[Klimek / photo: Carlos Kok]
Vague Terrain will be co-presenting a show at this year's edition of the Toronto-based X Avant festival, organized by our friends at the Music Gallery. The umbrella theme for X Avant this year is "Space is the Place" with a diverse range of programming paying homage to sonic explorers such as Sun Ra and Karlheinz Stockhausen. Our event will take place at 8pm on Thursday October 23rd at the Music Gallery. The lineup will feature live multimedia performances from Berlin's Klimek [Anticipate, Kompakt], Keith Fullerton Whitman [Kranky] and NAW [Noise Factory]. Beyond our show, the lineup for the entire festival is truly exciting and will feature performances from The Sun Ra Arkestra, Pram, Tim Hecker, Aidan Baker's Liminoid, and many others. Check out the Music Gallery event page and be sure to take note of the many fantastic shows in X Avant this year. Full event information and artist biographies are available for our show after the jump.
Thursday Oct. 23 ? Vague Terrain and the Music Gallery present..
NAW ? 8pm
Keith Fullterton Whitman ? 9pm
Klimek presents "Ghetto Ambient" ? 10pm
Part of X AVANT New Music Festival III ? "Space is the Place" (runs Oct. 21-26)
Supported by the Goethe Institut Toronto
Doors 7pm
Location: The Music Gallery, 197 John St.
Tickets $15 advance at Ticketweb
At the door: $20 regular, $15 member, $10 student
8pm ? naw
Montreal ex-pat naw (Neil Wiernik), who currently calls Toronto his home, began composing electronic music in 1988 with explorations in audio art and experimental music. Neil's interest in sound and technology has lead him to a continued questioning and refinement of audio tools and modes of production, resulting in experimentation with altered instruments, modified devices, and custom software environments. Neil's music could be described as warm, atmospheric, and cinematic electronic music. The sound design of naw is firmly grounded in the rich traditions of dub studio culture but can also be weighed alongside formal contemporary composition. His music was recently described in The Wire as having "...the kind of sharpness and clarity usually lost amid the murk and decay of clicks and cuts and digital delays." Neil has released music on various labels, including the legendary Canadian label Noise Factory Records.
9pm ? Keith Fullerton Whitman
Keith Fullerton Whitman is an American composer/performer obsessed with electronic music ? from its mid-century originsin Europe, through its contemporary worldwide incarnation as ?digital music.? Currently he is working towards implementing a complete system for live performance of improvised electronic music that incorporates elements from nearly every era ? a reel-to-reel tape machine, a selection of small ?jerryrigged? / ?circuit-bent? battery-powered sound-producing boxes, an analog modular synthesizer, an early ?consumer? home-computer, and at the core: a modern computer running a custom-built Max-MSP-based modular system that both controls these elements and acts as a central conduit into which their sounds are captured, collected, processed, then diffused to up to eight separate channels/speakers/amplifiers.
He is also, at present, composing an as-of-yet untitled piece for Egyptian Oud, Serge and Doepfer Analog Modular Synthesizers, and computer control/processing. It is his first through-composed long-form work. Keith runs a record-shop named Mimaroglu Music Sales which mainly sells reissues of early electronic music. He also runs the Entschuldigen record label and had previously run Reckankreuzungsklankewerkzeuge. He is not German. He has been known to dabble in ?dance music? under many stage names/ pseudonyms, most notably Hrvatski. He is not Croatian.
He loves to travel. He hates to cook.
10pm ? Klimek presents "Ghetto Ambient"
In collaboration with Vague Terrain, the Music Gallery presents Berlin-based artist Klimek (a.k.a. Sebastian Meissner), whose brilliant 2007 recording of ambient electronica, Dedications, pays tribute to everyone from Giacinto Scelsi to Marvin Gaye. Meissnner will perform a new audio/visual program entitled ?Ghetto Ambient.?
Sebastian Meissner works as a media artist using sound, video and photography. Employing multiple artistic personas (Klimek, Autokontrast, Autopoieses, Bizz Circuits, Open Source, Random Industries), his works deal with and negotiate urban/cultural/social scenarios, randomness, historical music archives and strategies of networking. He works with computer music sources, sampling and moving photography assembling their interrelation within geographic/historical/political discourses.
Over the years his works have been widely presented at festivals and by institutions such as Transmediale (DE), Sonar (ES), Mutek (CAN), the EU Parliament and various Goethe Instituts around the world. He worked for the Deleuze/Guattari-influenced media label Mille Plateaux, and also established the network platform Intifada Offspring that is looking for new perspectives on the Middle East region. His work has been released by labels such as Mille Plateaux, Kompakt, and Sub Rosa.
Ghetto Ambient
This new project by Sebastian Meissner explores urban and rural environments, which - as defined by the French ethnologist Marc Aug? - are frequently described as ?non-places?:
?if a place can be defined as relational, historical and concerned with identity, then a space which cannot be defined as relational, or historical, or concerned with identity will be a non-place?
Those are places in which identity, relations, and history are only marginally significant and where social relations are minimal. Familiar and recognisable aspects are minimized. Classically defined through arbitrariness and repeatability of its architecture, places such as freeways, airports, malls and supermarkets make their visitors feel like they are always, and never at home.
?Ghetto Ambient? is trying to immerse this definition of ?non-places? by focusing on ?places at the edge to the globalised world? (SPEX) and symbolised by details of every-day-life surroundings. This project is raising questions about how home (and exile), identity and (urban) spaces can be understood and defined today and how those values are created and maintained.
Meissner uses his processed photographic material collected from various geographic locations (see detailed listing below) to dismantle it into fragments and to re-arrange it to a highly dramatic fictional movie.
