Sasha Soren

CONTENTS:

LIVES
Shinichi Momo Koga, inkBoat

ART
London/”Falsifikacija”
LA/”In the Bright Room”
NYC/”(desi)re”
NYC/”Body Proxy” + “Echoplex”
NYC/”In Word Only”
NYC/”Dating Data”
London/”Lies”
Woodstock/”Foreign Affair”
LA/”Beauty in the Breakdown”
Brooklyn/”Lost in Queens”
NYC/”Women on the Verge”
Boston/”¡Dominicanazo!”

MUSIC
Disc series/Magdalen Hsu-Li, “Smashing the Ceiling”
Miami/Festivals/Subtropics 17

DANCE + THEATRE
INSIGHT/Cherie Carson, “Trikona”
NYC/”Sly Verb”
Athens/”Antigone: Worshipping the Dead”
Miami/”Suite 305”
NYC/”Room”

FILM/SCREENWRITING
Brussels/Festivals/Brussels Int'l Festival of Fantastic Film
Belgrade/Festivals/Belgrade Int'l Film Festival
London/Festivals/Constellation Change
Vienna/Tricky Women

BOOKS/WRITERS
Writers Bloc series – “The Long March”
Readings/NYC: KGB Bar, “Circus of the Grand Design” + “Tumbling After”
The Agent series – “First Year Out: On the Shelves”, Jenny Bent

TRAVEL
“Traveling Solo”

LIFE
Cyber security ping-pong
Naked brunch
Strip club art
Going once...
One crime, 19 suspects

SCI/TECH
Walking the ‘bot
Walking the ‘bot2: Baby robots
A sixth sense for danger
21st century linguistics

Go to: LIVES: ART: MUSIC: DANCE/THEATRE: FILM/SCREENWRITING: BOOKS/WRITERS: TRAVEL: LIFE: SCI/TECH

LIVES: Shinichi Momo Koga, artistic director, inkBoat

What most inspires me to create new works: Dissatisfaction. If I'm just happy about something, I'll usually just dance in that moment.

But what gets me into a studio to spend time and life laboring over? Something is broken and I want to spend the time understanding broken.
How to turn broken into beautiful. Like a junk collector, finding the beauty in what people have thrown away, making something new of it.

If I go into nature, that is inspiring to me, it elevates me and gives me the strength to continue with the life struggle, but I do not put the woods on the stage. The woods make better woods than I can. No competition there.

NEW WORK: “AME TO AME”

The meaning of “Ame to Ame” is "Candy and Rain." The title came first, like brainstorming on the seed that will create the work. The seed came first.

It's a play on words, in that the same sound (in the Japanese language), depending on the Kanji, will have a different meaning. So, the title is connected with desire and pain, two of our great engines for moving in this life.

But what is candy and what is rain?

If you take the rain as tears and the candy as the thing of desire, then a small circle is created. We want, can't have, then we cry.

While we cry, we cement our desire for the thing and then the spiral goes on and on down to some lower depth we don't even want to talk about.

But there's always singing in the rain.

I read things in my own way, but I expect that the audience, coming with filters different from mine, will see it differently.

BUTOH 101

Butoh is hard to explain. But the Japanese cultural references, the line between the grotesque and the beautiful -- these are certainly part of my vocabulary.

I take what is necessary for the moment. Well, sometimes I fall on habit. But I try to keep the form alive by constantly re-working it.

Some people or companies are "classics" in the Butoh world. They have found their way and they keep working it.

Me, I keep getting lost and getting interested in cobblestones (or substitute any small detail which might come across the way of walking).

That's just how I am. For good or ill, I keep my hands in many pies.

COMPLETION: UNEXPECTED ELEMENTS

Most unexpected is how I am going to talk about a work when you put me on the spot. Maybe I'll talk about how the breakfast I ate changed the dance that day, or maybe about a passage from a book I read that keeps resurfacing in my mind. Or process. In the work itself, the surprise is going to really depend on each person.

Completing a work can take anywhere from 10 seconds to 10 years, depending on numerous conditions.

On average, a work that will show in the theatre will take between two to three months to be realized. I've created entire shows within a few days, but these are usually some kind of experiment.

If I stare at the ceiling long enough, something is bound to creep into my brain.

LIFE AS ART

I typically take from childhood events when I'm conceptualizing. But when the moments are coming, it could be anything, from how I drink my orange juice to waiting at the bus stop.

Real life usually has a stronger punch. But there are always exceptions.

The most [powerful] thing anyone ever has said to me was: "I love you."

Many small flashes went across my brain, small revelations others have shared with me, but none of them can hit me like that most overused phrase, spoken by the right person at the right time.

THEMES

Some of the themes that occur over and over in my work: Going back to childhood dreams, life emerging from death, looking for love, and strange crawling insects.

COLLABORATION

This is my constant. I've been working with different disciplines since the first day of thinking "I am an artist." They all feed me incredibly well and I'm growing fatter and fatter from the experience.

DANCE/LIFE

Like love, death and taxes, [dance is necessary]. Can't actually eliminate it.

So, we’re talking about what gets put up on stage? I've never been to Spain, but of course I hear the stories about how the dance is a major part of existence... more, anyway, than in the USA.

But people go dancing in clubs for what? Are they trying to express something?

Usually, they just want to remember that they are alive and have a good time. Or they're on the make. Then we come back to that whole desire and tears spiral.

The most important thing a creative person needs, apart from funding or daily necessities: A life. If a "creative" only has some techniques, then it's totally boring.

What life experience has come to someone, and how is that digested and coming out again?

DIFFICULT WORKS

The hardest was the solo, "Tasting an Ocean." Just being by myself, making a solo, was more difficult than assembling a dozen people for a show. I had no mirror. It was totally disturbing. The only things that ever come easy are improvisations.

SPEAKING WITHOUT WORDS

On what’s more most important: technical proficiency or emotional resonance: Emotional resonance. The rest is just architecture.

On whether dance/body movement is a language:
Ever been punched? Ever been kissed? More direct than words, I'd say.

DANCERS: BORN OR CREATED?

Both. A more finely-tuned dancer or choreographer is created through discipline.

LIFE, THE PUZZLE

Something that genuinely puzzles me: Good question. Yes, plenty, but I can't come to one single thing at the moment. I mean, LIFE puzzles me.

Nothing frustrates me like myself. The world could be hell outside, but in the end, how do I deal with it? When I come short of my own self-expectation, then bingo: frustration.

On whether writer’s block exists: Absolutely. Go back to "frustration."

UNDER THE INFLUENCE

In music, I’m most influenced these days by traditional musicians -- really old style shamisen or shakuhachi or tabla or and or and or...

And then there are people I work with, like "Sleepytime Gorilla Museum" or "Faun Fables" or Sheila or Carla or Nils doing independent stuff. And I've never disliked a Tom Waits record.

Recently I've been reading things like Anne Carson or Murakami or Gurjieff. But there's so much good stuff out there, it's hard to say who’s my favorite.

I saw the film "The Cost of Living" by DV8 recently. I was totally jealous. It was great.

IN PASSING...

The most interesting stranger I’ve ever met: Mase Shooichi. I met then spent some days with him in Kyoto, forming what seemed like a strong friendship.

Then one day he cut all ties and disappeared. Now a stranger again. Hopefully to meet again. He inspired me to make “Black Map” (to be performed in SF in May; a 30-minute version, anyway).

QUICK HITS

Reads: Just finished "The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle" by Murakami and just opened "A History of the World in 10 1/2 Chapters" by Julian Barnes.

Discs: Right this second, I'm listening to the song "Viel Glück Im Privatleben!" by Zak May and Shiva. Russians living in Berlin.

Downtime: Photography. Playing shakuhachi(badly).

On the biggest myth about being a creative:
The biggest myth: "How wonderful it is that you get to express yourself!"

If I wasn’t a dancer/choreographer, I would definitely be: "Farmer" is next on my list. Been a photographer, cook, multimedia producer (or slave may be a better term) and coffee maker.

