Lou Mallozzi : sounds images words

2011-12-07T09:21:00.000-08:00

Glaze at Garfield Park Conservatory

I'm presenting a new performance called Glaze, created specifically as an homage to the hail storm destruction at Chicago's Garfield Park Conservatory. In the summer, a sudden violent hail storm destroyed much of the glass in the conservatory's roofs; through painstaking efforts, the plants, display rooms, soil, and glass are now being repaired and replaced. Glaze uses glass as its material and as a performance acts somewhat like an expanded "moment after" in which amplification figures prominently. It is being performed by the Chicago Composers Orchestra at Garfield Park Conservatory December 7 at 6:30PM, along with new works by Nicole Mitchell, Kyle Vegter, John Dorhauer, and Francisco Castillo Trigueros.

2011-11-23T20:36:00.000-08:00

2011 Sound Art Theories Symposium

I had the great pleasure to organize and host the 2011 Sound Art Theories Symposium at The School of the Art Institute of Chicago on November 5 and 6, 2011. This was the first symposium of its kind in Chicago, and it brought together 13 scholars from the US, Canada, and Europe theorizing sound as art and art as sound from a diverse range of perspectives. More than 200 people attended the four sessions. We had five invited presenters: Christoph Cox, Salomé Voegelin, Seth Kim-Cohen, Allen S. Weiss, and David Grubbs; they were joined by eight presenters selected from an open call for papers: Erin Gee, Michael Eng, T. Brandon Evans, Leslie Korrick, Christof Migone, David Michael Perez, Åsa Stjerna, and Daniela Cascella. The presentations were deeply thoughtful, the questions and responses were provocative, and the two-hour lunch breaks were particularly well-attended. The SAIC Sound Department and its students were tremendously supportive, as was the SAIC administration, and technical and administrative assistance from the school was exemplary. We look forward to organizing another symposium in the near future.
Several presenters have offered to post their papers on the Sound Department blog at SAIC, so you can read them there.

2011-11-23T20:23:00.000-08:00

Laughter and Tears at Millennium Park

On November 4 and 5, 2011, Experimental Sound Studio presented Laughter and Tears at the Pritzker Pavilion at Millennium Park in Chicago. Laughter and Tears is a surround sound installation, composed by Olivia Block and Joseph Mills, and I was the organizer and sound designer. The piece was an uncanny juxtaposition to the Frank Gehry designed pavilion, running from 10AM-10PM both days to the amusement and engagement of several thousand ambient listeners. Olivia and Joseph did a beautiful job transforming many hours of laughter recordings into a subtle and playful composition.

2011-11-23T20:18:00.000-08:00

Duo with John Butcher

On October 29, 2011 I performed a duo with the great British saxophonist John Butcher at Experimental Sound Studio, as part of the ESS Outer Ear Series. John was in town for some concerts in the Umbrella Music Festival and was artist-in-residence at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago's Sound Department.

2011-11-23T20:10:00.000-08:00

Duo with Beat Unternaehrer

On September 16, 2011 I performed a duo with Luzern-based trombonist Beat Unternaeher at Experimental Sound Studio, in celebration of the opening of hover, an installation by Steve Peters and Christine Wallers at ESS's Audible Gallery. You can hear or download the set at the ESS website.

2011-11-23T19:49:00.000-08:00

Outpost in performance and installation

I presented a two-hour version of my performance Outpost at the Grunwald Gallery at Indiana University in Bloomington on October 21, 2011, the opening for the exhibition "Waveforms" curated by Betsy Stirrat. The resulting recording was then incorporated into an installation version of the work for the exhibition, titled Outpost 21 October 2011 16:00 to 18:00. The other artists in the exhibition were Carrie Bodle, Jacob C. Hammes, Norbert Herber/Rowland Ricketts, Tesia Kosmalski, Shannon McMullen/Fabian Winkler, Stephanie Rowden, and Jesse Seay. "Waveforms" ran from October 21 - November 18, 2011.

2011-11-23T19:31:00.000-08:00

Discontinued Speech

On September 15, 2011 I presented an evening of short text pieces called "Discontinued Speech" at the Italian Cultural Institute. This was in conjunction with the exhibition "A Sense of Place" at the ICI, in which I presented a new sound installation, Laguna. "Discontinued Speech" included some older pieces from my ongoing series Usi scrutati, as well as some new pieces, such as La Patria partorisce padri partiti (The fatherland gives birth to departed fathers), derived from Italian fascist "commandments" published between 1923-1945.

