AIR

SUNDAY MAY 2, 2010

For one day only former Berwick AIRs, Liz Nofziger and Heather Kapplow, along with Linda Price Snedden will be offering wellness services as H&L Restoration Services.

As seen on CCTV and the MASSART CHANNEL, H&L Restoration Services is an extremely specialized clinic that provides a type of treatment that has previously only been available in Tibet. This treatment suppresses extraneous immune reactions; protects bone marrow and digestive tracts from free floating radiation; tonifies the liver; has a hypoglycemic effect on people with insulin resistance; and has mild antidepressant effects.

All in all, we think it might be THE antidote to everyday life! Please see our fine infomercial here for more details about our highly effective treatment: http://vimeo.com/11061136

H&L Restoration Services will be operating this fairly top secret (but extremely affordable) trial treatment center on May 2, 2010 from 12pm-8pm (with a short afternoon break from 3:30-4pm) at the MEME Gallery (55 Norfolk Street, Central Square, Cambridge MA.) Because we care a great deal about your physical and mental health, we invite you to partake of what we are offering. Please feel free to refer your friends and relatives to us as well.

H&L Restoration Services
http://meme.templeofmessages.com/pagez/now.html

With a bit of sadness, the Berwick announces the end of its Artist in Research (AIR)  Program. Started in a former whoopie pie factory in Roxbury's Dudley Square in 2003, the Berwick's AIR program has served numerous artists and artist groups and has invited a wide range of audiences into those artists' art-making processes. Within (and outside of) our studio walls, Artists in Research have sent helium balloon wishes into the sky, built suspended biospheres, experimented with pirate radio,  mounted politically engaged tea parties, hacked musical instruments, built a bike-bus, transformed weather data into sculpture and then into musical scores, collaborated with Dudley Square youth, made credit-card sound art, and much, much more.  We've been honored to have incubated the ideas of the artists who have come through our program and are humbled to witness their continued development afterward.  

The AIR program provided a studio, funding, and most importantly, critical perspectives for a widerange of inventive artists and their projects early in their careers. Uniquely structured to give artists constant feedback through studio visits, critiques, performances, workshops, and access to our wide reaching network of artists and art professionals, the AIR program has provided local, national and international creative producers with a space for experimentation, critical reflection, and community essential in the early stages of their careers. In return, the AIR Program was a place for its curators to grow, learn and experiment as artists, administrators, and collaborators. The artists and the communities their projects engendered, the press that made our artists visible, and the program supporters that gave us their vote of confidence have all been critical contributing elements to the development of the AIR Program and the Berwick as a whole.

 And so, the Berwick would like to acknowledge and thank all those who made the AIR program the success that it has been: the AIR artists who have bravely opened their studios and their practices to the public; the AIR curators who have worked tirelessly to grow and sustain this program and its artists with limited funds and limitless heart; and the members of the Boston arts community who have volunteered their time, thought, and support as AIR jurors, critics, and resources.  It has been a privilege to participate in the making of this exciting program and in the creation of new work and new ideas along the way.  We would also like to thank our audiences, collaborators and individual donors, and to highlight the LEF Foundation and the Massachusetts Cultural Council for recognizing the value of such an endeavor by taking a chance on  funding individual artist projects.  Best of luck to all AIR alumnae in your future projects, and congratulations on creating a unique and vibrant place for contemporary artwork in the city of Boston.  

The Future  

Though the closing of the AIR era is a significant programmatic shift, the Berwick Research Institute is still here. As we evolve, we are still passionately committed to our core mission. We will continue to support emerging artists with the opportunity for fiscal sponsorship and a laboratory where they can experiment with new forms and concepts without the pressure of a commercial environment. We will explore new ways to bring artists and audiences together to foster a community based on dialogue, while encouraging play as a means of doing research. And we hope you, our community, will join us in the process. We welcome your support and ideas as we move forward. Stay tuned.

Sincerely,

THE BERWICK:

Bonnie Bastien - bonnie at berwickinstitute dot org

Daniel DeLuca - daniel at berwickinstitute dot org

Megan Dickerson - megan at berwickinstitute dot org

Heather Kapplow - heather at berwickinstitute dot org

Dana Moser - dana at berwickinstitute dot org 

Deb Nicholson - deb at berwickinstitute dot org 

Meg Rotzel - meg at berwickinstitute dot org

Hanna Rose Shell - hrshell at mit dot edu

Ryan Sciaino - ryan at berwickinstitute dot org

Andi Sutton - andi at berwickinstitute dot org 

ARTIST IN RESEARCH PROJECTS, 2002 - 2009  

Curators, Bonnie Bastien and Nova Benway - 2008-2009  

Nathalie Miebach 

Jesse Kaminsky

Joshua Pablo Rosenstock

Eve Essex

Curators, Bonnie Bastien and Rosie Branson Gill - 2006-2007

Kelly Sherman 

Véronique d'Entremont

Liz Nofziger

Jon Taylor 

Maura Jasper

Matthew Shanley

Founder and Curator, Meg Rotzel with support from Mary Fuller and Natalie Vinski 2002-2005 

