There is no spoon.

Announcing the 2009 Artists in Research!

Submitted by bonnie on Tue, 03/24/2009 - 19:54

The Berwick is very excited to bring you our two Artists in Research for the 2009 season. The first AIR artist starts April 1st - VERY soon. Keep an eye out for information on the opening.

Bonnie Bastien and Nova Benway
Co-Curators for the AIR Program

 

April 1st - June 15thfunky drummer
Joshua Pablo Rosenstock
 
Joshua Pablo Rosenstock is a multimedia artist, musician, and educator based in Boston. His work explores the process of remixing via the creation of new instruments, interactive interfaces, and multimedia installations. With the Berwick, Rosenstock will be working on "Shrine to the Funky Drummer", a multimedia installation that will seek to portray a specific instance of media sampling as an archetypal cultural moment and a lens through which to examine a multifaceted story of creative appropriation.  The "Funky Drummer" is a five-second excerpt from a James Brown song that has been used as the foundation of hundreds of other musical compositions and is one of popular music's most famous samples.

During his project, he'll be gathering, creating, and presenting artifacts and "holy relics" that explore the early history of Hip Hop and the creative acts of sampling and remixing.  Rosenstock will be investigating debates about copyright and fair use in relation to Afro-Diasporic musical notions of "versioning," the fetishistic culture of record-digging, and postmodern theoretical questions about authorship in the age of digital (re)production.

Check out his website for more of his work.

 

song still

July 1st - September 15th
Eve Lynne Essex

Eve Essex is a Providence-based artist whose work suggests that history is as malleable as fiction.  She attempts neutralize the authority of 'proper' history by suggesting a multiplicity of alternatives. In video, sculpture, photography and performance, she explores historical moments and figures as a site for active re-interpretation. With the Berwick she will be working on "How to Improve the World", a project that blurs the roles of artist and anthropologist. Her object of study will be the Marxist composer Cornelius Cardew and his avant-garde musical milieu of the 60s and 70s.  Essex will adopt the political battles waged in Cardew's social and musical life as the subject for a historical archive and library.  

Through video, interviews, writing, and collaborative performances in the guise of "historical reenactments" I will collect and fabricate a range of historical recordings and documents-a body of generated materials that make up the collection of this library.  This factual, albeit highly subjective history will serve a theatrical framework for investigations of the artist's role as public intellectual, and the mythical status of canonical modern artists.