What I wish someone had told me when I first started out: Get real.

Favorite quote: "Am I shoveling sand to live, or living to shovel sand?" by Kobo Abe. So, what's the point of our struggles, anyway?

Interesting fact that nobody knows about me yet:
Interesting? What would someone be interested in, exactly? The more hidden, the more interesting. Best is whatever I've kept hidden from myself. Hmmm, have to get back to you on that...

Life is:
Life is life is life is life is life.

Artist bio: Shinichi Momo Koga (Artistic Director/Performer, inkBoat). Originally a photographer, filmmaker and theater actor and director, Koga became primarily known as a Butoh dancer after 1991 when he began dancing under Hiroko and Koichi Tamano (primary dancers in Tatsumi Hijikata’s company). In 1994, he created the group Uro Teatr Koku with Alenka Mullin Koga. This group became inkBoat in 1998.

Koga's productions, both solo and ensemble, have been experienced since 1988 throughout the U.S., Europe and Japan.

Restructuring dance, theater and cinema forms, he extracts the vital essence of each to create a sharper reality. As a teacher, performer, and director, Koga inhabits the shadow self and swims the collision between modern life and primal being. He challenges himself and others to attain balances between chaos and serenity, to be a raging storm in blue skies and a breath of calm in the midst of turbulence.

Koga collaborates consistently with diverse performance artists such as Yumiko Yoshioka and TEN PEN CHii (Germany: 1996-2001), Do Theatre (Russia: 1997-present), Shadowlight Theatre (USA: 1993-1997) and the group adapt in Berlin (co-founded by Koga in 2001) with Minako Seki, Sten Rudstøm, Yuko Kaseki and Yael Karavan).

Upcoming tour dates: "Ame to Ame" at Dock 11, Berlin, on March 10 - 13, 15 – 19, and "Black Map" at Dance Mission on May 26,28,29 as part of
the SF International Arts Festival.

Visit official site: inkBoat

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ART/London
”Falsifikacija”
Through March 6, 2005

IBID Projects presents Milena Dragicevic’s second solo show. The “Falsifikacija/Falsification” exhibit is a complex visual and psychological riddle, illustrating the mysterious process of creative thought in a tangible form.

The human figures depicted are not portraits of specific people, but actors absorbed in introspective but active anticipation of some magical event of their own creation; their gaze is withdrawn and secretive, yet the same gaze captures the viewer and draws them into the ritual of creative reflection, directed outward and inward simultaneously.

In this new series of paintings, the artist constructs a paradoxical world which is inaccessible yet within reach; concealing, yet full of revelations; dynamic and still, abstract and figurative, both contemporary and intentionally anachronistic.

The paintings accentuate moments of transformation -- the viewer’s gaze activates and ‘unlocks’ the artwork, while the border between the representational realm and the spectator’s reality collapses.

Is art merely falsification of reality? Is it a more subtle, but genuine reflection of reality? Or is art actually reality itself, as individual thought forever alters our perception of the world? These are some of the thoughtful questions Dragicevic raises for discussion, in “Falsifikacija/Falsification.”

The notion of ‘falsification’ belong most comfortably to the discourses of theology and philosophy of science, yet Dragicevic’s paintings suggest that it is particularly relevant to the opaque powers of art - acts of representation and naming, the seduction of images and doubt towards singularity of truth.

Artist bio: Milena Dragicevic lives and works in London. She has recently exhibited in Martin Janda Gallery, Vienna, I-20 Gallery, New York, Man in the Holocene, London and The Yugoslav Biennial of Young Artists in Vrsac. Her work is represented in Arts Council of England Collection, London and MOCA (Museum of Contemporary Art), Los Angeles as well as numerous private collections in Europe and the United States.

Gallery hours: Thur-Sun 12-6pm or by appt.

Find it: IBID Projects
210 Cambridge Heath Road
Unit 4
London E29NQ, UK
Get info: +44 (0) 208-983-4355

Concurrent exhibit:
Find it: IBID Projects
Sv. Stepono g. 18
Vilnius 1 LT-01138 Lithuania
Get info: +37 05-233-5395

ART/LA
“In the Bright Room”
Through February 12th

Somewhere between the realms of reality and imagination lies the photographic art of Mayumi Terada. Terada’s moody images suggest not a physical place, but a state of being.
Terada builds diminutive domestic sets she calls ‘dollhouses’, then photographs them.

Her large monochrome pictures show a world filled with scenes and objects completely familiar to anyone living in our Western culture, yet eerily devoid of human presence.

Thus, a soup plate sitting on a table, an empty trash bucket, or a shower stall with water droplets still lingering on the glass door have a mysterious sense of reality.

The viewer can’t help wondering who might have just emerged from that shower, who left the bed wrinkled and tossed, whose suitcases are packed and waiting. Yet no matter how seductive these speculations, the real subject of her photographs is light -- streaming into windows and illuminating stories suggested by the imagination.

Find it: White Room Gallery
8810 Melrose Avenue
West Hollywood, CA 90069
Get info: (310) 859-2402

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ART/NYC
Feb. 18-Mar. 26
“(desi)re”

And now, a novel take on the theme of desire...
Desire simmers with passion, is ruled by obsession and driven by purpose.

As George Bernard Shaw once remarked, “You imagine what you desire, you will what you imagine, and at last you create what you will.”
But that’s not the 'desire' referenced by this particular exhibit.

”Desi,” a Hindi word implying “of one’s own country” and used frequently to mean “of Indian origin” is employed here to express not only sensual desire, but the longing for home or cultural identity -- or the redefinition of both.

Find it: Talwar Gallery
108 East 16th St.
New York, NY
Get info: (212) 673-3096

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ART/NYC
“Body Proxy”
+ “Echoplex”
Through March 26th

A motorcycle’s revving engine roars like an animal, louder and louder as visitors approach.

A year’s worth of disposable contact lenses worn by one person suggest an archive of what was seen during the year.

A comfortable sofa, saturated with pheromones. The hair of the artist, in a single, knotted strand over 100 km long, wound around a Teflon spool...

The body, central to the work of Norma Jeane, is represented by proxy: never present but always hinted at. Norma Jeane’s work proposes a reading of the body as an entity becoming abstract.

“Body Proxy” reveals the power, energy and will of the body. As its title indicates, the exhibition presents works that stand in as authorized representatives for the body. However, there are no bodies to be seen in the exhibition except those of the visitors.

The visitor is central to the activation of the main work in the show, “RPM,” which consists of a grey Yamaha YZF-R1, 998 cc, linked to high-tech sensors. The powerful engine remains off, but as visitors approach, the motorcycle revs, roaring like an animal, in a deafening noise.

Only when the viewer withdraws does the motorbike return to a lower gear, and off again, while powerful fans try to cool it down. Waste of energy, excess, and the erotic pair of repulsion and attraction form essential elements in this work.

The Swiss Institute will also house “Echoplex,” special project by Mika Tajima: a site-specific installation merging sculpture, sound and architectural space.

The work is composed of reflective plexi, laser-cut with repeating patterns, and installed in modular panels around a rough perimeter of the library so as to create a destabilizing environment; one where sound, sight and architecture interchange.

Tajima invites the viewer to interact with reflections and reverberations comprised of a two-dimensional minimalist pattern and simple serialist sounds.

The mirrored space propagates the pattern, which becomes dense, repetitive and then broken, layered, and degrades like an echo. The reflective surfaces begin to shatter the images and break down perception.

Ultimately, the viewer may see an echo or hear a reflection: the diverse products of sound and vision traded freely.

The title of the work "Echoplex" comes from the name of an analog effect box for music, which delays, echoes and loops sounds.

In order to achieve a similar kind of effect in her installation, combining loops of both sound and space, Tajima researched Robert Smithson’s work focusing on his use of mirrors and Dan Graham’s insights on the integration of sound and architecture.

