1,349 research outputs found
Trevor Mathison, From Signal To Decay: Volume 1 CCA Goldsmiths
No full textFrom Signal to Decay: Volume 1 was the first solo exhibition in a UK institution by composer, artist and sound designer Trevor Mathison. The presentation comprised an ambitious sound installation, drawings, archival material, sculpture, video, and live performance.
In the months leading up to this exhibition, Mathison undertook a sonic investigation of the Goldsmiths CCA building, producing numerous recordings using an Ambisonic microphone. These samples were periodically played back in the first basement gallery, reverberating with the architecture and providing a constant signal with which the sound pieces in other gallery spaces could converse and collide. In the Oak Foundation Gallery, a number of compositions – selected from Mathison’s archive, were reconfigured and combined with new sounds, while in the back basement a video work, shot in Scotland and featuring an independent soundtrack, was on display. In an adjacent corridor, a microphone provided a live feed from outside the building, picking up sounds from New Cross Road. Mathison’s sound installation played the building back to itself, using its open and porous layout as an opportunity to mix different sounds into a multi-layered, mutating composition.
Curated by Appau Jnr Boakye-Yiadom and Oliver Fuke
The Conversation Continues: We Are Still Listening (with Trevor Mathison)
No full textThis discussion and performance was part of a special preview of Trevor Mathison’s newly commissioned artwork ‘The Conversation Continues: We Are Still Listening’. The audio-based piece is an immersive soundscape which explores the legacy of Stuart Hall (1932-2014) and the radical thinkers laid to rest at Highgate Cemetery.
The preview was accompanied by a live conversation between commissioned artist Trevor Mathison and Aasiya Lodhi, former BBC radio producer and Senior Lecturer at University of Westminster. Aasiya Lodhi’s research explores race, coloniality and voice in mid-twentieth century BBC radio programming, especially in relation to Caribbean writers. Aasiya and Trevor discussed some of the inspirations behind the commission, the legacies of the thinkers resting in the cemetery, and sonic engagements with Stuart Hall’s ideas. The event also included a live reading from Hall’s posthumous memoir ‘Familiar Stranger’, performed by actor Joseph Black
Black Industrial Noise, Ultima 2024
No full textPress Release from Ultima website:
"A radical ‘essay-concert’ reclaiming a post-colonial lineage of techno and noise. Black Industrial/Noise is an extended event taking over Henie Onstad Kunstsenter. Compelling experimental electronic music and noise artists and thinkers present a continuous flow of live music and talk, within a loosely defined concept of ‘Black Industrialism’.
Trevor Mathison and Gary Stewart have been in search of a black avantgarde since the 1980s. As the duo Dubmorphology they make experimental audio-visual installations and performances that examine the relationship between culture, history and creativity, reworking historical, political and scientific archives. Theorist and artist Kodwo Eshun is the author of the acclaimed book on music and Afrofuturism, More Brilliant Than the Sun (1998). He will give a performance-lecture outlining the aesthetic of Black Industrialism.
Nkisi is a producer, live musician, DJ and curator born in Congo, raised in Belgium. Her intense sonics are influenced by ancient Kongo rhythms, noise, the planetary electromagnetic grid, and experimental improvisation. South London’s Klein is an electronic composer with a Nigerian background. She specialises in grainy pop collages with R&B-inspired vocals, manipulated samples and metallic drones. As well as collaborating with Laurel Halo she has released music on the Hyperdub label and composed music for film.
On the Black Industrialism of Trevor Mathison of Black Audio Film Collective: A Lecture by Kodwo Eshun
No full textIn conversation with Kobena Mercer in 2016, John Akomfrah and Trevor Mathison of Black Audio Film Collective characterised the Collective’s 1982 slide tape work Expeditions: Signs of Empire and Images of Nationality in terms of ‘a sonic back- drop which one could only call “black industrial’. To pursue the notion of a black industrial aesthetic is to rethink the constitution of black audio from within the Collective’s recursive formulation of the becoming of black audio film collectivity
How is she in the water
No full textPublished work by a Douglas College Student Alumni. With an unlikely sea creature in his bathtub, Cleveland's future is at risk. Can he do what it takes to set things right? Author is exploring the assumption of humans ruling a fictitious hierarchy of living and non-living things.Final book published.DC Author's celebration 202
For and against; should doctors advise young people to abstain from sex?
