July 11, 2009 – Bard College

So it’s been quite a while since the conclusion of the Merida project with Jackie and Nadia yet oddly enough the place I’ve been for the past month seems very much in line with what was started at the beginning of June. In reading back on these posts about our triad project, I see many of the same ideas that I’ve been working on within my project here at the Bard MFA program. Its fitting that the project in Mexico was focused on the mouth and that has led to a project developed here at Bard that started inside the mouth, in the voice. The first instrument.

I’m trying to unravel what it is that I learned from the Mexico project with regard to collaboration, improvisation, text and sound. I think part of our project’s artistic impact for me was just working through collaborative strategies applied to text and the voice instead of improvised electronic music. I keep finding that improvisation is the process and the focus and the materials can often be of any origin – sounds, text, images, movements. I wonder what this says to the end result? I wonder how improvisation works with performance and writing in this way? Improvisation in this collaborative project seemed to serve a generative function but the end result was more scripted and there were less moments of improvisation except within the parts of the piece where there were readings. And yet I still think of this project as largely an improvised effort.

I mean improvisation is really just a matter of human function right? Wikipedia manages to have a useful definition actually – http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Improvisation and I appreciate the comic diversity of actions where improvisation can contribute significantly – flower arranging and romantic relationships.

It’s interesting that improvisation speaks to the ability to have  ’intuitive” and “technical” knowledge as well as bringing “awareness” and “understanding” into the same realm at the same time. What then is this state of mind that is improvisation? I always thought of it as the ability to both listen to yourself while also playing music. To be both the player and the audience at the same time. To be able to abstract your own actions. I wonder then how that plays out in the act of writing. Could it be said that this state of being is somewhat inherent in writing. This abstraction of action necessary in order to produce language on the page/computer screen what have you.

It seems as though improvisation is seen as decision making “on the fly” within the idiom of the instrument – the realm of what is known about the isntrument – it’s limits as an instrument and limits on the human body in playing that instrument – but there’s another meaning that is often used that refers to music that works within a specific idiom/genre/style. That explores through improvisation the limits of that genre/style. I guess what I find more intriguing is the general problem of genre in music these days. Particularly thinking about a genre of improvised music. Particularly when improvised music tends to jump outside idiom, culture, and body more often than not as the musician interacts and dialogues with other artists within a performance. I’m starting to become interested in what happens when musicians who do not approach from shared common experiences/shared knowledge work through creative collaboration and improvisation.

Also what does it mean to improvise with text? Improvise with poetry? Is that an action an artist takes / makes or is that an action that is somewhat tied to writing anyways? Intuition and technical understanding of the idiom… and the decisions made within.

But I haven’t described Dream City. I’ll try to. It is a place of many voices, where the unified singular self is an illusion. Naturally, Obama was born there. So was I. When your personal multiplicity is printed on your face, in an almost too obviously thematic manner, in your DNA, in your hair and in the neither this nor that beige of your skin—well, anyone can see you come from Dream City. In Dream City everything is doubled, everything is various. You have no choice but to cross borders and speak in tongues. That’s how you get from your mother to your father, from talking to one set of folks who think you’re not black enough to another who figure you insufficiently white. It’s the kind of town where the wise man says “I” cautiously, because “I” feels like too straight and singular a phoneme to represent the true multiplicity of his experience. Instead, citizens of Dream City prefer to use the collective pronoun “we.”

http://www.nybooks.com/articles/22334

Harris Schiff

Merida June 4, 2009

Yesterday’s meeting laid out the formal structure of the project with different strategies we discussed the day previous. The performance will focus a good deal on language and it’s function as sound, as communication, as abstraction. This theme seems augmented by the challenges of working across two languages – though our meetings are in English, I wonder how difficult it is for Nadia to have to “translate” her poetics into English on the fly as it were. 

For me the challenges (but also an interesting aspect) of the project lie in this “translation” of poetics. To understand how different audiences will respond to different language and sound element. A point made was that the overlap of English and Spanish in mexico is very common and mostly associated to television and overdubbing in movies. Using this technique then requires some additional abstraction or self-awareness to divorce the initial feeling of overdub for the audience.