2011-06-23T21:25:00.000-07:00

European tour 2011

From May 21 to June 9, I had a three-week tour in Switzerland and Berlin. I was fortunate to have some generous and talented collaborators (including old friends and total strangers), and some excellent audiences in terms of both numbers and attention.

I started off in Switzerland with three performances with a first-time ever quartet comprised of Urs Leimgruber, Jacques Demierre, Vincent Barras, and me. We had three performances in Luzern, Geneva, and Vevey. Sandra joined me in Francophone Switzerland for a few days, one highlight being our boat ride from Lausanne to Vevey sipping espresso on the lake while gliding past beautiful vineyards. After a few days of rest, museum-going (tip: Konrad Witz's two 1444 paintings at the Musée d'Art et d'Histoire!), and cooking in Geneva, I headed to Zurich for a duo with Christian Bucher. He and I then went to Baar, joined by Hans-Peter Pfammatter, Barb Wagner, and Pelayo Arrizabalaga. And then to Luzern's wonderful Musikforum for a CD release gig celebrating a new trio CD: Well Fed featuring Christian, Hans-Peter, and me (out now, a limited edition of 100, send me an email if you're interested!).

Next was a very pleasant 8-hour train ride from Luzern to Berlin for four very different performances in a week. First a quintet plus two dancers: Michael Vorfeld, Michael Thieke, Ute Wassermann, Olivier Toulemonde and me with dancers Arthur Staedli and Lena Meierkord. Next was a solo performance at the Certain Sundays series, where I premiered three new text pieces based on my current explorations of the suffix "ology" and subtraction, as well as two pieces from my Usi scrutati series. I then spent a day working with Alessandro Bosetti on two new text pieces for a festival in Ptuj, Slovenia. Once again, some rest, museums (tip: the Gemäldegalerie's Dutch still lifes, two Vermeers, two Bronzinos, etc.!), and more cooking (dinner for 8 at Casa Vorfeld-Heise). Then I had a duo performance with Alessandro, and finished the tour with a trio comprised of Michael Vorfeld, Chris Heenan, and me.

Thanks to everyone who performed with me, set up the gigs, provided the venues and funding, let me stay in their homes, and came to listen!

2011-05-18T07:28:00.000-07:00

Laguna (2011)
I'm pleased to be included in "A Sense of Place," an upcoming exhibition in Chicago that is organized in conjunction with the 2011 Venice Biennale. I'll be presenting "Laguna," a new 6-channel sound installation.

"A Sense of Place"
an exhibition in conjunction with VENICE BIENNALE 2011 - ITALIAN PAVILION IN THE WORLD

The artists included in the exhibition are Carl Baratta, Antonia Contro, Stefano Cossu, Marco G. Ferrari, Virginio Ferrari, Sung Jang, and Lou Mallozzi. The exhibition is curated by Kate Zeller.

Opening reception: Friday, June 3rd at 6pm
Istituto Italiano di Cultura
500 N Michigan Ave, Suite 1450
The opening is free and open to the public. Reservations are requested by May 27th: (312) 822-9545.

The exhibition is open through September 16th, Monday through Friday from 9am to 5pm. Special Saturday hours on June 4th from 10-5pm.

"A Sense of Place" represents Chicago as one of eighty-nine satellite exhibitions featured in the Italian Pavilion in the World at the 54th International Art Exhibition of the Venice Biennale. Organized by the Italian Ministry of Foreign Affairs in honor of the 150th anniversary of the unification of Italy, the Italian Pavilion brings together Cultural Institutes from across the globe to promote Italian art as it has emerged internationally over the past decade. This local presentation - represented at the Venice Biennale through film - highlights the work of seven exceptional, Chicago-based artists who share a connection with Italy's landscape and culture as inspiration for their practice. Through the works on view, "A Sense of Place" also considers how we understand and engage our own experiences of a place, and how such encounters continue to permeate our sensibility.

2011-01-19T11:05:00.000-08:00

Interval in Colorado
My sound installation Interval was included in a sound art exhibition at the University of Colorado at Colorado Springs…
BREAKING THE SOUND BARRIER: Sonic Art 1860-2011
An anthology of the art of sound from the first audio recording of the French folk song Au Clair de la Lune by Édouard-Léon Scott de Martinville to work completed yesterday, this exhibition investigates the dimensions of sound through silence, noise, ambient textures, ideas, stories and places. Curated by UCCS VAPA faculty and artist Valerie Brodar.