Tajima is interested in perverting the tropes of pure minimalism to create works that allow her audience to slip between comfort and discomfort, harmony and discord. Tajima works and lives in Brooklyn, New York. She is a central member of the New Humans, who will be playing during the inaugural events at the new Walker Art Center. This is her first solo project in New York.

Find it: The Swiss Institute
495 Broadway
3rd Floor
New York NY 10012
Get there: N/R to Prince St./6 to Spring St.
Get info: (212) 925-2035

ART/NYC
“In Word Only” (Basquiat retrospective)
Feb. 15-Mar. 26

The “In Word Only” exhibition of the work of Jean-Michel Basquiat presents paintings, drawings, and notebooks that feature only Basquiat’s written words.

The artist was well known for large, colorful works dense with gesture, collage, figures, symbols and words, but this exhibition will be the first to exclusively feature Basquiat’s unique and significant use of language.

The exhibition includes works from the artist’s entire career, dating from 1979 to 1988 (the year of his death).

For Jean-Michel Basquiat, the meaning of a word was not necessarily relevant to its usage; he employed words as abstract objects that can be seen as configurations of straight and curved lines that come together to form a visual pattern.

The artist also employed words and phrases that are loaded with meaning and reference, in particular those words related to racism, black history, and black musicians and athletes.

Basquiat’s word paintings and drawings often appear to be a secret, coded language that the artist devised and left for the viewer to attempt to decipher.

He readily acknowledged his manipulation of words, stating: “I cross out words so you will see them more; the fact that they are obscured makes you want to read them.”

However, Basquiat’s casual, random manner is deceptive, because on closer inspection his choice of words often coalesce into intelligent, meaningful, and cohesive thoughts and subjects.

The majority of the works in “In Word Only” have never been exhibited or published. The Estate of Jean-Michel Basquiat has generously lent a number of important paintings and drawings, in addition to several of the artist’s private notebooks.

Basquiat continually wrote and drew in notebooks, and used them as a laboratory for experimentation and personal expression. These rare notebooks offer a rare and fascinating insight into the Basquiat’s aesthetic and creative process. Additional works have been borrowed from private collections in the United States and Europe.

“In Word Only” coincides with two major retrospective exhibitions of Basquiat’s work at the Brooklyn Museum, New York, March 11-June 5, 2005; and the Museo d’Arte Moderna, Lugano, Switzerland, March 19-June 19, 2005.

Find it: Cheim & Read
427 West 25th St.
New York, NY 10001
Get info: (212) 242-7727

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ART/NYC
“Dating Data”
Through March 5th

“Information is a lover that doesn’t speak our language, a lover we visit every day with no hope to touch, explain or understand.”(Witold Gombrowicz)

“Reality cannot be avoided,” argues curator Josée Bienvenu in “Dating Data,”an exhibition of works on paper by 18 artists.

Reality cannot be avoided, but watching an infinite sequence of simultaneous, precise and live news reports is not enough to understand the difference between live broadcasting and death, between business and democracy.

The artists included in “Dating Data” address our ambivalent fascination with information culture. They manipulate and process various kinds of data to produce works that confirm that we are condemned to know more and understand less.

Beth Campbell makes art out of the way we think. In her “My Potential Future Based on Present Circumstances” series of drawings, she connects autobiographical events, thinks them through and mines the data of her thoughts, presenting the potential outcomes of personal events through parallel chains of circumstance.

Mark Lombardi’s monumental flowchart drawings trace the circuitous yet intersecting flows of legal and illicit capital, revealing the links between clandestine plots and the rogue beauty of global corruption.

Devising his own conspiracy theories, David Opdyke invokes well-known symbols, such as the American flag and corporate logos, using them as quasi-magical emblems of largely unlocatable sources of power.

Danica Phelps’s “generation drawings” document every financial transaction in her life. Nicolas Rule’s genealogical charts tracks the major bloodlines of current American horse champions, with particular attention given to inbreeding.

Ingrid Calame traces the contours of stains she finds on the streets of New York and Los Angeles, left behind after the transactions of daily life are finished.

In “Tide Drawings,” Jill Baroff meticulously registers the repercussions of waves and turns them into micrographs. Tim Bavington’s stripe drawings are color visualizations of music's passage through time.

Type A, the collaborative team of Adam Ames and Andrew Bordwin produces works that explore the phenomenon of male competitiveness and needless aggression. In “Push,” they take turns standing and shoving each other. The pusher’s steps and the pushee’s landing are outlined and systematically numbered in sequence.

The artists in “Dating Data” have also set up various processes of recording, fragmenting and obliterating information. Stefana McClure and Fidel Sclavo condense text and typeface to the point of near illegibility. Jacob El Hanani’s drawings, based on the phone book, also display inaccessible data.

Elena del Rivero’s “Letter from the Bride” is made up entirely of clothing labels where the word “medium” is repeated throughout the page.

Tom Friedman’s “Secrets” is a letter made of infinitesimal words -- things barely heard or said and totally impossible to read. “Down” is an alphabetized list of words with negative connotations taken from the dictionary.

Rutherford Chang cuts out every word in a copy of the “New York Times” and rearranges them in alphabetical order, turning daily news into abstraction. Finally, John Sparagana "distresses" photo spreads he finds in fashion magazines, rolling and creasing them until the once-glossy pages become so thin that the selected image evaporates.

Find it: Josée Bienvenu Gallery
529 West 20th Street (between 10th & 11th Avenues)
New York NY 10011
Get there: 1/2/3/9 to 23rd St.
Get info: (212) 206-0297

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ART/London
“Lies”
Through March 12th

”Lies” is a minimal but powerful video installation. There is only one element shown against the sky's background -- a flag -- but there are many different meanings associated with this thin strip of fabric.

In the video, Cagol elaborates on the symbology of the Stars and Stripes in particular; the flag stirred by the wind becomes something menacing, or the exact opposite -- it takes on the aspect of a butterfly and of a heart, its message continuously transformed. The extreme, continuous and complex mutability of the image symbolizes the unstable political situation of the world we live in.

The video is 25 minutes long, composed of fragments of random length, between ten seconds and five minutes. There are five seconds of black between each fragment, but the sequence doesn’t follow a clear narrative progression; the fragments are always different; the background of the sky, the distance of the flag from the viewer, the light patterns, effect of the wind, are all different.

The end is sudden, and always the same – the image blurs, develops through a zoom effect, and finally invades the entire screen.

The soundtrack was created using found audio recording the sounds of traffic on New York City streets, slowed down and altered by reverb.

Stefano Cagol comments on his work: ”The continuous aesthetic mutability of a flag -- in this case the American one -- moved by the wind make me think about the changeability, the insecurity of ideals, of promises, of truth that all seem wrong, that all seem to be ‘Lies’. It makes me think how harshly a man can fight and die for the simple name of one flag. At this moment, I think in particular about the States, they try by any means to convince the world that their projects of war are only for truth and for peace.”

This exhibition is the first step of a public art project about the symbolic meaning of flags, which will run through other cities with the collaboration of international art spaces in Tokyo and New York.

Find it: Platform
3 Wilkes Street
London, UK
Get info: +44 (0)207-375-2973

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ART/Woodstock
“Foreign Affair”
Through March 27th

“When I consider...the small space I occupy, which I see swallowed up in the infinite immensity of spaces of which I know nothing and which know nothing of me, I take fright and am amazed to see myself here, rather than there: there is no reason for me to be here rather than there; now, rather than then. Who put me here?” - Pascal, “Pensées”

What motivates us to leave home is as diverse as what we encounter along the journey, but dreams of far away lands can often begin with a photograph. The relationship between photography and travel goes as far back as their inceptions.

Expeditions to visually record the far corners of the earth were planned as soon as the development of photography was announced.

Photographers such as Francis Frith, William Henry Jackson, and Timothy H. O’Sullivan (who had a darkroom on a boat) showed us the earliest ‘real’ images of the then unseen and undiscovered wonders of the world.