Another interesting development from the discussions yesterday was the idea of our doing a very text-centric project within an improvised music festival. What I had said almost offhandedly to explain our project in this context was that the mouth is the first instrument, the primary instrument. But thinking about it – it’s actually quite true. The project will focus on the mouth, speaking, communicating, sounds, and silence – and the mouth is one of the first things most people use to emit sound. The cry of a baby. I also was thinking about our use of improvisation in the performance. And what occurs to me – which may be less obvious in the project itself – but this idea of process/improvisation – is very much tied to collaboration in my mind. So the collaboration of the three of us is essentially a form of improvisation – particularly due to the fact that we’ve never worked before like this and our timeframe is short.

Merida – June 3, 2009.

Jackie and I met Nadia Escalante for the first last night to start discussing what I’m calling our triad project. We had a couple hours of chatting about our personal work, our aesthetics and ideas about what we’re working on. Nadia spoke of some of her ideas about language and the nature of language as an obstruction to reality. How language can hide a lot about what is happening. She has some interesting perspectives on silence being at the root of language and her words “everything we could express is in silence” is a compelling idea. 

Jackie’s work looks at human interactions, miscommunications, (humorous, sly, sexual, andotherwise). The catalogs of gestures that make up who we we are and how we relate to each other. Also we discussed how the removal of context, or distorting of context was of interest. 

I feel as though my own sound work is moving towards an interest in improvisation as a way of understanding these routes of communication, dialogue, miscommunication, exchange. I think aesthetically I’m interested in the contrast, the tension, the push and pull of opposing or juxtaposed ideas, concepts, sounds, visuals, mediums etc. I like to think of the process of creating art as an activation – of the artist and the audience, a performative gesture that is more than just that of the performer. A complicit act = performance. 

I think all three of us work with these ideas. Something we developed in the meeting was the idea of focus on the everyday – the quotidian – the aphorism. Also the disruption of the everyday and the linear narrative. 

Before the trip we had considered focusing on the mouth as a theme of the performance and project. The mouth as the entrance and the exit, the form of communication, the way that the outside is brought inside. 

This morning we began to work out strategies for the project – different actions that we could use to express some of our ideas. The afternoon meeting will also be focused on developing strategies and planning out the shape of the performance. We’ve decided to use video projections and documentation as well as focus on some language related to the mouth and aphorisms involving the mouth.

But now it’s raining like crazy!

Merida!

“I am trying to connect the ideas of emotion in music and improvisation itself—and making the claim that both the idea and the practice of improvisation are essentially feminine—a female art derived from female so-called vices: emotion, volatility, variability, fickleness. Being called fickle, for instance, is never a compliment, but I think it can actually form a kind of structure for a work of orchestral music.”

http://www.textura.org/archives/articles/rosenfeldarticle.htm

Festival de Improvisación Libre, Free Jazz y Noise “Cha’ak’ab Paaxil” 2009
June 5-6, 12-13, 2009

Bonnie Jones - medios electrónicos (Baltimore, USA)
Chris Cogburn - percusiones (Austin, TX)
Remi Álvarez - saxofones tenor y soprano (Ciudad de México)
Milo Tamez - batería y percusiones (Monterrey)
Manrico Montero - objetos, kalimba, guitarra y medios electrónicos (Ciudad de México)
Lawrence Williams - saxofones tenor y soprano (Londres, GB)
Blair Latham - saxofones tenor y alto, clarinete bajo (Cozumel/Nueva Zelanda)
Armando Martín - guitarra eléctrica y electrónicos (Mérida)
Misha Marks - guitarra y electrónicos (DF/Nueva Zelanda)
Juan García - contrabajo (Mérida)
Leonel Traconis - guitarra acústica y electrónicos (Mérida)
Augusto Palma - laptop y medios electrónicos (Mérida)
Elías Puc - laptop y medios electrónicos (Mérida)
José Luis Gil - laptop y medios electrónicos (Mérida)
Antonio Domínguez - medios visuales (Ciudad de México)
Nadia Escalante - poesía (Mérida)
Jackie Milad - medios visuales (Baltimore)

MySpace 

Blog

I’ll be performing in Merida, Yucatan, Mexico presenting new collaborations with Nadia Escalante, Jackie Milad, Chris Cogburn, Juan Garcia, and Manrico Montero.

This performance is supported by Meet the Composer, Global Connections.

Andrea Neumann (inside piano) & Bonnie Jones (electronics)
September 2009 Tour

Andrea Neumann & I will be doing a short East Coast tour after her appearance in September at the 2009 High Zero Festival.

