JUNE 2, 2009, 7PM
Nathan Austin, Tobias Laukemper and Kelly Warman,
Morgan Packard
Nathan Austin
Survey Says!
Survey Says! is a procedural poem that arranges all of the answers, correct and incorrect, from two months' worth of Family Feud episodes.
They are "on board." They beautify themselves. They
brush their teeth. They brush their teeth. They buy
groceries. They cash their check. They change their
jobs. They chew gum. They comb it over. They develop
more hair. They don't like to look pretty. They don't put
on their seatbelt. They don't take care of their bedroom.
They dry flowers -- like dried flowers. They dye it. They
eat. They fall out of love.
Nathan Austin uses found textual materials to interrogate language's role in creating and mediating relationships between self, body, and social orders. Through the use of procedural techniques, he disrupts and re-interprets conventions of intention and meaning. His most recent book, Survey Says! (Black Maze Books, 2009) is a systematic re-ordering of all the answers provided by contestants on Family Feud over the span of two months.
Nathan received his B.A. in Literature from the University of California, Santa Cruz, and his Ph.D. in Poetics from the State University of New York at Buffalo. Poetry has appeared or is forthcoming in Songbook and Other Stories, Loose Watch: A Lost and Found Times Anthology, Aufgabe, Little Red Leaves, Combo, Phoebe, and Kiosk. Other books include (glost) (Handwritten Books, 2002) and Tie an O (Burning Press, 1998). He currently teaches English in New York City.
http://thiscruellestmonth.blogspot.com/
topTobias Laukemper and Kelly Warman
Laukemper and Warman will show the collaborative film ProgRock and will screen The Announcement as an artist's presentation.
Tobias Laukemper was born in 1970 in Düsseldorf, DE. He currently lives and works in Berlin. In 2006 he received his MFA at the Piet Zwart Insitute, Rotterdam NL, after he graduated with a Diploma in Fine Arts at the Hochschule für Grafik und Buchkunst, Leipzig DE in 2004.
Laukemper develops individual and collaborative works, which all deal with the profession of the 'Artist' in relation to production, labour, division of tasks and the development of a critical discourse. He is interested in the production and distribution of art, the artistic product and its staging as commodity as well as his own position within these guidelines. The gallery, the media, the creative industry, discourse, are all researched and reflected upon in the larger context of modernism, postmodernism and utopia.
Recently he has shown his work at Expodium, Utrecht NL (2009), Gallery Asim Chughtai, Berlin DE (2007), KASA Gallery, Istanbul TK (2007). In particular his video work was screened at the Vienna Biennale, Vienna A (2008), Museum Beuijmans van Beuningen, Rotterdam NL (2008/2006), Städtische Kunsthalle/ Lothringer 13, Munich (2007), the Fair Play Festival, Berlin DE (2007) and in TENT. Center for Visual Arts, Rotterdam NL (2006).
Kelly Warman was born in London but currently lives and works in Rotterdam. Before completing her MFA at the Piet Zwart Institute, Warman graduated with a BA (Hons) from Dartington College of Arts in Visual Performance. Warman's formation as a film and video artist is related to a larger understanding of a culture that evolves around self-performance and self-profiling, she is particularly interested in the translation of the interior monologue into the cinematic space. Warman's work investigates the idea of a commodity-person through staged performance and cinematic video works.
Notably she has shown her work in Witte de With (Rotterdam, 2009) Vienna Biennale (Vienna, 2008) Boijmans Museum (Rotterdam, 2008) Lothringer13 Kunsthalle (Munich, 2007) and TENT. (Rotterdam, 2006). In 2009 Warman will be on residence at Apex Art, New York.
Morgan Packard
Morgan Packard’s sound is rooted in a decade’s immersion in beat-based electronic music and informed by periods of intense study of jazz, western classical music, and computer programming. While his music may be wrangled into the minimal electronic category, he is actually eschewing minimal tropes in favor of highly wrought arrangements – fitting multiple sensibilities into music that could easily be mistaken for existing genres, though when explored carefully, hardly fits into any. Using the form of techno/house/breakbeat music as a beginning, not an end unto itself, Morgan arrives at a sound which manages to synthesize ideas from the worlds of electronics, jazz, and classical in a manner that has no hint of experimentation, but rather a purposeful, concrete rendering of his vision.
The structure of Morgan’s music begins with loop-based electronica. However he uses software of his own creation to subtly disrupt the “loopness” inherent in this form. Every iteration of a loop has incremental changes, which over time becomes something entirely different from its origin. The constantly shifting textures is due both to the software techniques employed and the hand guiding the results. Morgan carefully nudges the arrangements into music that pays homage to a host of techniques and styles that have come before it; taking those ideas and stretching them into new forms; adhering to select guidelines, while disregarding most.