Artists include Terry Allen, Jacki Apple, Charles Amirkhanian, Paul Bright, Adan De La Garza, Jim Green, Richard Lerman, Lou Mallozzi, David Moss, Senga Nengudi, Matt Pass, Helen Thorington, and Improv Everywhere.

February 4 – April 15, 2011

Gallery of Contemporary Art 121
University of Colorado at Colorado Springs
121 S. Tejon St
Colorado Springs, CO 80903
www.galleryuccs.org

Public Reception: February 4, 6 - 9 pm
Hours: Monday – Friday, 10 am - 8 pm

2011-01-02T09:56:00.000-08:00

Iceberg Projects: solo sound performances and selections from Usi scrutati

On December 5, 2010, I presented selections from my solo sound performance series Usi scrutati along with several solo improvisations at Iceberg Projects, a recently opened space in Chicago (http://icebergchicago.com/home.html). The invitation came from fellow artist Doug Ischar. (photo credit: Zak Arctander)

There's a very nice review/summary of the performances at the Iceberg Projects website: http://icebergchicago.com/artwork/1722473_Lou_Mallozzi.html

2011-01-02T09:44:00.000-08:00

Outpost
Perched on the 4th floor mezzanine of Chicago's Museum of Contemporary Art, I’ll be zeroing in on visitors to the museum through a telescope and describing them in detail over loudspeakers placed outside the 2nd floor exhibition space. Presented for the “Interactions” series in conjunction with the MCA’s current exhibition “Without You I'm Nothing: Art and Its Audience,” Outpost turns surveillance inside-out: spectators become spectacle, the audience becomes subject and object.

Museum of Contemporary Art, 220 E Chicago Avenue, Chicago
January 4 – 9, 2010
Performance times: Tuesday 6PM-8PM, Wednesday-Sunday 1PM-3PM
curated by Tricia Van Eck

Outpost was a great success at the MCA in Chicago. There was a nice, concise TV piece done by Dan Andreis of WTTW/Channel 11, archived at: http://video.wttw.com/video/1724740839/ -- scroll down to Thursday June 6 “Museum Spy.” I include photos here from Nathan Keay, (c) MCA Chicago.

Peers

2010-10-17T13:59:00.000-07:00

Peers (2010) is a sound installation comprised of a recording of everything Lee Harvey Oswald said from the moment of Kennedy's assassination until the moment of Oswald's assassination. The text is recited by 12 people in unison, a stand-in for for the jury Oswald never had, one of many gaps and absences in an event that has become so mythological that its facts may never surface nor perhaps even matter. The piece was presented in October 2010 as part of Sustenance, a group exhibition of site-specific installations in Dallas, organized by Stephen Lapthisophon and Anne Lawrence (http://sustenanceexhibition.blogspot.com). Many thanks to the readers: Anton Hatwich, Kate Joyce, Chi Jang Yin, Rich Cahan, Jacob Ross, Noé Cuellar, Rebecca Kressley, Carla Duarte, Hamza Walker, Gary Marks, Lee Blalock, and Benjamin Chaffee.

Peers by Experimental Sound Studio

Unattended Packages

2010-10-14T19:50:00.000-07:00

Unattended Packages was a solo sound performance presented on 26 June 2009 at Sonic Peripheries, a series held on the outskirts of Bremen, Germany, curated by Petra Klusmeyer.

Unattended Packages by Experimental Sound Studio

Screenplay: one and one

2010-10-11T14:06:00.000-07:00

Screenplay: one and one is a new text-based sound installation that recently opened as part of the Non-Cochlear Sound exhibition at Diapason in Brooklyn (http://noncochlearsound.com). Two loudspeakers play two simultaneous texts, each of which is a real-time recording of me describing two different feature-length narrative films. The 106-minute loop is relentless, full of uhs and ums, a document of my inability to keep pace with the cinematic editing, a performance impediment made manifest. In short, an exercise in auditory parallax.
Screenplay: one and one by Experimental Sound Studio

2010-07-10T09:24:00.000-07:00

Eschewing intelligence?: why "ecology" makes me nervous

(a talk originally presented at the conference of the American Society for Acoustic Ecology, Chicago, July 9, 2010)

Lou Mallozzi, Chicago, June 2010

Introduction

I will attempt to articulate some questions I have, not to construct a rational analysis or to argue a position, but to open an inquiry. My feeling at the moment is that I need to attempt approaches to discourse that skirt the rational and yet grasp at, in which the grasping itself is the point of departure. Hopefully this will simply give us something to talk about.