9/16 University of VA, Charlottesville, VA. Series curated by Jonathan Zorn

9/17, Silver Spring, MD, Pyramid Atlantic Art Center

9/18 – Philadelphia, PA Bowerbird

9/19 – Three Days, NYC, Listen/Space

9/20 – Three Days, NYC Fotofono

Download full bios & hi-res images

The tour is made possible in part by the High Zero Foundation.

Saturday, May 2nd. 8pm.
The Lab at Convergence
1801 N. Quaker Lane
Alexandria, Virginia 22302

Come see the best, rarest, and wildest of the 20th century underground!

Theatre Classics is Ric Royer, John Eaton, and John Berndt, who will be performing with Geodesic Gnome.

Join us for an evening of early 20th century obscure and experimental theatre works (including dada, surrealist, and futurist plays), as well as a piece by Daniil Kharms, a short play by Konrad Bayer, and new “interpretations” of American classics such as Our Town and The Crucible.

Just to see stagings of Kharms-a poet destroyed by Stalin-is worth the theatrical excursion.

with an opening sound performance by Bonnie Jones, on circuit boards of digital delay pedals.

Hosted by M. Magnus. This production brought to you by Yockadot Poetics Theatre Project and the Alexandria Performing Arts Association, in conjunction with Convergence.

Just stumbled onto info about Daphne Oram – early electronic musician. Created Oramics - a tool for drawing sound onto 35mm film! I’m wondering if above film clip is Norman McLaren using Oramics or at least a similar technique.

6th Annual Transmodern Festival!
Live.Art.Action

Four Days of Avant Performance, Installation, Sound, Film, Mayhem, Ecstasy, and Radical Culture!

April 2nd – April 5th, 2009
H&H Building
405 W. Franklin Street
Baltimore MD

http://www.transmodernfestival.org/2009/

April 24th, 25th, 2009. Bonnie Jones / Chris Cogburn / Liz Tonne trio at Fusebox Festival - Austin, TX.

April 24, 25, 2009.

Hot damn this goes out to all my Texas friends!

My dear friend Laure is having a retrospective at MICA opening on Friday 1/30 from 5:30pm – 8:00pm. A must see in Baltimore.

http://digital.mica.edu/drogoul/

Download PDF Exhibition Catalog

NPR did a nice story on Sonic Circuits 2008 – I was opening the show that night. Nice story and shout out to the stalwarts in DC who keep experimental music going.

All Things Considered, January 6, 2009 – Washington, D.C., is a gray town, known more for suits than fun. There are lots of lawyers, lobbyists and politicians. But there are also lots of musicians. Washington has a long history as a home to diverse styles of music — from Duke Ellington to hardcore to go-go — and it has been a hotbed of country and bluegrass. Washington and its environs have also been home to some of the hottest guitar players ever to touch the fretboard: Roy Clark, Roy Buchanan, Danny Gatton.

Today, D.C. is home to a different sort of scene: Experimental music is thriving under the city’s official radar. One of its homes is the Velvet Lounge, a neon-lit bar with blood-colored walls on the fringe of the city’s uber-trendy U Street corridor.

An Intense Whine

On a recent evening, a motionless crowd packs the lounge’s dark upper bar. The whine is intense. It’s a relentless, unforgiving, slightly pulsating, shrill cry of a sound. It’s being produced as part of an event called the Sonic Circuits Festival of Experimental Music, which showcases electronic, experimental and avant-garde music. As a slim, serious young woman with a bow at her throat manipulates circuit boards and digital delay pedals, the whine changes, lowering and distorting. Bonnie Jones was born in South Korea and raised by New Jersey dairy farmers. Now, she lives near D.C.

Read the full story on NPR Web site >>

no idea festival 2009

http://www.noideafestival.com/

annette krebs guitar, electronics . berlin
bonnie jones electronics . baltimore
chris cogburn percussion . austin
cooper-moore multi-instrumentalist . nyc
dave dove trombone . houston
jason kahn percussion, electronics . zurich
jawwaad taylor trumpet, electronics, MC . nyc
joshua beckman poetry, electronics . nyc
mario de vega electronics . mexico city / berlin
melanie noel poetry . seattle
tatsuya nakatani percussion . pennsylvania

february 26-28 austin
march 1 houston

Performance of Koja Press poets in the Baltimore’s CHELA Gallery, Feb. 22, 2003. Performers: William James Austin, Mike Magazinnik, Igor Satanovsky, Bonnie Jones, Megan McShea, Fred Collins, Charlie Chadwick (cello) & others.