Soon followed two firsts which simultaneously opened the world to us further. In the 1880s, while George Eastman invented roll film and the box camera, the combustion engine was ignited, rendering photography and global travel accessible to middle class and working class families.

Seeing and portraying the world firsthand was no longer reserved for the privileged elite. Tourists were photographing the great pyramids as early as 1890.

Today, photographs continue to fuel the tourism industry, but photography and travel have the ability to lead us far beyond glossy brochures.

Departing from the tourist snapshot used to evidence “being there” or to consume place, the artists assembled in “Foreign Affair” focus the camera on the experience of the foreign, exploring our multifaceted relationships to travel, exploration, and dislocation.

From expectations of the new to the confrontation of realities, from the rapture of release in a new environment to the anxiety of estrangement, the work presents a dialogue about transience, elation, loss, and discovery in a world where boundaries are ever shifting.

Many travel seeking beauty with the innocence and optimism that there is a better place beyond the one they call home, where a release from the rhythms of our daily routine will allow our problems to melt away.

One glance at that photograph of a swaying palm tree on a beach is all one may need to get packing, but rarely do our actual experiences meet the expectations which a carefully composed, distilled photograph can inspire.

Scott Whittle’s colorful images of sightseers in unfamiliar landscapes mine the gap between our fantasy of exotic travel and its less-than-ideal reality.

We see the sites but also the obligatory omni-present vacationers who have become part of the view.

What is refreshing about Whittle’s images is that in fully encompassing the tourist into their temporal destinies, we move beyond the package tourist mentality and see people interacting with the sublime landscapes that envelop them.

How do we process and understand a new place where the fixed boundaries of the familiar collapse? Language, food, colors, and sounds become unknown fragments overwhelming the senses, while our mind valiantly attempts to create cohesive connections.

Fred Cray’s dense travel diary montages evoke a virtual experience of the dizzying layers that can disorient the traveler upon arrival in a new place.

With no memories or previous landmarks, one may find this exhilarating, terrifying, or both.

In contrast to the dislocating feeling of estrangement in Cray's work, Priya Kambli’s “Suitcase” series inverts displacement by carrying the idea of home abroad.

Inspired by the experience of cramming her belongings into one suitcase when she emigrated to the U.S. from India in 1993, Kambli’s suitcases remind us of the self we carry within no matter the geographic location and the memories we allow to escort us as loyal companions through transformation.

Brent Phelp’s sweeping landscapes paired with original writings from Lewis and Clark’s journal literally carries the viewer on a fascinating historical voyage, to a time when the world was still “new” and yet to be explored.

In this remake, the images inform our understanding of history and move us into the mindset of explorers seeing these sights for the first time.

Walter Martin and Paloma Muñoz’s collaborative images of snowglobes containing figures in transit. In this series of photographs, Martin and Muñoz subvert the cheerful conventions of the snowglobe with dark ruminations.

The typical snowglobe winter wonderlands are supplanted by desolate and sometimes sinister snowscapes. Forests of dead trees are traversed by solitary figures laden with suitcases.

The characters seem dressed for a more civilized sort of commute, their business attire ill suited for wading through deep snow and biting cold. It seems as if they were collectively caught off guard by some series of events and forced from their familiar habitat into a harsh and premature exile.

Ultimately it is left to the viewer to speculate about possible narratives. These scenes encased in glass and water each represent an attempt to in some way encapsulate, isolate, and illuminate a certain form of human dread associated with the unexpected and the obvious but often ignored inevitabilities of mortality.

In a sense, the figures in the globes become stand-ins for us; their nomadic isolation a metaphor for our own sense of unknown origins and unknowable destinations.

Departing from the idea of the destination altogether, the artists have framed the journey itself: solitary commuters, wanderers, and the lost attempt to find their way amidst the anxious territory of the unknown and the uncertainty of what lies ahead.

Tom Hunter’s series was created over a two-year jaunt through Europe in a double-decker bus. His detailed portraits of the domestic environments of a contemporary nomadic group express his concern with the political issues surrounding the rights of 'squatters', 'travelers' and those viewed as 'outsiders'.

Not rooted by the geographical and cultural conventions of traditional community, these modern day gypsies are viewed as ‘others’ based on their lifestyle choices and priorities that keep them on the move.

In comparison, Soon-Mi Yoo’s video, “Isahn,” brings to light the extreme challenges faced by people and cultures forced into exile due to political unrest and conflict.

Exploring issues of loss and alienation, Yoo recreates the experience of displaced North Koreans looking through tourist stereoscopes near the North/South Korean borders as they view images of a country they can no longer return home to.

Crossing borders to make a new beginning, they must negotiate a conflicting state of non-belonging and learn to assimilate the new and simultaneously preserve their uprooted culture while coping with the pain of separation.

Finally, what has often propelled us forward into uncharted terrain is the quest for knowledge and the idea that enlightenment could be within our reach. Vicki Ragan’s iconic imagery of astronomical charts, moonscapes, and explorers awakens longing, wanderlust, and the elation of discovery.

A transient position affords us a unique perspective and can expand our understanding of how we know the world. The artists in “Foreign Affair” reveal that photography and travel share the ability to shift the frontiers of perception, empowering us to see beyond the confines of the world as we know it.

“Should the chosen guide be nothing more than a wandering cloud, I cannot lose my way.”
– Wordsworth

(Via exhibit curator Kate Menconeri, 2005)

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Stories: Artist commentaries on the works in “Foreign Affair”

“Isahn”/Soon-Mi Yoon: In October 5, 2001, I heard TV news that Mr. Chung, an 82-year-old man originally from North Korea, killed himself after failing to get into the lottery to take part in the family reunion and meet with his family in North Korea.

The split screen in “Isahn” is from the stereoscopes at Imjingak, which is located 30 kilometers from Seoul and borders North Korea.

Tourists and displaced North Koreans can go and drop a few coins in the stereoscopes to look at the government sanctioned photographs of North Korea.

The images from the stereoscopes are mixed with contemporary footage (shot in 1999) of Burmese refugee camps around Mae Sot, Thailand, in which inhabitants are forced to relocate to yet another anonymous site.

For those who are not allowed to go back home, the sights of exile are just ersatz landscapes. Sometimes they may offer consolation. Often times they work as hindrance. Many would say, “When I close my eyes, I can still see my hometown so vividly”.

“Travel Diaries”/Fred Cray: This work is about literal and metaphorical travel, simultaneity and the accumulation of meanings. Controlled chance is an element in gathering the images, but in this series I use a much higher percent of what I photographed than in any other work I do.

The work reflects the difficulty of thinking and of accumulating thoughts to form a coherent whole. Most of all, the work is about looking and seeing in a visually loaded world.

“Red”/Priya Kambli: My work has constantly dealt with issues of journey and memory. I integrate traditional photography with digital media as well as elements of mixed media and installation.

In an essay of [my] work, one critic notes that "The particulars of (these pieces) are all simply props on a stage where our own memories must take on the role of actors. We are asked to imagine first the millions who set forth in this world leaving their homes and their families or bearing them with them. But we are moved by stages to consider our own losses, the bridges we have crossed, and the ones we burned behind us as we went."

When I moved to America in 1993, I crammed 18 years of my life into one suitcase. It weighed approximately 45 kg. It wasn't until recently that I started thinking about the objects I chose to bring and their selection process.

The objects were chosen for their magnetic ability of attracting and repelling memories.

The status of these chosen objects increased substantially to the level of sacred relics for having being touched or given by a loved one, etc. These souvenirs contain within them the ability to vividly conjure memories of the past.

Distilling ones life to fit the finite parameters of a suitcase meant editing -- the inevitability of certain memories being discarded while others attain a new significance.

It further implied simplification of ones past, untangling the chaotic web so that a clear succinct pattern emerged.

In the “Suitcases” series, I am interested in juxtaposing snippets of information that interact with each other to convey an open ended narration.