No full textAgainst a background of high rates of teenage pregnancy and an increasing prevalence of sexually transmitted infections, the sexual conduct of young people is vigorously debated. Many teenagers later say that they had sexual intercourse "too early" but should doctors be advising young people to abstain from sex? Trevor Stammers, who is a tutor in general practice and an author and broadcaster on sexual health, and Roger Ingham, who has done research on sexual conduct and sex education in Britain and other countries, consider whether advising abstinence is an effective response to declining teenage sexual health
Black Industrial/ Noise Events
No full textThis series brings together artists, musicians, and writers to think about different notions of Black Industrial/Noise. How has it been elaborated previously? What affiliations between musical forms might it suggest? What different meanings does it have for practitioners working today?
Performances by Nkisi, Dubmorphology, Dhangsha, Ain Bailey & GAIKA. The performance took place with a different artist each month over five months, alongside an in-conversation with invited contributors
Colbourn, H. Trevor - office
No full textDr. Trevor Colbourn, President of UCF 1978-1989, in a suit and tie in his office. Colbourn was the author of The lamp of experience; Whig history and the intellectual origins of the American Revolution in 1965.https://stars.library.ucf.edu/univphotocollection/1612/thumbnail.jp
Three Songs on Pain Light and Time
No full textPAIN Sickle cells under a microscope. Man walking beside field of sunflowers. Caption: "Donald Rodney is an artist with Sickle Cell Anaemia." Donald Rodney in a wheelchair in his studio. His VO says that he is in constant pain; his work is hindered because there are things he can’t do as a result. Rodney talks about not being able to stand for long and being unable to carry canvases as he could when he was a student. Man in sunflower field holding large photograph of Rodney as a boy. Rodney’s VO explains that his joints are slowly breaking down. He thinks that in the black community, and in the art world, people with disabilities become "partially invisible". The avant garde community can make those people feel less like outsiders as well as enable exploration of "the bizarre nature of … sexuality, masculinity and race". Black Man Public Enemy (1992); The House That Jack Built (1988); Middle Passage (1984); Self Portrait as Clinton McCurbin (1988); Untitled (1987); Untitled (1988). Sonia Boyce, Artist, challenges the idea that male artists deal with "universal themes" while women concern themselves with more "personal" subjects, saying that men and women have influenced each other’s practices. Addressing Rodney, she points to the drawing, The Voyage of My Father (1987), as being "very personal … and quite challenging". Britannia Hospital III (1988). Rodney with book; his VO says that Boyce had introduced him to the work of Frida Kahlo who, though crippled, was "a highly political artist", using images of her disability as metaphors for the crippling of her culture. Marlene Smith, Artist, talks to Rodney about the importance of his humour and irony. VO over How the West Was Won II (1983); Deaf Dumb & Blind Self Portraits (1983). Sunflowers. Rodney’s VO talking about the difficulty of turning "the experience of pain into art". Britannia Hospital II (1988) and Self Portrait (1991). His VO over Trophies of Empire (1993) suggests that he would have become a sportsman if he had not become ill. Sickle cells.