Vaughn Bell 

Devil Music Ensemble 

Kirsten Forkert

Christy Georg 

Heather Kapplow

Carolyn Lambert and Fereshteh Toosi 

John Osorio-Buck

Jessica Rylan

Morgan Schwartz

Aliza Shapiro

Amy Sharp 

Helena Sidiropulous

David Webber

PUBLIC ART INCUBATOR PROGRAM, 2005 - 2007 

Curators, Andi Sutton and Susan Sakash 

The Institute for Infinitely Small Things

Matthew Mazzotta and Heather Clark

John Ewing

About the AIR Program

The Artist in Research (AIR) Program was a residency program created under the Berwick Research Institute’s non-profit umbrella that provided emerging conceptual artists essential time, space, community and, most importantly, critical feedback. High value was placed on a sustained period of dialogue and critical analysis, with no expectations for the completion of artwork. Instead, curators encouraged the research and interrogation of an idea, and experimentation with the subsequent results.

Here's the video that I showed at my closing reception at Mass Art on 6/24. What a great evening!

In the past few weeks of digging in the (mostly internet) crates, I've found a lot of useful materials. I'm going to use this post to document the best stuff.

Thanks to a response to a post on the hiphop/turntablism blog The Essential Elements, I was alerted to the presence of this video:

This is a bonafide hip hop holy grail! It documents an early freestyle battle between the young Lord Finesse and Percee P. They're rapping over a Mark the 45 King loop of the Funky Drummer! Although it's pretty low-fi (I actually like that about this) it really captures the ambience outside the Patterson Projects in the South Bronx.

Somehow I missed this one in my previous combing through youtube. It's a James Brown live medley from 1968 that has the best Clyde Stubblefield footage I've found yet. He's so young! Look for the drum break in Cold Sweat at around the 6:00 mark.

When I was researching Creative Commons, this interview with Negativland's Mark Hosler (an early and important influence on my own use of sampling as an artist) was really useful in helping to understand the limits of the CC model.

By comic artist Kagan McLeod, here's a great artistic representation of the Think break, another James Brown-derived sample that has an even richer history than the Funky Drummer. This is kind of another version of what I'm trying to do.

(click for full size)

This blog post by Ethan Hein has a nice visualization of the FD loop:

 I found some great info and images of King Records, which is both the studio where James Brown recorded the Funky Drummer, and the company that put the record out, here and here. It turns out King was a model of both a racially- and vertically-integrated company (they specialized in both country and r&b recordings).

 Jesse Kriss has a cool interactive visualization of famous samples.

This company "replays" or recreates samples as a way for companies to avoid paying royalties for them. This is so postmodern it blows my mind! 

The amazing and very helpful Larisa Mann/DJ Ripley shared her annotated bibliography on Intellectual Property with me.

Through her blog I found this great article by Simon Reynolds, a music writer I've been a fan of for a long time, entitled What Is Your Sampling Epiphany? 

I'm finally meeting up with Wayne Marshall! This is exciting because not only were his writings some of the first texts I looked at as part of my research, but also pretty much everyone I've talked to since starting this project has asked, "have you talked to Wayne?" He's a busy guy so I'm glad he found time to join us for a conversation.

The following are some questions/ideas for topics I hope to explore with him. 

 -what is the relationship between the afro-diasporic tradition of Versioning and sampling?

-to what extent do particular samples engender bodies of musical work or even entire genres? Can those samples be seen as "folk music" or part of a creative commons?

-to what extent is remixing or using a formulaic repertoire of samples an open, democratic, participatory culture? How do notions of authenticity figure into this? (ie can a white guy from sweden make "real" reggaeton just because he has access to the same ingredients?)

-how does the illegality or high cost of licensing affect how artists can work? And, what kind of creativity is engendered by a copyright-free environment? Is "creative commons" really an adequate solution?

-is a sample just a musical "means to an end", or are the historical associations that go along with it an essential part of its signification? How do sample "replaying" services figure into this? What about uninformed artists and/or audiences?

-why does the original performance context of the sample matter anyway? :-)

-what is the trajectory of value and commodification that the sample goes through, from original studio performance, to vinyl record, to forgotten thrift store artifact, to rediscovery by hip DJs, to being sampled, to being cleared (or sued) by the record companies?