The essence of the “Suitcases” series is the dialogue created by pairing of fragments. The items contained within the suitcases are sticky with associations and often pertain to travel. Each suitcase deals with a separate theme and corresponds to a specific hue.

Color is the origin of each piece, giving each suitcase its individual personality and focus by dictating the objects it contains and their relationships. Even though the suitcases are self-contained and conceived to function independently, they all share many physical and conceptual characteristics.

Details from “The Navigation Project”/Vicki Ragan" These images are photo collages assembled from maps, charts, NASA images, details of historic aircraft, and silhouettes of human figures.

Travel, the study of space, and the methods man uses to find his way, both physically and spiritually, are among the themes explored.

Although the images in this exhibition are printed digitally, they were created the old-fashioned way, with a pair of scissors. The figures were cut out of bits of map, placed on another image, and re-photographed. Each final image is derived from a single black-and-white negative.

Find it: The Center for Photography at Woodstock
59 Tinker Street
Woodstock, NY 12498
Get info: (845) 679-9957

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ART/LA
“Beauty in the Breakdown”
Through March 19th

“Beauty in the Breakdown” is the debut Los Angeles solo exhibit by Chicago-based artist Laura Mosquera.

Laura Mosquera’s work is grounded in contemporary human experiences and reflections of everyday life. Her work explores the representation of reality and the perception of what is real and its construction using non-linear narrative.

Her tableaus are cinematic depictions of seemingly inconsequential moments describing everyday narratives. While there is no linear narrative, there is enough information to suggest a mood to the viewer.

Mosquera’s drawings and paintings are constructed with the use of snapshots. The figures are never posed, but rather captured in a moment, unaware of being documented. Mosquera’s paintings are similar to movie stills, shots of a moment in time, captured in a single frame.

In general, the story Mosquera tells is one of a sense of loss, of something missing. There is also a sense of longing and searching for this intangible, whether its name is yet known, or whether it remains elusive.

Each piece in “Beauty in the Breakdown” evokes nostalgia, and reflections on the emotional worlds we live on the interior.

Mosquera's work reflects the unusual view that true nostalgia is nostalgia for the present, not the past; her work is imbued with a melancholic awareness that it is always the present, not the past, which is in the process of coming apart.

Find it: sixspace
549 West 23rd St.
Los Angeles, CA 90007
Get info: (213) 765-0248

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ART/Brooklyn
“Lost in Queens”
Feb. 18-Mar. 21

Plus Ultra Gallery presents: “Lost in Queens: A Natural History Museum in Seven Parts,” a solo exhibition by artist/architect Brian Walker.

As an experiment in extreme artistic constraint, Walker presents seven architectural drawings of 13 proposed Natural History Museum buildings located throughout the borough of Queens.

Each proposal is located on one of the highly improbable, oddly shaped and sometimes all but inaccessible lots actually purchased by Gordon Matta-Clark for his 1974 project “Fake Estates.”

Walker traveled to each of these locations in a self-imposed ritualistic process, including eating the same breakfast in a neighborhood diner after each visit.

He thoroughly documented the lots, researched the City’s zoning regulations, and then designed a building for actual natural history collections of various animals, including bees, passenger pigeons, dodo birds, ants and a Tyrannosaurus Rex.

His designs include display spaces, storage facilities, a theater, a café, and a research laboratory throughout the seven buildings. Walker’s results are as fantastic as they are humorous and inspiring.

Find it: Plus Ultra
235 South 1st St.
Brooklyn, NY 11211
Get info: (718) 387-3844

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ART/NYC
“Women on the Verge”
Through March 12th

In “Women on the Verge,” artists examine the darker side of human emotion with wit, introspection, and verve. The artists utilize a wide array of media and techniques to explore the tension between the organic and the artificial chaos of our world.

The exhibition features the work of nine international women artists: Maggie Cardelus, Jennifer Coates, Kim Fisher, Servane Hottinger, Elizabeth Huey, Lori Nix, Mary Redmond, Eva Rothschild and Clare Woods.

Clare Woods, Jennifer Coates and Eva Rothschild examine our fear of the unknown using semi abstract imagery.

Maggie Cardelus uses photo cut-outs and paper to create massive wall hangings which draw upon her associations of memory and family.

Her labor-intensive sculptures are remarkable constructions; conceptually and aesthetically they draw the viewer with their organic edgy intimacy. Cardelus lives and works in Italy and has been widely exhibited in Europe.

Kim Fisher and Mary Redmond employ an abstract aesthetic with a contemporary sensibility to create innovative works of art. Fisher creates paintings which have a unique sculptural quality.

Redmond manipulates found objects to the brink of fragility, fashioning a dark, absurdist aesthetic using fabric, metal, and wood. Redmond lives and works in Glasgow. Her work is currently included in an exhibition the ICA, Palm Beach, Fl.

Elizabeth Huey and Servane Hottinger utilize the human figure in their paintings to explore the darker side of human emotions, while Lori Nix subverts our expectations of seeing by photographing minutely constructed dioramas, which have an eerie, otherworldly quality.

Using humor and pathos with equal aplomb, the nine artists featured in "Women on the Verge" toy with the tension between the real and the imagined with remarkable ingenuity and skill.

Find it: Alona Kagan Gallery
540 West 29th St.
New York, NY 10001
Get info: (212) 560-0670

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ART/Amsterdam
“On Patrol”
Through March 20th

“On Patrol” examines the many different systems that police our society, from traditional investigatory techniques to the unofficial practice of gathering and classifying personal data, that have become a form of social control.

In “On Patrol,” exhibition artists, responding to societal trends, show how their work fits into the framework of a surveillance society.

Participating artists: Marc Bijl, Sophie Calle, Ergin Cavusoglu, Paul Chan, Claudia Cristovao, Harun Farocki, Robin van't Haar, Nicoline van Harskamp, Janice Kerbel, Jill Magid, Yucef Merhi, Julia Scher and socialfiction.org.

The artists invited for the exhibition “On Patrol” explore various aspects of (in)security: they play with the observations of other people, manipulate techniques of espionage, hack, break codes and appropriate methods of power. They reveal the fear of insecurity, as well as worries about an excess of security.

In “Evidence Locker” (2004) Jill Magid deploys the local police force and the 242 security cameras stationed in the center of Liverpool to allow herself to be observed. From the resulting video material, she creates a film in which we can follow her closely. She also chronicled her stay in Liverpool in an exhibition diary.

Nicoline van Harskamp's new project shows how passers-by change their reactions to gatherings of teens in temporary uniforms, who look more like guards than young rebels.

Ergin Cavusoglu's video installation, “Entanglement” (2003) makes everything and everyone suspect, evoking an oppressive feeling of potentially threatening danger, turning man into a frightened animal through the sound of invisible, hovering helicopters and roving searchlights.

”On Patrol” is a response on the ongoing debate about security measures and the new cultural offensive being waged by various governments.

Critical and artistic confrontations about policing and surveillance are deployed in order to make viewers ask themselves: what is acceptable in the name of security? When is our individual freedom so much at stake that a boundary has to be transgressed -- and whose interests are being served by capitalizing on or fuelling fear?

Find it: De Appel
Nieuwe Spiegelstraat 10
Amersterdam, NL
Get info: 31-20-6255-651

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ART/Boston
“¡Dominicanazo!”
Through February 27th

In the Dominican Republic, a country in which painting has always prevailed, sculpture is seldom attempted, and performance art is often misunderstood, this group show includes installation, sculpture, video and painting.

Samson Projects presents the most provocative and stirring images from the current Dominican Republic art scene.

Artists include: Elia Alba, Tony Capellán, José García Cordero, Nicolás Dumít Estévez, Mónica Ferreras, Iliana Emilia García, Scherezade García, Pascal Meccariello and Belkis Ramírez.

Through their imagery, they examine their country's most pressing social issues: poverty, tourism and third world politics.

The exhibition decodes and debunks cultural stereotypes as the artists use diverse ways to translate their experiences in relation to their culture.

