Native Strategies issue 5 summer 2016 (enter) CHIAR A GIOVANDO CHRISTOPHER ROUNTREE LUKE FISCHBECK ANNA LUISA PETRISKO ERIK AVERY I S U C M ISSUES JULES GIMBRONE DAVID JAMES PAHA MICHAEL ANTHONY IBARRA ARCHIE CAREY I S U C MOLLY ALLIS & JENICA ANDERSON M OSCAR MIGUEL SANTOS ISSUES ODEYA NINI CLAIRE CRONIN I S U C DORIAN WOOD M KEVIN ROBINSON TODD LEREW MORGAN LEE GERSTMAR XINA XURNER INGRID LEE WEBA GARRETSON ) The The of Sound of Bodies of Bodies Privileging Privileging enter and Negation and Negation ( performers: stage1 chiara giovandop12 christopher rountree luke fischbeck p16anna luisa petrisko erik avery jules gimbrone p20 david james paha p26michael anthony ibarra archie careyp30 molly allis & jenica anderson oscar miguel santos p34odeya nini claire cronin dorian wood p40 kevin robinson todd lerew p44 morgan lee gerstmar xina xurner p52 ingrid lee weba garretson p54 music issues conversations: Native Strategies: N (enter) S Curated by Brian Getnick, Tanya Rubbak, and Jules Gimbrone Issue #5: Music Issues – The Privileging and Negation of Bodies of Sound, Native Strategies utilized LACE to Weba GarretsonWeba & Mark Wheaton conversation in with Brian Getnick A Disembodied A Conversation Impostor. between & Dorian Wood Rossen Ventzislavov conversation. in Rubbak Brian Getnick, & Tanya Jules Gimbrone p6 host performances and to stimulate collaboration be- tween the often disparate artistic worlds of music and sound production in Los Angeles. N (enter) S installation was a Native Strategies issue come to life in a three-dimensional space at LACE, from p64 July 9 to July 31, 2014 where over 30 artists to per- formed and enacted the process of producing a journal. The installation consisted of 3stages designed to sym- bolize phases of our production cycle. Stage 1 was a mock television studio in which artists engaged in dialogues and performed with and for each other, thus generating material for the journal. Stage 2 was the pro- duction desk where content was processed, edited, and archived. Stage 3, a reading room, where the printed journal was available to the public. N (enter) S enacted the experience of reading a Native Strategies issue by positioning people and their prac- tices directly into each other’s orbits. As a whole, our model of research is to pay close attention to what is happening on the ground in Los Angeles and to repre- sent the divergent ideologies, methods and wisdom of contemporary practitioners and investigating critics. The aim is to create encounters between artists from different regions, classes, and degrees of formal educa- tion, ethnicity and sexuality. p60 3 stage2 BRIAN GETNICK, JULES GIMBRONE & TANYA RUBBAK IN CONVERSATION The Privileging and Negation of Bodies music issues of Sound “I think that’s why sound is such a radical and queer medium. It’s like water: it’s uncontainable.” uncontainable.” it’s water: like It’s medium. queer and a radical such is sound why that’s “I think BRIAN GETNICK One of semi-private, but also in a public and the questions we had was about the highly documented space. way that performers and compos- All in all, the performers seem ers differently used their bodies in B to really like that structure. I have to making their work. Do you feel like say one thing I’m surprised about and we got some surprising research or one thing that you’ve really taught me feedback from that? as a curator is the amount of struc- JULES GIMBRONE I think ture you can impose upon performers that we got some interesting begin- and how willing they are to rise to the nings to conversations. It was excit- occasion. It really yielded something ing for people to be actually talking to great. The structure still allowed for a each other about these things. This lot of openness and indeterminacy to really resonates with me because happen, it became, in itself, a sort of I’ve been involved in dance commu- indeterminate sound score. nities as well. In dance communities, Do you people are talking about performance TANYA RUBBAK think that it’s something specific to all the time. They sit in circles before music, that these were musicians they perform. They sit in circles after and not visual artists or strictly per- they perform. They talk to each other. formance artists? Because there’s In music, we just don’t have that cul- that idea of the open, indeterminate turally. We don’t talk to each other. score? B I was thinking about Pauline J I think that artists do that all the time when they’re doing a show in a gallery that has a certain space to consider but I do think musicians are generally more easy going and willing to adapt because musical practice takes its form from adaptation and experimentation. Oliveros’ Deep Listening concept and I think that’s true but there’s about how in this issue we applied B also a real toughness about asserting deep listening as a structure. that the sound is going to be their J Within the work, we invited the sound, it’s going to be enveloping, artists into that kind of listening by it’s going to be projected beyond the making it private, but also public. It scrim and beyond their bodies. I’m was very intimate in ways, but also wondering if this is also a part of the jules did not allow a space for people to reason it was easy to work with them escape. The stage also ended up in a in this confinement. 5 J Because they aren’t really con- ing out of the speakers feels massive. fined. I think that’s why sound is such I have to admit, sometimes when a radical and queer medium. It’s like I go to experimental music shows water: it’s uncontainable. You can and I see people crouched in front of build walls that contain, but it’s very laptops, I think to myself, “Why are hard to fully contain it. I think that it’s we watching this person here? Where not easily flattened, or discernible, is the person’s body in this perfor- or interpreted. It allows for a lot as a mance?” basic raw energy. That’s why I was so Honestly I’m actually not so interested about this idea of bodies. J interested in the body. I’m interested Because the body is both slippery in the body as a not-body. I’m inter- and somewhat contained. ested in the transformative power The body is this reality that we of the body. For David*, it becomes grab onto as human beings, but it’s more about him and his practice and simultaneously always dying, or how the piece that he presented was changing, or evolving. There’s some- all about an immersive sound envi- thing in that duality that makes music ronment that people can walk and and sound practice questioning of the engage in, but depending on where body as a vessel or container. they are in the room, and how they hear things, will have a vastly differ- But I think no one would mis- B ent experience from each other. take that the body isn’t important to your practice. In the performances I would say he’s creating almost I’ve seen your body is highly involved like a ghost body in the room for us to as an activator of various objects walk in. He’s engaging in something and other humans who you play as that’s potentially more intimate and instruments and collaborate with in maybe more close to what it means to installation. The work becomes highly have a body than someone who’s na- sculptural, and exists between heavi- ked on the floor and writhing around ness and lightness, it has sculptural or something like that. I feel like it vocabulary. allows other people to experience their own bodies in a way that isn’t so solid or fixed. T To add onto that, I think his performance was one of the most vis- ceral ones for me. I had to close my eyes and really experience the sound, it was very powerful. On the other hand, I think of some- one like David James Paha, who B I’m wondering if David’s mini- sits at a small computer screen and malism re-exposes us to ourselves presses buttons, but the sound com- as listening bodies while your piece music issues brian getnick jules gimbrone tanya rubbak Jules, brought me into other narra- B Because your body is in flux? tive places because you are moving, I think it’s because all bodies are you are activating the space. You’re J in flux and while some activity with- a character in your work, a kind of in my practice has to do with being conductor. queer and whatever, there’s no clarity J There have been pieces in my to identity that I’m really interested past that I’ve been very conscious in. I’m interested in talking about about playing with power and the re- difference and talking about expe- lationship that has with the audience rience and talking about how things and performers. But it’s also just the changed, and how things are moving necessity of moving things around and how being human ends up in a and putting chords and doing a huge weird, subjective place. amount of work. The technical reali- But at the same time I’m visibly ties of working with a bunch of elec- queer, or trans, or whatever you want tronics and things that are constantly to call me.