives the audience the opportunity to experience the process of creation, it is dramatic and meandering, and that process is contrasted by the installation, which is fixed, but because it is showing animated films it also represents a compression of time- it takes months or years to make my animated pieces, but ultimately they are just a few minutes long, it takes years for improvising musicians to be so in tune with their tools that they can create magic on the fly.