-what is the role of specific technologies in the aforementioned process, and what types of novel creative and/or commercial uses are enabled by them? 

-what are the implications of codifying musical performances as "property" and what are the connections to other past or present formulations of humans and their activities as property?

-does the notion of "digging in the crates" apply in the youtube/sharity era? There is lawsuit-avoiding value in obscurity, but how does this balance against the more allusive/versioning/re-licking aspects of using samples?

And also, on a more meta-project level:

-as an "amateur ethnomusicologist", what kinds of rhetorical strategies should I be using to fairly represent cultures to which I don't belong? How do I balance this with an approach that is largely based on appropriation? 

-how has the "sound of the machine" been theorized? I'm interested in looking at James Brown's "Sex Machine" as a notion that prefigures drum machines and sequenced/on-the-grid music. 

-part of my project is to sample/compile everything I can find that relates to the history of the funky drummer sample, as well as things that can be seen as evolving out of it. Are there particular sources you can think of that I should be sure to include, or things that you think should be part of that history?

-are there other notable artists/musicians that have obsessively reworked a single sample? 

-in *your* view, how should the Funky Drummer be enshrined? :-)

Here's a video sketch I put together last week... still some things to be worked out, but it gets across some of the ideas I've been thinking about.

More coming soon!

From my perspective, my "opening" presentation was a success. I felt like I was able to put together an interesting overview of my body of work that deals with sampling and remixing, and present my project vision and the questions I'm grappling with in a way that facilitated the subsequent discussion.

And discuss we did! The attendees from the Berwick circle of folks were very generous in their feedback, offering lots of responses, questions, and great suggestions for the project. All in all it was highly stimulating and definitely gave me lots to ponder and plenty of ideas to work with.

I'm going to list here some of the thoughts and issues that came up, as best as I can reconstruct them, aided by Phil's and Bonnie's notes. 

• Focus on the part of me that is "Pablo" and/or create an identity as Pablo to personify in this project
• There's an established dialogue about authenticity within the lyrics of hiphop already - disses, Eminem, etc - I can insert myself into it. Also, I need to talk to some other/"actual" hiphop practitioners.
• Religion/orthodoxy seems like a tricky quagmire wrt identity/appropriation. Complex relationship to people's voices - giving/taking away agency
• The "ecstatic moment" that I refer to in terms of lengthening the breaks/b-boying seems like it can stand in for religious ecstasy
• "Fetish object" idea - should draw on ethnographic practice and investigate before choosing imagery. Try to avoid tokenizing. Look at participants in hiphop culture - what do they treat as fetish objects? I may have a role as a bridge builder.
• There is a capitalist aspect to the idea of fetish objects as well. Scarcity, how copyright makes certain sounds more valuable...
• Need to incorporate the context of doing the project work here in Dudley Square. What about getting in touch with Project Hip Hop? (youth program down the street)
• Records in particular are used to tell the mythography of hiphop - I should make a test press/dubplate of myself telling the stories and mix myself into the sonic history
• A specific aspect of the experience of hiphop music is the sound itself, meant to be played bass-in-your-face through big speakers. There is a parallel to churches and pipe organs.
• A past Berwick artist did a performance with a giant speaker you climbed into. Maybe it's still around somewhere and could be used?
• I seem to be preoccupied with artifacts that freeze hiphop in the past. What about current stuff happening now, especially internationally? I need to get over the idea of authenticity and ownership - there are people all over the world, including plenty of white people, who claim hiphop.
• Shrines have actions you have to do to invoke the deity (James Brown?). In Shinto, you clap three times to bring them down.
• Also, people leave something of themselves at shrines. Makeup, food, sounds... Opportunity for people to take over project, bring something of themselves, respond to what's triggered
• About sampling: what is Clyde S's reaction? The landmark suit against the Beastie Boys found that since the sample came from an "improvised" passage it was not subject to copyright. Jay-Z re-recorded samples. Sample licensing perpetuates the haves/have nots division - only the megastars can afford to sample.
• I should try to license the funky drummer sample - see how much it would cost, what it would take, "what it's worth"
• In song "Funky Drummer" James Brown seems to give prophetic instructions on what to sample! Gives directions to the drummer - keep on doing what you're doing. James as Messianic figure. Ask Clyde - how did he feel when JB called that song the funky drummer? Also, what's left out the song besides thee sample? What's the 1st thing that comes to mind for people when they hear that sample? It's versatile - from NWA to George Michael!
• Why funky drummer in particular? There are 1/2 dozen other beats that are just as elemental. Would be interesting to trace the lineage of each one - like family trees.
• In terms of the religious connection, I could position myself as a medium - "James Brown is speaking through me!" Speaking in tongues. People "possessed with the spirit" writhing on the ground akin to breakdancing? Maybe my character is a televangelist/hiphopologist. (this kind of role gives me some of the ironic distance I'm looking for) What about a car as the shrine? with stained glass album covers of saints?
• On the question of my presence/absence from the piece: the most authentic move is to put myself in as a person asking "what right do I have to be here?" Someone who's been inspired and is asking "where do I fit?" I could collect positive/negative feedback as a comment on my "right" to the content...

