Manipulated Image #9: "GUTTURAL!"

Friday, December 18, 2009 at 7:00pm
7:00pm – 9:00pm
@ the Santa Fe Complex

Participating artists: Wilfried Agricola deCologne (Germany), Niclas Hallberg and Stina Pehrsdotter (Sweden), Paulo R. C. Barros (Brazil), with special presentation and discussion by Martin Back (Santa Fe) and Hey-Yeun Jang (New York City)

Curated by Alysse Stepanian

"GUTTURAL!"
merriam-webster.com: being or marked by utterance that is strange, unpleasant, or disagreeable

wikipedia.org: Gutturals are seen as those sounds pronounced in the back of the vocal tract that do not occur in English, and which are perceived as harsh.... Sometimes whether a language is considered guttural or not could depend on differences within regions and countries.

There is obvious and natural rawness to Martin Back's work, an unbridled energy exuding its life force. Similarly, Paulo Barros's percolating abstractions are only inhibited by their forced rectangular enclosures. Hey-Yeun Jang's work penetrates the “in-between,” the deep cracks that are left unexplored in familiar realities. Niclas Hallberg (with his collaborator Stina Pehrsdotter), gives voice to disoriented beings that have come to feel shame in a civilization that has alphabetized and codified proper conduct. Wilfried Agricola de Cologne's videos are both visually and viscerally penetrating, and his clear observations are potent and commanding. It is not necessarily the grating quality of the sound that makes these works guttural, but the restless audacity of the artists to breech the boundaries of the agreeable, the proper, and the familiar .(Alysse Stepanian: November 9, 2009)

Wilfried Agricola deCologne (Cologne, Germany)

Agricola de Cologne is a multidisciplinary media artist, director of short films, New Media curator and founder & director of [NewMediaArtProjectNetwork]:||cologne – www.nmartproject.net, the experimental platform for art and New Media operating from Cologne/Germany. In this framework, he is, among others, the director and curator of JavaMuseum – Forum for Internet Technology in Contemporary Art – www.javamuseum.org, chief curator for VideoChannel – http://videochannel.newmediafest.org, as well as founder and director of CologneOFF – Cologne Online Film Festival – http://coff.newmediafest.org – a mobile film festival online and offline simultaneously, and co-organiser and curator of several media festivals and exhibitions. Agricola de Cologne directs, produces, edits, and composes music for his experimental films. His work has appeared in more than 100 solo exhibitions in cooperation with more than 70 museums throughout Europe, and since 2000 he has participated in more than 250 media exhibitions and festivals around the globe. Agricola de Cologne's media art works have received numerous prizes and awards.

Agricola de Cologne's past exhibitions include:ISEA2008 Singapore, 52th Venice Biennale 2007, Documenta 12 Kassel/Germany 2007, Budapest International Shortfilm Festival 2007, Museum of 21th Century Art Rome/Italy 2006/2007, Moskow International Film Festival 2006, Canariasmediafest 2006 & 2002, Athens Videoart festival 2006 & 2007, Japan Media Art Festival 2006 & 2002, ZKM Karlsruhe/G 2005, Biennale of Video & New Media Santiago/Chile 2005, Biennale de Montreal 2004, Biennale of Electronic Art Perth/Australia 2004 , Biennale of New Media Art Merida /Mexico 2003, Venice Biennale 2003, FILE Sao Paulo 2001-2007, FILE Rio 2006- 2007-2008, Ars Electronica 2001-2006, Videoformes 2001-2008, Art on the Net 2001, 2002, Mediaterra Athens 2002, ISEA 2002 Nagoya/Japan, SENEF Seoul 2004, 2005, 2007.

- timedOUT   2008, 9:00
- Burning Phantom   2009, 1:00
- Truth Paradise Found   2004, 3:00
- Distortion Project  2005, 4:40
- House of Tomorrow 2005, 3:00
- One Day on Mars  2007, 7:47
- bareback: Serial Discharge 5:59

Niclas Hallberg (1965, Sweden)

Stina Pehrsdotter and Niclas Hallberg have been working together since 1998. Over the years they have developed an affectionate closeness,  always with an open-mindedness for each others ideas. In their latest artistc collaboration project Inner Departure, a photo- and video-exhibition, they worked very intimately and want to express desires, memories and wishes. In their working process they share thoughts, discuss problematic issues and help one another, both in practical and theoretical questions. They have aslo a wide network of artists around the world, with who they cooperate in different projects.

