Programs

Presented with Cabinet

Who and what are the Necronauts? Triple Canopy has been haunted by this question for the better part of three years, since hosting a presentation of the INS's aerial-reconnaissance work in February of 2008. Recently, in Berlin, editors briefed local cultural producers on the INS's covert recruitment efforts—part of its putative effort to "map, enter, colonise and, eventually, inhabit" the space of death—and warned of the uncanny resemblances between the group's doctrine and the target demographic's aestheticizing impulses, which have had the effect of "turning each of us into a medium of transmission, doomed to convey no other message than that quality of our being." (Read the draft copy of their internal report.) On the eve of the publication of General Secretary Tom McCarthy's novel C, Triple Canopy and Cabinet convene a panel of experts to probe the corpus of the INS. McCarthy will be joined by INS Chief Philosopher Simon Critchley. Interrogators will include editors of Triple Canopy and Cabinet, Joshua Cohen, and Christian Lorentzen; members of the audience are encouraged to prepare their own questions and accusations.

Presented with Light Industry as part of the Brooklyn Book Festival

David Gatten's ambitious 16-mm cycle Secret History of the Dividing Line attempts a rare feat, an investigation of the borders between word and image influenced equally by Stan Brakhage and Ludwig Wittgenstein (both veterans of related pursuits). The results are formidable: Of a planned nine, parts I through IV currently run 97 minutes, yet indeed feel like the finely constructed beginnings of a grander architecture still to come. Gatten draws from the massive library of colonial Virginia gentleman William Byrd II, with occasional dips into his daughter Evelyn's journals, producing artfully composed typographies that suss out an invisible web of connections and epiphanies. But Gatten also expresses the indigestible bulk of history's verbiage through a mobile concrete poetry. Not all his quotes allow for reading; some words flutter past too quickly to serve as more than compositional elements, while others appear in negative, close-up and grainy, like luminous alphabetic windows. Attempting to glimpse a lost world recorded through texts, Gatten offers the paper-thin screen between past and present as just one of his project's ultimately ineffable dividing lines.

Bill Kouligas & C. Spencer Yeh, with a film by Frans Zwartjes
New Humans, with Hiroshi Teshigahara's Otoshiana (The Pitfall), 1962
Purple Haze, with videos by Gary War & Taylor Richardson

Triple Canopy presents Double Features, an evening of audio-visual exchange organized by sound artist and composer C. Spencer Yeh. Duos Bill Kouligas & Yeh, New Humans, and Purple Haze represent an array of sonic-experimentation strategies. They will perform new works guided by (and in opposition to) the films of Dutch artist, musician, and filmmaker Frans Zwartjes, Japanese avant-garde filmmaker Hiroshi Teshigahara, and video artists and musicians Gary War and Taylor Richardson.

Purple Haze
Purple Haze is Marcia Bassett (Zaimph, Double Leopards, Hototogisu) and Taylor Richardson (Prehistoric Blackout, Fluid Human). A house band for bad trips and temporary psychosis.

New Humans
Formed in 2003, New York–based New Humans make collaborative works that explore the intersection of sound, installation, and performance. New Humans emerged out of Mika Tajima's art practice and is a moniker for her projects with curator Howie Chen, as well as musicians, artists, and designers including Vito Acconci, Charles Atlas, and C. Spencer Yeh.

Bill Kouligas & C. Spencer Yeh
Here making their collaborative debut, Kouligas and Yeh are most closely associated with their projects Family Battle Snake and Burning Star Core, respectively. Kouligas, a Berlin-based sound artist and graphic designer, has worked with Sudden Infant, Ralf Wehowsky, and Damo Suzuki, among others. He manages the electroacoustic noise label PAN, which will release a triple-LP set of the soundtracks of Frans Zwartjes this fall. Yeh focuses on the development of a personal vocabulary using violin, voice, and electronics. His past collaborators include Tony Conrad, New Humans with Vito Acconci, Evan Parker, Thurston Moore, Amy Granat with Jutta Koether, and Justin Lieberman, among others. Yeh has performed at numerous international festivals and venues such as Sonar, FIMAV at Victoriaville, Frieze Arts Fair, No Fun Fest, High Zero, the 24 Hour Drone People at Fylkingen, the Kitchen, and ZKM Karlsruhe.

Image: Bill Kouligas; still from Frans Zwartjes, Living (1971).