Glenn Gould’s later playing of the Bach Goldberg Variations Aria – one of my favorite pieces of music.

January 4th, Load of Fun, 2pm, Free, coffee & cakes. North Ave, Baltimore, MD

Ric Royer’s The Weather Not The Weather, a serial poem, was released
Dec. 14 by Outside Voices Press. Cover and internal design by Justin
Sirois of Narrow House.

I will be reading with “The Bbbbbbbb Writing Group” (starring Megan McShea, Rupert Wondolowski, and Bonnie Jones).

*** This will also be a sneak peek at the new theatre space that is being constructed at load of fun***

January 22, The Hexagon, 9pm, $5. 1825 N. Charles Street. Baltimore, MD

Steve Bradley, bunny & chick, Andy Hayleck, Bonnie Jones, and David Kim-Boyle.

January 24, Red Room, 8:30pm, $6. 31st Street, Baltimore, MD.

Bonnie Jones / Gust Burns / Gregory Reynolds

January 31, StudioSeries, Studio34, 8pm. Philadelphia, PA
Organized by Nicole Bindler

Carolyn Merritt – tango
Bonnie Jones/Liza Clark – movement/sound/text
Sara Yassky – dance
Ashley Deekus – percussion
PIMA Group – music/dance
Michelle Stortz – dance

Cat Stevens Lyrics – Norma Fraser below

I would have given you all of my heart
but there’s someone who’s torn it apart
and she’s taken almost all that I’ve got
but if you want, I’ll try to love again
baby I’ll try to love again but I know

The first cut is the deepest, baby I know
The first cut is the deepest
’cause when it comes to being lucky she’s cursed
when it comes to lovin’ me she’s worst
but when it comes to being loved she’s first
that’s how I know

The first cut is the deepest, baby I know
The first cut is the deepest

I still want you by my side
just to help me dry the tears that I’ve cried
cause I’m sure gonna give you a try
and if you want, I’ll try to love again
but baby, I’ll try to love again, but I know

The first cut is the deepest, baby I know
The first cut is the deepest

‘Cause when it comes to being lucky she’s cursed
when it comes to lovin’ me she’s worst
but when it comes to being loved she’s first
that’s how I know

The first cut is the deepest, baby I know
The first cut is the deepest

November 16, 2008, Alexandria, VA
The Lyceum
201 S. Washington Street
Alexandria, VA 22314
4 – 9pm

IN MEMORY OF MY THEORIES
AVANT-GARDE POETRY MUSIC PERFORMANCE

Organized by & featuring Rod Smith
The Washington City Paper’s Best Poet of DC

Charles Bernstein
Anselm Berrigan
Croniamantal
Nada Gordon
Tom Raworth
Gary Sullivan

Rodrigo Toscano, Mel Nichols, Chris Nealon, Mark McMorris, Doug Lang, Bonnie Jones, P. Inman, Adam Good, Heather Fuller, Buck Downs, Tina Darragh, Lauren Bender, Michael Ball

Hosted by M. Magnus. This event is part of the APAA’s Guest Artist series at the Lyceum. Poster designed by Justin Sirois.

Thursday, 11/20/08, ResBox @ Steve Allen Theater, Los Angeles, CA

ResBox Series
Steve Allen Theater
at the Center For Inquiry – West
4773 Hollywood Blvd
Los Angeles, CA 90027
(323) 666-4268

LUKAS LIGETI (NYC), BONNIE JONES/ANDREA NEUMANN (Baltimore/LA), JEFF GAUTHIER/BECCA MHALEK/MARGARET PARKINS, HANS FJELLESTAD… plus live visuals by VJ FADER

Friday, 11/21/08, the wulf, Los Angeles, CA

the wulf.

1026 south sante fe avenue #203
info thewulf org
213.488.1182

DUO BONNIE JONES + DAVID KENDALL

Charlie Gibson destroys Sarah Palin in a very subtle way. I love Sarah Palin!

Alaska is close to Russia! Is that seriously the best you can do…?

http://vimeo.com/1614366

Video excerpt for trio set Liz Tonne, Chris Cogburn, Bonnie Jones.

From Leah Michelle Ross film documentary of the 2008 No Idea Festival in Austin & San Antonio Texas. Sound by Ryan Edwards.

Just released on Compost & Height – online music label.

“Jones Family Farm”
http://compostandheight.blogspot.com/2008/08/bonnie-jones-jones-family-farm.html