The Redroom presents an evening of improvised music by varied combinations of musicians Muyassar Kurdi (voice), Al Margolis (tapes & electronics) and Walter Wright (circuit bending and video synthesis) with Paul Neidhardt (percussion), and Jeff Carey (computer).
MUYASSAR KURDI
“Chicago resident Muyassar Kurdi is the final act, delivering a Dadaistic performance that falls between musical absurdity and autistic choreography. Completely concentrated upon her bizarre ritual, the singer – dressed in black – emits tortured vocalisations and cries worthy of Yoko Ono in full flight, all of it juggling with electronic effects and white noise. It’s incredibly in-your-face and perturbing but makes you smile too: the sheer pleasure of making a racket…”
~ Mulhouse in L’Alsace (France)
Kurdi is a musician, performance artist, dancer, filmmaker and educator from Chicago, Illinois.
In performance, she explores the relationship between abstract sound and meta-primordial movement, obliquely confronting ideas of masculine subjugation by re-appropriating and then distorting hegemonically, sexualised, figurative motion and juxtaposing it with random, abrasive and jarring acoustic and electronic sound components along with wordless vocalisations.
http://muyassarkurdi.com/
AL MARGOLIS aka If, Bwana
A recent review of Margolis’s work says: “Let it be declared that Al Margolis/If, Bwana is some sort of evil genius working with raw materials which are never adapted to a genre or a context, because they create one in that very moment. Those sources are radically altered up to an utterly unrecognizable state, anarchic manifestations moving in compact determination.” (Massimo Ricci, Touching Extremes).
Margolis has been an activist in the 1980s American cassette underground through his cassette label Sound of Pig Music; was co-founder of experimental music label Pogus Productions, which he continues to run. Active under the name If, Bwana since 1984, making music that has swung between fairly spontaneous studio constructions and more process-oriented composition.
He has recorded and/or performed with Pauline Oliveros, Ione, Joan Osborne, Monique Buzzarté, Katherine Liberovskaya, Adam Bohman, Ellen Christi, Fred Lonberg-Holm, Jane Scarpantoni, Ulrich Krieger, David First, and Dave Prescott, among others.
http://www.ifbwana.com/
WALTER WRIGHT
is an interdisciplinary artist, his practice includes computer programming, electro-acoustic music, and video performance. His focus is on “improvisation as a way of being present in the world.”
Wright was one of the first video animators. At Computer Image Corp he animated letters, words, and titles for Children’s Television Workshop. He was a video animator for Ed Emshwiller’s Thermogenesis and Scapemates, aired by WNET’s Artists Television Workshop. Scapemates was the first computer graphics video nominated for an Emmy Award (1971). He showed his work at the first computer art conference at the Kitchen (NYC, 1973). In 1973-76, as artist-in-residence at the Experimental Television Center, he pioneered video performance touring public access centers, colleges, and galleries with the Paik/Abe Video Synthesizer.
Wright has developed software and hardware for artists including the Video Shredder, a desktop video processor for the TARGA2K. Currently he works with Max/MSP, softVNS, and Processing. His programs and sketches are available on his blog – nohtv.wordpress.com
Wright performs with several groups including Egregoros, ensemble indent and Tough Day Tubing. He plays a Bugbrand Board Weevil, a Flower Electronics Little Blue Boy, contact mics by Crank Sturgeon, drums and percussion. He recently toured with an amplified drum kit and is experimenting Martin Freeman’s Horndog and Peter Blasser’s Shnth.
Wright is a co-founder of 119 Gallery, the first digital art gallery on the World Wide Web, located in Lowell MA.
https://nohtv.wordpress.com/