“Life starts to get interesting when contradictions accumulate.”
-- Gaston Bachelard, The Poetics of Space

To start, I’ll describe two very different projects I’ve been engaged with. I hope these will establish some context for what then follows, a sort of inductive ramble, every sentence of which should probably be followed by a question mark.

Part 1. Two Projects Against

First, a current and as yet unfinished project on –ologies: I have accumulated a list of about 400 words in English that end in the suffix “-ology.” This is from the Greek word logos, a word that some say we have misguided, like taking it in hand and leading it blindfolded through a prism. In many cases it is defined as “the study of,” or “the rational knowledge of,” or simply “language,” eventually it even comes to mean “the Word.” The project involves accumulating these words’ definitions, then substituting the suffix “-agnia”, meaning “the avoidance of,” and creating a new list.

-ologies to -agnias : from engaged rational studies to avoidances or separations.

So, for example, biology, the study of life forms, becomes biagnia, the avoidance of life forms. This seems to have some interesting poetic possibilities.

Second, the Sound Canopy and its vandalism. In 2003, Experimental Sound Studio and other groups and individuals collaborated with the Hyde Park Art Center to establish a temporary urban public installation site for sound installations, the Sound Canopy, at the corner of Adams and State in Chicago’s Loop. Multiple loudspeakers were mounted in the construction canopy that wrapped around the corner of the building at the site, playing alternating sound pieces curated by various Chicagoans. It was rather quickly vandalized, the wires repeatedly cut at night, and eventually we had to abandon the project and the site. Retrospectively, this event can be seen as the invasion (by us) of a site for its cultural elevation, and the resistance to said invasion (by them), this in turn being perceived by the original invaders (us) as a resistance to the site’s elevation, to its civilization. Or mis-perceived as such. The vandal (them) speaks, criticizes with his/her means, which are non-discursive and therefore “uncivilized” – snip, snip -- that is to say, in amoral opposition to that which urbanized humans have brought forth; that is to say, in amoral opposition to what technologized humans have brought forth from history and environment; that is to say, it is a resistance curiously in harmony with the “natural” world – a world that is in constant amoral response to itself. So we arrive at a point where we can in fact say that an act of vandalism is a response to over-technologized urban human intervention/invasion, and that this vandalism is in perfect harmony with “ecology” – if what we mean by “ecology” is a not-ego-first approach to experiencing environment. But we as humans want our cake and we want to eat it too. Which is why we, the initial invaders, were so taken aback by the “unjustified” vandalism of the site and didn’t stop to think that we ourselves might have been vandalizing the site in its previous incarnation as an abandoned, dormant building (sitting on very expensive real estate) that might well have been serving as someone’s temporary home. That this is not just a battle of wills or of egos (us versus them) is perhaps inherent in that it was a contestation of a site transformed through sound -- it may not have been subjected to the same response if it were a visual and therefore ignorable intervention. Sound is inescapable and therefore inherently oppressive.

Part 2. More on Us and Them

Humans and the environment: a false duality? Or whose duality? This duality presupposes a separation that is said to have taken place, apparently in violation of a once-extant unity in some indeterminable past, in mystery, in myth, and since the seventeenth century at least, in the scientifically determined continuum of chronological time. But perhaps we cannot return to a unity because there is no authentic unity; perhaps humans are in fact beings who exist in ways other than objects, animals, etc. And in ways other than environments. The phrase “in ways other than” is very difficult. My opinion is that art making – or perhaps a better term is art-being, a poetic being -- is the very place at which “in ways other than” is explored, contested, dynamized. So, to steal from Heidegger, if we “dwell poetically” we are occupying a place of being that cannot be logos, cannot be solely and reducibly rational, a position outside, a position of intelligent stewardship, if by this we mean rational. We are not in an environment. We have perhaps invented “environment” as that which allows us to be surrounded, as it were, by our contestants. It is not us and them, us agents in a “them-space.” But the nature of our connection to the world may be different than the rational one we’ve inherited; perhaps we are connected to the world not because we are essentially the same as anything else in it (as science requires), but because we are differentiating beings of it. Language is that differentiating being; it is not simply a tool to communicate, not something we invented to make our lives easier -- anyone who has ever tried to explain anything knows that is nonsense – it is a differencing as we are. Otherwise poetry could never work.