Mónica Ferreras psychoanalytical mandala paintings attempt to capture the essence of thoughts. Elia Alba's body suits comment on the ephemeral nature of skin and its cultural labels.

The poignant sculpture by Tony Capellán, included in the Samson exhibit, uses found objects to invoke the hunger pains suffered by the country's children while Belkis Ramírez, an architect by trade, incorporates wire, fences and netting to depict the distressing position of women in this traditional macho culture.

Scherezade and Iliana Emilia García are sisters with unique voices. Scherezade works reflect her fascination with duality. Iliana Emilia's multimedia work is strongly experiential, as the viewer’s imagination dictates each encounter.

José García Cordero divides his time between studios in Santo Domingo and Paris. Cordero creates large-scale paintings that reflect both the duality of his personal experience and the historical clash between European and Caribbean culture.

(Via curator Camilo Alvarez)

The show closes on Sunday, February 27th - Dominican Independence Day. Samson Projects will hold be holding a party in the gallery at 6PM to celebrate Dominican Independence Day.

Find it: Samson Projects
450 Harrison Avenue
Storefront 63
Boston, MA 02119
Get info: (617) 357-7177

MUSIC/Disc Series
Magdalen Hsu-Li, “Smashing the Ceiling”

My upcoming album is called “Smashing the Ceiling.” When I was writing the songs on this album, I felt I was experiencing a kind of quantum leap or personal gestalt.

There were so many breakthroughs that happened to me personally, emotionally, musically and spiritually.

“Smashing the Ceiling” was an incredible album to make. The songs felt completely inspired as I was writing them, as if I were a just a channel and they were coming from some higher source.

When I wrote the songs, I was trying to break through many personal ceilings in myself, things that most people would not know about unless they were exceptionally close to me. Later, as the album progressed, I began to feel pretty smashed up, myself.

This album has been the hardest thing I have ever made. It has been a rough time for me. I admit I'm glad to be moving into the performing end of things again.

What helps me create: Dreaming, sleeping. A lot of my best ideas come when I am awakened at 5am. I like to think it’s a time I can truly tap into the collective unconscious.

Sometimes it takes half an hour to complete a new song, sometimes months or years; in general, I like to try to wrap things up on a song within about a day or two.

SONGWRITERS: BORN OR CREATED?

Well, my first song ever was a nine-stanza adaptation of my own lyrics, and a schoolmate’s lyrics to the tune "Old Susannah". It was about a turkey that got botulism.

"Oh dear turkey
Oh why'd you have to die
Oh why'd this sickness come to you
I think I'm gonna cry"

We got a standing ovation from the class. I think I was like nine years old.

So, maybe songwriters are born. But what you do with your artistic inclination is up to you.

REFLECTIONS OF REAL LIFE

Fiction is the work of artists. Real life is something a lot of artists are really bad at!
So they create lives of fiction.

[But] I try to keep all my songs based in personal experience or personal feeling. Songs are better if they’re connected to something real.

Personal favorites: Probably “Redefinition” or “Mary Magdalene,” because I have changed myself so many times in my life, and certainly I have lived out the stigma of the virgin/whore, the bad girl -- what woman hasn't? Mary Magdalene is getting a makeover nowadays, thanks to the book "The DaVinci Code".

SMASHING THE CEILING

It's hard to say [what’s different about this new album, compared to “Fire” and “Redefinition”]. It might be better if other people listen to it and decide that for themselves. I can say that the drummer is different for this album, and also
that I think this is a much more inspired album than the last.

The songwriting is better; more universal and concise. The songs are shorter. I do think the politics are more deeply embedded; more hidden -- but still they are there to see, if you look deeper.

[Also], the personal takes precedence over the political in this album. I was writing where I was in my life, so it's an accurate portrayal, with hopes that the personal becomes universal.

PERFORMING ART: WHAT MATTERS TO ME

Depth and connection, giving to an audience of listeners, sometimes catharsis for myself. Writing songs is my way of giving to others.

Many performers are kind of broken people already; they would not have gotten into performing unless something was already lacking in themselves.

Maybe they are incapable of normal expressions of intimacy. Their art becomes their primary way of expressing intimacy of giving and receiving love, of being accepted by others.

Nothing gives me greater satisfaction than hearing someone say: "Your song meant so much to me because of _________," or "Your lyrics echoed my feelings, it really sounded like you were speaking for me and what I've been going through."

COMPASSION VS. COURAGE

I think they are equally important. We need more compassion in this world -- which, to me, equals understanding or putting yourself in someone else's shoes. We would have less wars if we had this.

On the other hand -- we need to be courageous, which, to me, equals righteous conviction. You must have an enormous amount of righteous conviction to be an artist, to be a human being, or how else can your ego take it?

It's pretty hard just being a human being, on an emotional level. We get all banged up and are expected to be perfect on top of that.

MUSIC, THE EXPERIENCE

Music just kicks ass over other art forms! The only other one that comes close is film, in regard to creating a large emotional connection to people.

I think that seeking a deeper connection to others is a theme that predominates in my music, also striving for spiritual or social consciousness. I also strive to create magic
through my music.

I would like to think I write from all the different places I’ve lived: the Southeast, the Northeast, and the West Coast, that my music is a true amalgamation of country, folk, pop rock, jazz, even punk.

LIVING IN THE WORLD

Things that piss me off: People who are spiritually lazy; people who are hypocrites; people who think they are better than other people and go out of their way to make others feel bad just so they can feel better about themselves; egomaniacs, dishonest people who bend the rules and the truth so that they can serve themselves.

There is an incredible lack of integrity in most people, I find. Most of all, I really dislike people who project their own character flaws onto other people so that they don't have to look at themselves.

What I’d like to see change in the world: That all people would really try to self-examine and look at their own behavior to discover what it is that makes them think and act the way they do. And practice self-restraint and diplomacy.

I really think that we would have no wars if people just could look at themselves objectively and say: “I need to work on myself and make myself a better person every single day and be relentless with myself in terms of my own growth.”

CREATING VS. PERFORMING

I think performing is more difficult for me, because I am actually a really very shy person. Most of my friends would scoff at this, but it’s true.

INSIDE TRACKS

“Mary Magdalene”

She always looked a little
Deeper into things
She could find a heaven
In the hell that life can bring

Took a long walk down that
Lonely road to find herself again
Went a little crazy
From the places that she’d been

Well, I don’t know where she’s goin’
But I do know where she’s been...she’s
Comin’ on the scene
Just like Mary Magdalene

She had compassion
She was fearless and bold
A fallen angel
With a heart of gold

She had a faith
That no religion can give
A wisdom far beyond
The years that she’d lived

And I don’t know where she’s goin’
But I do know where she’s been...she’s
Comin’ on the scene
Just like Mary Magdalene

Several people have asked why I chose to write a song about one of the most controversial figures in biblical history.

“Mary Magdalene” is both an autobiographical song about my life, as well as a blend of various biblical mythologies about Mary Magdalene.

I think she is one of the most iconic, provocative, loved, hated, and mysterious women in history. Yet her story has been misinterpreted through the centuries, so I felt it was time to help redefine her story in a more positive light.

“Northern Light”

I come from inside a mountain
A mountain made of stone
From a river full of blood
With the truth the world has known…

What would you say
If this world was at an end
What would you do
If these hurts we could not mend

Where would you go
At the end of it all?

I’d wanna be with you
In the northern light…

An early morning song. I woke up hearing the chords progression in my head and stumbled naked to the piano (freezing) and got the basic song form down on tape.

It came out very quickly, and I was inspired by the fact that the song has a dimensional space in it that is very large and vast, like looking out a huge expanse of mountain and sky.

I like the idea that music is a multi-dimensional medium. You can create soundscapes much a like a landscape in a painting and people can feel or visualize what you are seeing in your mind.

This song comes from many strange places, some personal and others ethereal. I could feel a vaguely Canadian type of energy around its creation, also the Iraqi desert and the center of the war activity played a role in this song, too.