Jan Kather, artist educator and video artist from NY, made a comment:

”Wow! You should make a catalog for all of the Formverk (art zone) shows - such a cross section of ideas and processes. Thanks so much for sending the beautiful Inner Departure catalog.  If we are now asked to define the word "collaboration" it will include this entry as THE perfect example: Niclas&Stina”

Formverk (art zone), established 2004 by Stina and Niclas, is an example of another side of their collaboration.  It’s an exhibition place, an area for cultural events and a project room. The purpose is to show national and international contemporary art and to realize artistic exchange and cooperation. Formverk (art zone) has the last two years developed rich and vivid contacts with other artist-run places around the world and has collaborations in Scandinavia, Eastern Europe, USA and Brazil. The purpose is to realize ideas, develop dialogues and have fun!

- Implemented – 3:00
- Caprice  – 2:34
- Inner Departure -  3:34

Paulo Barros (Sao Paulo, Brazil)

Paulo R. C. Barros is a video and sonorous artist. His works were shown at Art and Media events and Festivals in the United States, Denmark, England, Cyprus, Spain, The Netherlands, France, Austria, Syria, Romania, Venezuela, and Brazil. He has a rich collection of electronic art and sonorous plastics. Observer of the cinema, music, contemporary art and adjacent medias, he is up to date on expanded possibilities of video that are in constant process of changing and rearrangement.

Paulo R. C. Barros explores the computer as a form of aesthetic experimentation when working the resources that better allow him to arise the sensibility of the audience. Subverting continuously the function of the machine and the programs that he uses, reinventing the way how he appropriates of a technology, the digital artist increases his performance and expands his creative horizon. The techniques and artifices used in the conception of the works are full of concepts and themes based on the minimalism principles, always aiming an innovative and stunning perspective. The recycling of the visual and sonorous signs, the fragmentation and the impious dismount of their parts, the intentional repetition, allow the creation of an abstract, pulsing, hypnotic and seducing form of art. The result is disturbing and can be multiplied to the infinite feeding the artistic intervention in the media universe and creating new interpretation parameters, that demands fast perception to be able to catch the message in a speed that sometimes seems to be dizzying.

- Neonerd 1:02
- Codebar 1:14
- Reworked 3:08
- Machine Noise 1:19
- Soundsieve 0:49
- Circuit Variations 2:06
- Circuit-Bending 0:58
- Continuum 1:02
- Interned 0:52
- Hybridizer 1:01
- KRAFTNOISE 2:20
- Phonictype 0:31
- Meracortex 4:08
- Multipliied Perception 1:23
- Signal Noise 1:31
- Spirastorm 0:38
- Tilt-Switches 2:06
- Transfer 1:30
- (with Alan Walker) Telepathic 1:07

Hey-Yeun Jang (New York City, USA)

Martin Back (Santa Fe, USA)

BIO
Martin Back is a media and sound artist; and musician and composer. He received a B.A. in Moving Image Arts at the College of Santa Fe in 2004 where he was a student of pioneering media theorist, historian and author Gene Youngblood and renowned media artist David Stout. He has studied experimental composition privately with composer and sound artist David Dunn. He is a self-confessed dilettante and sonic provocateur and as such his work may explore or make use of drones, custom analog electronics, graphic and text scores, field recording, software, site specific performance, noise, and sound object-sculptures. Recent works have been focused on the human body as a locus for sound making and performance; sound as a physical medium; scores for environmental response; and multichannel diffusion. Martin performs often either in solo or ensemble situations. He is founder of the Ancestral Groan Liberation Orchestra and is a member of the New Mexico Soundpainting Orchestra, led by jazz trombonist and experimental musician Christian Pincock, and a member of the Transducers, an electro-acoustic ensemble founded by composer Philip Mantione. His video works have been exhibited in the United States and Canada.


- Performance For No One  7:39
- Color Noise Invocation, 2007, 3:54