LIGHT Sunflowers. Rodney’s own Super-8 film of hospital activities. His VO talking about light meaning warmth, sun lamps, even heat blankets. Rodney’s VO over Science Museum model of haemoglobin cell with lights indicating the part of the cell which causes Sickle Cell anaemia. Images from Black Man Public Enemy. Hospital scenes. Rodney’s VO saying that while green used to be his favourite colour, it now reminds him of surgery. Storm People on beach holding cloths in the wind. Rodney walking towards them and his wheelchair. Sunflowers. Rodney’s VO talking about the "guilty secret" of having been a flower painter in the past and about growing flowers Rodney walking. People holding up photographs in the sunflower field. Rodney. Wheelchair. Rodney talks about having grown a nine-foot sunflower. Rodney and Diane Symons in the Rothko Room, Tate Gallery. Black on Maroon (1958), Black on Maroon (1959). Rodney’s VO pointing to the irony that, though the gallery includes very few works by black artists, the majority of the security guards are black. VO continues over him taking sugar lumps from a packet, saying that the history of the Tate is the history of the slave trade sugar plantations. His VO says he wants to make a model of the building in sugar cubes, surrounded by security guards.
TIME Blood dripping in a transfusion bag. Sunflowers. Hospital scenes. Rodney’s VO says that it’s odd that the film is happening almost exactly a year after his last hip operation, a time when he felt closest to dying. Rodney talking to Mora Byrd, Art Curator, about showing the installation, Visceral Canker, "properly", and explaining how that should be done. He talks about Sir John Hawkins and his coats of arms. Visceral Canker (1990). Hospital scenes. Rodney’s VO explains that concerns about the nature of his blood had led local authorities to insist that he used something else in previous exhibitions. Hospital scenes. Rodney’s VO saying that he’s been unable to make work as he’d like to for several years past. Brenda Agard, Artist, addressing Rodney, remembering "the buzz" of the 1980s with artists from all over the country meeting and sharing ideals; she thinks the community is now more fragmented. Boyce, Smith, and Agard, each with sunflowers. Rodney saying his life is "constantly fragmented" and he has to work in other ways. He’s very happy with his installation, Othello (1995). VO Rodney walking past men holding photographs of Mike Tyson and O J Simpson, talking about his work dealing more and more with sexuality and black male masculinity. He is perturbed at finding himself constantly being called "a threat" because he’s a black man. Women with the photographs. Othello. Rodney’s VO describes the piece and what influenced it. The Watchtower (1989). Rodney’s VO talking about the empty wheelchair as being an image of absence and loneliness as much as of disability. Sea. Beach. Film of wheelchair. Brighton’s Palace Pier at night. Wheelchair at water’s edge. Rodney’s VO saying he wants to create a maze in which wheelchairs will move around on their own… "journeys to nowhere". Credits
From dadaism to free jazz: the cultural developments of a new aesthetic
No full textWhat does it mean for something to be called “avant-garde”? The ambiguity of such a label fails to define the works of which it is typically applied. It’s more relevant to think of the term as an on-going process that explores new artistic possibilities. This thesis will look at some factors that helped propel such a process into motion and the shared aesthetics that came as a result. An avant-garde process began in the early 20th century as individuals and groups sought out a divergent worldview that began to question the rapidly developing Western worldview dominated by science and its frameworks. By looking at the works and statements of key individuals of the time such as the surrealist André Breton, psychologist Carl Gustav Jung and poet Charles Olson, one gets a clearer picture of the many factors that fueled this divergence. The most notable being World War I with its atrocities and globalized horrors, the splintering of social groups between capitalism and communism and increased secularization. In cataloguing the connections between both political and artistic groups it becomes clear how the collective skepticism and questioning of the then dominant worldview led to the eventual creation of an altogether new worldview centered around concepts and ideas not available in old. The development of jazz is seen within this light as a uniquely culturally positioned art form. From more traditional jazz styles to more experimental, jazz is looked at as following a parallel trajectory into a moment of avant-garde synthesis. In looking at the early development of progressive jazz musicians Ornette Coleman, Cecil Taylor and John Coltrane, this thesis aims to cement the 1950s as a hotbed in which an avant-garde aesthetic converged, ultimately resulting in music of the likes of free jazz and beyond.M.A.Includes bibliographical referencesby Trevor E. Hudso
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