Maybe the northern lights are actually a dimensional doorway and when we see the lights maybe we are actually seeing a glimpse of what is on the other side of that doorway. I’d like to console myself that if we continue down our warmongering path, maybe I will move to Canada. Or another dimension.

“Take Me There”

There’s a place in greyspace
Where my soul was made
And when my time comes
May I be safely laid there

I was just playing around on my guitar not attempting to write anything, when the verse popped out and I really liked it...then the lyrics came out and after staring bewilderedly at them for a minute, I began to understand and remember what they were about.

I once had this amazing acupuncture treatment where when the needles were left in for a while, whereupon I went to a very strange grey space that I could see in my mind’s eye.

There was nothing there and there was everything there. I knew nothing and yet I knew everything; all the secrets and knowledge of understanding music were revealed to me and I knew that I carried them inside of me, that I had always carried them inside me.

I cried when I came out of the treatment and asked: “How did I forget?” My acupuncturist said: “You didn’t forget. You still have all that knowledge inside you. You just need to re-learn it again.”

Really, that's part of what this song is about. But it’s also about the awakening of passion in oneself, and going back to the place of your original nature; where you are just you, and where wholeness exists.

“Sweet Hereafter”

I get through each day
But these scars will never fade
It’s been years since you left
This crazy world, my love
And all of my heavens have
Crumbled to dust

I saw the words “sweet hereafter,” rolled the words around on my tongue a few times and liked the way they sounded. I thought “there’s a song in those words.”

Then, a month or so later, I awoke at 5am to music in my head. I stumbled naked to the piano and, in the dark, recorded what I heard in my head.

As I wrote the song, I began imagining a morbid fantasy about what my life would be like if I lost someone I loved who was very dear to me.

I cried a great deal while writing the song; while tracking it in the studio, I cried a lot, too. Imagination can make you crazy. Or maybe you’re just feeling what others around you are feeling, and it just comes through you and you are just this vessel for it.

“Change The World”

There’s no one else
Has all the magic that you have inside
Or knows the way
To share the gift that only you provide
If you wanna change the world
Then you gotta change yourself

And though you may feel
That everything you do is small
You can’t deny the ripple
That you send through it all

I first heard the melody and lyrics for the chorus of this song while I was driving in my car. Often, song ideas come to me when I am traveling or in a moving vehicle -- sometimes traveling helps your mind hitch a ride on to the universal highway.

I think that the song has a few meanings for me. One is that I have changed myself so many times in my life that I know it’s possible to do things like that. I’m not talking about little changes, but about big 360-degree turnarounds.

Also, I know what it is to feel very small and insignificant (which is most of the time), and then to run into someone I met like eight years ago who tells me they chose to walk down a particular path in their life because of a conversation we had, instead of taking another path.

QUICK HITS

Reads: Re-reading “Northanger Abbey” by Jane Austen

Downtime: Painting, hanging out with my friends, political and social activist work, running, walking, swimming, hangin’ with my honey.

The biggest myth about being a creative: That we live these incredibly romantic lives on the road, that the road is romantic. In truth, traveling in the U.S. can be an endless chain of hotels, stripmalls and Walmarts. The performances are fun, varied and exciting, but the traveling hardly varies from city to city in regards to what you see, visually.

If I wasn’t a singer/composer, I would definitely be: A trapeze artist!

Bio: Growing up in rural backwater Virginia, singer-songwriter and painter Magdalen Hsu-Li began playing classical piano at age eight, and started writing music at an early age.
Says Magdalen, "You just couldn't stop the songs from coming. I was also painting, and at the time it seemed (to everyone) that was my stronger gift. But music was always the way for me to get in touch with the deepest parts of my emotional myself and confront my inner fears."

Early on, Hsu-Li focused intensely on painting, graduating with a degree in fine art from Rhode Island School of Design, and set her sights toward an art career in New York City.

Soon after graduating, she had a vivid dream that abruptly changed the direction of her life. "I dreamt I was a musician living in Seattle, and I felt utterly compelled to follow its message." She followed her instincts and moved to Seattle to study voice and classical and jazz piano at Cornish College of the Arts.

Magdalen writes songs that visually portray what she sees with her painter's eye, addressing universal themes about love, loss, and relationships; identity, spirituality, and the search for consciousness. "I write completely from the heart," she says. "But I also write from the places I'm from (the Southeast, Northeast, and West Coast), and from my heritage. “

Hsu-Li has sold over 8,000 records through her own independent label and formed a dedicated grassroots following through constant touring.

Her previous release, "Fire," was named one of the Best Top 12 DIY albums of 2002 by "Performing Songwriter." She holds a BFA in Painting from Rhode Island School of Design and has been awarded the Oxbow Fellowship, Talbot Rantoul Scholarship and Florence Leif Scholarship for Excellence In Painting.

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MUSIC/Miami
Subtropics 17 Experimental Sound Arts Festival
Feb. 24 – Mar. 5

Subtropics 17 Experimental Music and Sound Arts Festival launches its ten-day festival on February 24, with a performance by the West Coast new music group E.A.R. Unit.

E.A.R. Unit combines acoustic and computer generated sounds with video components. Consisting of winds, strings, percussion, piano and computer, E.A.R. Unit performs eclectic selections ranging from austere minimalist works to lighter, more humorous pieces, and others with political content.

E.A.R. Unit will perform a series of works, including Amy Knoles’ autobiographical music/video work, “Squint,” exploring the phenomenon of squinting your eyes while stuck in traffic in order to alter your environment, while absorbing the ensuing audio collage of myriad car radios. Yes, really.

Highlights: Festival Schedule

February 24, 2005 [7pm-9pm] Opening Reception
“Sounds in Space: Works from the Diapason Archive”
Twelve unique sound works, scheduled by a computer to play installations ar random intervals. “Sounds in Space” features the work of Tom Hamilton, Doug Henderson, Leif Inge, Tetsu Inoue, Stephen Vitiello and Amnon Wolman.

Tom Hamilton’s “London Fix,” a sound installation featuring music that changes with the price of gold, is featured on opening night, with special performances by street theater troupe “Urban Disturbance.”

Friday, February 25, 2005 [9pm]
Makihara/Meneses: Electro-Acoustic Percussion Duo
Makihara/Meneses is percussionist Toshi Makihara and marimbist Jim Meneses. Makihara/Meneses present dynamic and original electro-acoustic percussion soundscapes, using a variety of conventional and homemade percussion instruments, discovered and invented sound media and digital sampling systems.

February 26, 2005 [7pm]
“Mathematics of Resonant Bodies”
From his home in Alaska, John Luther Adams has created a unique musical world, reflecting the “choirs of inner voices” in natural percussive noises. His music is grounded in wilderness landscapes and indigenous cultures, and in natural phenomena from the songs of birds to elemental noise. His music includes works for orchestra, small ensembles, percussion and electronic media.

Saturday, February 26, 2005 [9pm]
jamJam Strawberry
Featuring Sony Mao, Sawako Kato, Dino Felipe and Otto Von Schirach
Web-based band, jamJam Strawberry a.k.a. The Strawberries, is an online, computer band which improvises, layer by layer, from server to server, on the world wide web.

The first notes were 'sounded' with an .aiff file placed in the "sonymao" drop box on the Microsound list's hotline-client server, intercepted by Sawako Kato in Tokyo, passed back to Miami’s Sony Mao, then to the "sonny browsers" uploads folder on a kdx-client server, picked up by Øivind Idsø in Oslo, Norway, and then swiftly routed back to Sony Mao.

For their in-the-flesh world premiere, the Strawberries are Sawako, a.k.a. Tokyo Digital Mutation Girl, and Beta Bodega Coalition's agent of chaos, Sony Mao. They are supported by solo performances from Miami's prince of computer cabaret, Dino Felipe, and, fresh from a North American tour with industrial band Skinny Puppy, Otto Von Schirach.

