Mark Solotroff at Museum of Contemporary Art - 11/22

Esther Shaw and J.R. Robinson of Wrekmeister Harmonies have a new piece called "Oscar Screams" for Pope.L's "Cage Unrequited" at the MCA. Mark Solotroff and Billie Howard will be doing a reading on Sunday November 21st, at exactly 3:18 PM.

https://www.facebook.com/events/1658767217728180/

This event is FREE to the public.

"Cage Unrequited" is a 25-hour marathon reading of experimental composer John Cage’s influential book "Silence: Lectures and Writings" (1961) organized by visual artist Pope.L. The performance reimagines the book for contemporary audiences by filtering a bit of the past through the voices and attitudes of a diverse community of more than 100 invited readers from Chicago.

This program is presented in association with the exhibition "The Freedom Principle: Experiments in Art and Music 1965 to Now."

"Cage Unrequited" was originally commissioned and premiered as part of "Three Duets, Seven Variations," a special series of performances organized by Adrienne Edwards, Performa, and Thomas J. Lax, The Studio Museum in Harlem, during the Performa 13 biennial for the New York presentation of "Radical Presence: Black Performance" in Contemporary Art at The Studio Museum in Harlem and NYU’s Grey Art Gallery. Radical Presence is curated by Valerie Cassel Oliver, Senior Curator, Contemporary Arts Museum Houston.

For more information visit http://www2.mcachicago.org/event/mca-live-pope-l-cage-unrequited/

Wrekmeister Harmonies - The Group on 12/27

Here is a post-show group shot taken at the Museum of Contemporary Art by Carmelo Espanola:

Mark Solotroff performs with Wrekmeister Harmonies @ MCA / Tue 12/27

Please join me for my last performance of 2011.  This is a pretty amazing event to be a part of!  And Tuesday is "free day" at the MCA.

Happy Holidays!
Mark


J.R. Robinson, AKA Wrekmeister Harmonies, will be performing at the Museum of Contemporary Art, on Tuesday December 27th at 6:00 PM -- as part of the MCA’s Face the Strange series. Robinson will be screening and conducting a live score to his video, "You’ve Always Meant So Much To Me."  Robinson is a Chicago-based sound artist who works under the name Wrekmeister Harmonies. He has exhibited his ambient tonefields in numerous international institutions including the Museum of Modern Art, the J.Paul Getty Museum, the Guggenheim, and the Centre Pompidou. For the MCA’s Face the Strange series, Robinson screens and conducts a live score to his video "You’ve Always Meant So Much To Me." Inspired by minimalist and structuralist filmmakers, Robinson’s video is a highly meditative and starkly beautiful work that juxtaposes various locations in Tasmania, Detroit, Joshua Tree and Brooklyn. Sonically, this version of Wrekmeister Harmonies explores the darkest corners of ambient black metal. The renowned artists joining Robinson for this performance include Jef Whitehead (Leviathan, Lurker of Chalice, Twilight), Jaime Fennelly (Mind Over Mirrors), Bruce Lamont (Bloodiest, Yakuza), Sanford Parker (Buried at Sea, Minsk, Nachtmystium), Stavros Giannopolous (The Atlas Moth, Twilight) and Mark Solotroff (Anatomy of Habit, BLOODYMINDED, The Fortieth Day), as well as a string section and harpist.


From the Chicago Reader:
http://www.chicagoreader.com/chicago/wrekmeister-harmonies/Event?oid=5216167

As Wrekmeister Harmonies —a bastardization of the title of the 2000 film "Werckmeister Harmonies," by the great Hungarian filmmaker Bela Tarr—Chicago sound artist J.R. Robinson creates resonant, long-form drone pieces and slow-moving ambient excursions, in both cases using field recordings made around the world, often in famous art museums like the Getty or Centre Pompidou. Last month Robinson performed a live score for Michael Snow's classic 1967 structuralist film/Wavelength/in Los Angeles, and this week he scores his own homage to structuralism, the 45-minute film "You've Always Meant So Much to Me." He's assembled an impressive lineup to play a soundtrack that his publicity materials say explores "the darkest corners of ambient black metal." Given that he's got help from Jef Whitehead (Leviathan), Bruce Lamont (Yakuza), Sanford Parker (Twilight), Stavros Giannopoulos (the Atlas Moth), Mark Solotroff (Anatomy of Habit), and Jaime Fennelly (Mind Over Mirrors), I'm willing to believe it.—Peter Margasak


Museum of Contemporary Art
220 E. Chicago Ave.
Chicago, IL 60611
312-280-2660
http://www.mcachicago.org/