After last week's intensive immersion into hip hip history, I'm actually feeling like I need to move away from "retelling history" as a model. That approach feels too restrictive - there's a kind of "heavyness" to history - and raises too many concerns for me about authenticity and representing other people's experiences.

History will certainly continue to frame what I'm doing, but the project needs to have a more lighthearted and playful relationship with the past. So I've been letting go of that a bit and moving instead towards a more experiential and metaphorical way of thinking about things.

One of the "big questions" I came up with last week had to do with the value of the shrine concept. On further reflection, the shrine frame/metaphor is still quite useful to me. Over the last year I've traveled to Japan and India, where shrines of all types and faiths dot the landscape and are integrated into daily life and urban space. In Japan in particular these shrines made a strong impression on me, and I was impressed by how they are not only used as a means for devotion and paying tribute to higher powers, but also can express an entire cosmology and worldview through their symbols and associated rituals.

Hip hop too can be said to have its own creation myths, major and minor deities, things it holds sacred, fetish objects, and ritualized actions.

I'm definitely still concerned about religious overtones and unnecessary baggage that comes with this territory, but for now I intend to just move ahead irreverently and see how it works out.

-----------------

What I want to do is create objects that are larger than life and monumental to express their importance, but also tiny, miniature elements to illustrate the constellation of attendant artifacts that make up this domain.

Also, I'm seeking to codify a series of ritualized gestures that visitors perform at various stations - something like that hand washing that is performed at Shinto shrines. I'll use these gestures as the principle for interactive interfaces that can be used to trigger the audiovisual content of the pieces.

 Some possible gestures I'm imagining:

• Touching the surface of a giant record (along with stern warnings admonishing against touching the record - in exaggerated, technical language). This could trigger a scratch, a beat-juggled loop, or a looped video...
• Placing an enormous needle on the record 
• Flipping through an immense box of records ("deepest crates")
• Pressing giant rubbery mpc pads - trigger video clips

To help get in the swing of things with this here "research" I have pulled together some words, songs, and flickering images.

I put together a listening page over here.  

Here's my youtube playlist:

Also: 

Rap Sample FAQ search results for "funky drummer"

Beat This: A Hip Hop History (BBC 1984 documentary) 

The ecstasy of influence: A plagiarism - Harper's piece by Jonathan Lethem

If you can Hear it, you can Have it (2) - Blog post at diagonal thoughts 

Giving Up Hip Hop's Firstborn: A Quest for the Real after the Death of Sampling - Wayne Marshall 

Realizing that the reality we live in is a construct of arbitrary norms, I am interested in exploring various modes of existence.  Unlearning the presupposed outcomes that I’ve been taught frees me to navigate and experience the world in a completely fresh manner, responding and adapting to situations with a minimum of bias, and inventing new realities.

Often, my work involves the creation of a ‘character’ that represents a certain belief structure, and around which develops a story.  The subject is outfitted with clothing or structures that are an augmentation or extension of the body, and blend aspects of fashion, packaging and architecture. The character is documented in situations that parody real events, highlighting and exaggerating oddities of human behavior

The backbone of my methodology is a relentless commitment to drawing; on paper, on walls, large or small, this two dimensional aspect of my work functions as both blueprint for more elaborate projects and compositional playgrounds where thoughts overlap and intertwine.  These pieces can stand alone, or more often are reconfigured into sub-components of three-dimensional constructions. 

Responding largely to my immediate surroundings, I look for materials that have been passed over by society, our garbage is the greatest marker of our civilization (or lack of).  My approach to manipulating these materials has taken a decidedly more low-tech approach recently.  For the past year, I have existed as a non-packagitarian  (a lifestyle which avoids the consumption of packaged goods).  The recurrent theme of packaging speaks to a pandemic fear of contamination, detachment from our surroundings, and the containment of our built environs.

I invite the viewer, if only for a brief second, to laugh at ourselves, and the state that humanity finds itself in.  With a lighthearted approach, this work creates lasting impressions that can be appreciated on many levels.