Wednesday, March 2, 2005 [7pm]
“Body Over Water”
Body Over Water is a new work by Maria Jose Arjona inspired by the passage of time. “When I think about water, generally, I think of life. Life as a fluid element that changes in stages generating a rhythm and multiplying itself endlessly over time,” says Arjona, who has been working in performance and installation since 1997. Arjona has participated in solo and group
shows in Bogota, Miami, Marfa (Texas) and New York City.

Thursday, March 3, 2005 [7-11pm]
“Transfers”
Digital media artist Matt Roberts, a member of DeLand’s duo DropBox, has taken a day job – driving a taxi. Sort of. Roberts offers no ordinary cab ride. Customers create their own unique multi-media works by directing Roberts to their destination of choice.

As the taxi travels, the passenger experiences a
real-time manipulation of live video and audio.

Utilizing GPS technology coupled with custom real-time audio/visual manipulation software, Roberts enhances the mundane experience of a cab ride
by marrying its own locomotion with the passing visual environment. Pick ups in and around South Beach.

Thursday, March 3, 2005 [7pm]
“Shared Frequencies”
“Shared Frequencies” is a mobile electro-acoustic studio producing a fluctuating, changing sound installation culled from acoustic transmissions and environmental sounds, modulated by sound artist Kabir Carter.

Carter's work zeroes in on the confluence of speech, urban environmental noise, acoustic feedback, analog sound synthesis, transmissive acoustics, specialized microphone technologies, tone sequences, and other sound events germane to
General Mobile Radio Service (GMRS) and Family Radio Service. His compositions, live performances, and sound installations have been presented at P.S. 122 and d.u.m.b.o. arts center.

Thursday, March 3, 2005 [9pm]
Subtropics Videos: Selections from the Festival for Art on Film
A varied program of video works by national and international artists. Kristen Baumliér’s “Antenna” is a three-minute work investigating the nature of communication technology.

Francesca N. Penzani’s “Donne, Citta' ed in Vestito Nero/Women, Cities and a Black Dress” is a trilogy of short dance videos performed by three women in three different cities wearing the same dress.

Regis Ferguson Collective from Minneapolis presents “Gesture Lesson,” which knits together disembodied gestures, digital sound and algorithmic imaging.

“Texture Mapping II” by Claudia Esslinger exposes the interaction of organisms and industry reliant on water and the ensuing ecological dangers.

Friday, March 4, 2005 [9pm]
“Sound Mess and Other Poems”
The Be Blank Consort performs “Sound Mess and Other Poems.” The works in “Sound Mess” convert the raw material of spoken signs and messages to produce a cacophony which is a new language, with its own rhythms, structures, and signifiers.

The simultaneity of texts and meanings produces a three-dimensionality of language which is ordinarily absent in writing and speaking. The members of Be Blank subvert the linearity of conventional language and offer an experience more akin to music.

Saturday, March 5, 2005 [7-11pm]
Closing Concert: Subtropics Marathon
The Subtropics Marathon unites artists and sound practitioners from various disciplines. The Marathon has been a catalyst and springboard for collaborations that are subsequently recorded and produced beyond the Festival.

This year’s Marathon features the work of Rene Barge (Miami), Kabir Carter (New York), Charles Recher (Miami), Guillermo Gregorio (Argentina), John Vanderslice (Miami), Absolute Zero (Miami) and Gustavo Matamoros (Miami).

Find it: Dorsch Gallery
151 NW 24th St.
Miami, FL
Get info: (305) 981-0600

Go to: LIVES: ART: MUSIC: DANCE/THEATRE: FILM/SCREENWRITING: BOOKS/WRITERS: TRAVEL: LIFE: SCI/TECH

DANCE/Insight
Cherie Carson, “Trikona”

My love of movement is my inspiration to create performance works. I'm also inspired by the act of creation itself.

Sharing my ideas through my art and how that reaches people in a new ways is powerfully exciting to me.

To me, dance is any gesture made with intent and style. I look to connect gestures in a meaningful way taking dance beyond the original impulse.

BEHIND THE SCENES

I get a germ of an idea that I want to explore. I may spend months tossing around thoughts, interviewing people, researching my topic, and developing movements that capture the kernels of truth that I see.

Then I pick a physical place and design costumes and props to breathe life into what will finally develop into a finished performance piece.

Often, I find that the best place to fully realize a performance work is in a non-traditional space, such as a planetarium, a banyan tree, a reflection pool, sculpture gardens, a lake, or a warehouse.

At other times, the energy of a space attracts me and a dance is born out of my partnership with the nature or architecture of the space.

The creation of a new work can vary from three rehearsals to three years. I created a wonderful duet, “Pregnant Pause,” in three rehearsals. The ideas and choreography just poured out.

On the other hand, “Water Dreams” took over three years from start to finish. It was a multimedia site-specific work created in phases.

For instance, the first phase was to create underwater choreography for video, edit the footage into a 25-minute piece, then go back into rehearsals to create the site-specific performance that incorporated the video.

My newest aerial work, “Trikona,” is taking about three months to complete.

ON PAPER

I often improvise to the idea using everything but the music. I sometimes write to release the images and do research to gain greater depth.

DANCERS: BORN OR CREATED?

Both. One can be born creative, but it takes perseverance, time and work to grow into one’s art form.

PIECES OF ME

Several works have been created from my life. All of my works contain pieces of me, whether in abstract form or from a real-life experience.

As I see it, there is a thin line between fiction and real life, because we create our own reality. What is more important is that the story we tell
through our art transcends its specific details and enables the audience to relate in a meaningful way.

LIFE LESSONS

The most [powerful] thing anyone ever said to me was: That everything has consciousness. Nothing in my upbringing had ever taught me that, and when I looked at my surroundings, I had a very different sensation and could no longer kill bugs.

SITE-SPECIFIC WORKS 101

Site-specific works are events/performances created for a particular place, and are only considered unusual because western art has
confined the creative experience to even more specific places, such as theaters, galleries and museums.

Site-specific work brings art out into public places, where the experience is unexpected. Art can be, and is, anywhere and everywhere.

NEW WORK: "TRIKONA"

"Trikona" is a new dance piece to be performed by three dancers suspended on three ropes. It is based on the structure of a yantra, which is a geometric design composed of basic primal shapes. These shapes are psychological symbols corresponding to inner states of human consciousness.

At the basis of yantra operation is something called "shape energy" or "form energy". The idea is that every shape emits a very specific frequency and energy pattern.

A yantra represents a particular configuration whose power increases in proportion to the abstraction and precision of the diagram. A yantra gradually grows away from its center, in stages, until its expansion is complete.

The structure of "Trikona" will be based on triangles and circles. This new work as an aerial dance that bridges body and spirit, creating a sense of expansion and freedom. (Premier at 1PM,
Feb. 13th, at Motivity Center, 8th and Dwight Way, Berkeley, CA, as part of a benefit for the National Cervical Cancer Coalition).

I am using this architecture of enlightenment as the basis for "Trikona," combining dance with the aerial apparatus (dynamic rope) and yoga movements and mudras.

I'm interested in pushing the limits of taking yoga/meditation into a moving performance in the air.

The Sanskrit word 'yantra' derives from the root 'yam' meaning to sustain, or hold.

I'm interested in the visual aspect of moving these elementary shapes in a direct and bold way in order to represent the sustainment of enlightenment. Something as small as a miniature can create a sense of expansiveness.

"Trikona" is an aerial dance that establishes and then follows a focal point that is a window into the absolute.

I see it as an expression of life continuing and unceasing, and also as the essence of artistic creation.

THEMES

Consciously or unconsciously, strong women are often present in my work.

WRITER'S BLOCK

I don’t consider what I get as a creative block, more like losing the thread. I drive. I take a shower. I leave it alone for a couple of weeks.

INFLUENCES

Visual artists, DV8 Company, journaling.

EMOTION VS. TECHNIQUE

Both are necessary, but in choosing one --emotional resonance wins, hands down! I need to see a dancer integrate the experience, not