Part 3. Au revoir, objet sonore

Art, of course, is not law (logos), it is not eternally rational, it does not “speak a universal language,” it is at root unstable; it wants to open rather than define, to be in and of history, to interrogate towards ignorance, embracing ignorance as another opening. Science is only ever about what we already agree upon. Its peculiar beauty lies in its combination of optimism and doubt, and in how optimism and doubt conspire to battle ignorance. Because we as humans have intentionally made each other’s lives contestations of misperceived resources, making the world a better place has become the role of the current social engineering model that pervades cultural discourse, cultural institutions, funding sources, and evaluations. This social engineering model -- born of science and its seductive promise of stamping out ignorance -- requires compassionate rationality; it cannot freely admit dispassionate irrationality; that is to say, it cannot freely admit rather a lot of what art is. If it does open the door a crack to let in a whiff of the irrational, it only does so by finding a way to confine all forms of irrationality within the boundaries of its rationalist mission: “this is an art that elevates, this is an art that heals, this is an art that allows expression, this is an art that makes for a better citizenry, this is an art that exemplifies our values.” It cannot learn from art, it cannot learn from nature (if such a thing exists), it can only learn more about its own context of rationalized and therefore inherently technologized thinking and doing. It will never admit the vandal – snip, snip. This why the social engineering model and its institutions embrace ill-conceived or ill-executed art attempts that “speak to the issues;” they affirm the model’s optimistic rationalism. This is also why, for example, on PBS “nature” programs, the lion killing the antelope is always accompanied by music (a very specific type of romantic music) and never by the sounds of the chase, capture, and killing. Such nonmusical sound emanates the irrational, the uncontainable: the amoral is inherent in the sound, sound is not only physically omindirectional, it is also amorally omnidirectional (unlike a photograph, for example). Music in this sense can only ever be aesthetic (which is its power). But even if we were to hear those amoral nonmusical sounds, they are in fact once again divorced from their amoralizing irrational power, they are contained in our technologized watching – we visualize them into a flattened, framed submission, another containment – in fact, they are “on” TV, or “on” radio, or “on” CD – they are only ever “on” and no longer “of.” Here is one root of the collision and perhaps the dichotomy of recorded sound vis-à-vis the environment: it inherently violates its own critique, it inherently romanticizes its own source, it in fact wants to “represent” its source in the first place and therefore becomes a kind of zoology, a holding out of context for study that which only lives in context, a taking-out-“of” and placing-“on”-to. Taken in one direction, it applies a frame and implies that perceptions can somehow act like objects. But there is no “unit of purified representation,” so the sound object cannot be. Problems of purity?

“…for when art is good, it is because it has touched inexpressiveness, the worst art is expressive art, the kind that transgresses the piece of iron and the piece of glass, and the smiles, and the shouts.”
-- Clarice Lispector, The Passion according to G.H.

2010-05-25T18:14:00.000-07:00

Dr'm't'c C'nstr'ct'ns

Dr'm't'c C'nstr'ct'ns exploits the pronounced tunnel-like quality of its site: a construction canopy at a building site, a long, narrow conduit of crisscrossing humanity by day, an empty shell of human traces at night. The long sides of the canopy face off through language: on one side, a series of sentences could be describing the individuals passing through; on the other, a vocalist and director construct melodramatic responses to an unnamed narrative. The texts are linked by bursts of operatic music, the sanctioned icons of joy and sorrow, and they coalesce, contrast, or dissolve in miniature scenes or atomized images.

Two rows of loudspeakers, dimensions variable

Exhibition history:
Sound Canopy, Chicago
NOVA Art Fair, Chicago

2010-05-25T17:54:00.000-07:00

Paces

Paces is a sound and video installation by Lou Mallozzi and Gustavo Matamoros. The piece is site-specific in its evolution and presentation: the artists perform a "pursuit and avoidance" action that is videotaped and miked from five perspectives. They then reassemble the resulting sounds and images into an installation that superimposes an action in the space onto the space itself, creating a media double in the architectural context.

Five loudspeakers and two video monitors

Exhibition history:
Art Gallery of Knoxville, TN

2010-01-19T19:45:00.001-08:00

Accumulation Drawings

Ongoing series of drawings made from layered gesture drawings of objects in lists. White, or red, gray, and white colored pencil on black paper, various sizes.

2010-01-19T19:16:00.001-08:00

Interval

The sound installation Interval is the coincidence of three separate looping, asynchronous sources: a piano being tuned, a recording of inhalations and exhalations, and the occasional interruption of these by a recording of a tree being chopped down. The sounds interact unpredictably to create tensions, releases, interactions, and hints at narrative, only to be disrupted every 15 minutes by the tree falling in the woods.

two raw loudspeakers and three audio monitors, three CD players, dimensions variable

exhibition history:
Portland Art Center, OR, US
Evanston Art Center, IL, US
Radiorevolten Festival, Halle, Germany