Friday, June 3, 2011, 8:00 pm, $8-10 sliding scale
New film/video + music collaborations by:
PAUL CLIPSON + DARREN JOHNSTON
KERRY LAITALA + AARON NOVIK
KONRAD STEINER + MATT INGALLS
… performed LIVE!
SAN FRANCISCO – Artists’ Television Access (ATA) and San Francisco musician/curator Lisa Mezzacappa join forces to present a new live cinema series showcasing new work by Bay Area and West Coast artists. Experimental filmmakersand video artists collaborate with innovative local composer/performers on a series of new short works that premiere at Artists’ Television Access this spring, summer andfall. The spring edition of the series features new collaborations by Paul Clipson and Darren Johnston; Kerry Laitala and Aaron Novik; and Konrad Steiner and Matt Ingalls. The imagery spans found footage manipulated with modern video techniques, disjointed pop culture mash-ups and textured conceptual imagery. The music, performed live by ensembles chosen by the composers, spans sounds, forms and genres from experimental jazz to noise to indie pop to chamber music and electro-acoustic improv, incorporating meticulous composition and wide-open improvisation. Mission Eye & Earwas conceived to celebrate and stimulate the diversity and creativity of local experimental filmmakers and composers, and to invite Bay Area film- and music-loving audiences to enjoy stellar work by local, often unsung, artists working outside mainstream visibility. For less than the price of a new release movie, audiences are invited to a uniquely Bay Area live cinema experience, and a glimpse of the creative process in a treasured Mission District venue.
Organized by Lisa Mezzacappa & Fara Akrami
with support from Southern Exposure’s Alternative Exposure Program
and the Subito Program of the American Composer’s Forum.
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Artist Bios
PAUL CLIPSON makes experimental films exclusively with a Super8 camera. Clipson’s largely improvised, in-camera-edited Super-8mm films often employ multiple exposures, dissolves, and macro imagery, bringing to light subconscious preoccupations and unexpected visual forms. Master of color, shape and texture, he has collaborated with countless musicians at home and abroad and is a tireless creative force in the Bay Area arts community.
Oakland musician MATT INGALLS is a composer, clarinetist, concert producer, and computer music programmer. Often incorporating elements of improvisation, his music is heavily influenced by his long involvement in computer music. His composerly solo improvisations explore extended clarinet techniques that interact with the acoustic space, often as combination tones. Matt is the founder and co-director of sfSound, a new music series, ensemble, and internet radio station that has emerged as one of the most exciting and fiercely innovative contemporary music organizations in the San Francisco Bay Area.
Since settling in San Francisco in 1997, Canada-born trumpeter DARREN JOHNSTON has built a web of alliances, from avant-garde excursions with the likes of the ROVA saxophone quartet and Myra Melford, to straight-ahead jazz outings with artists such as bassist/composer Marcus Shelby. As a bandleader he first made his mark with the United Brassworkers Front, an infamous ensemble with a truly unique take on brass music that released two albums. In ’07, Johnston released “Reasons for Moving,” which featured Fred Frith and Larry Ochs, and was released on the Not Two label. In 2008 Johnston was labeled as one of twenty-five “trumpeters of the future” by Downbeat magazine. His critically-acclaimed quintet CD on the Clean Feed label won four stars by four different critics in that same magazine, which helped to place him in the “Downbeat Critic’s Poll” for his trumpet playing. This same recording, “The Edge of the Forest”, was listed as a “top ten of ‘09” recording by multiple critics, and given an honorable mention in the Village Voice’s listing of the same name, coming in at number 13. Currently, Darren’s primary focus is his “Nice Guy Trio”, which features Rob Reich on accordion, and Daniel Fabricant on bass, with an eclectic cast of guest musicians who blend together miraculously on seemingly disparate instruments such as pedal steel, strings, and Indian tablas.
KERRY LAITALA grew up in the wilds of the Maine coast, while developing a chronic passion for old things. She attended Massachusetts College of Art studying Photography and Film and received her Masters degree from the San Francisco Art Institute in Film. Laitala has received numerous awards such as the Princess Grace Award in 1996 and subsequent grants in 2004 and 2007. She has also won a 2007 GOLDIE from The Bay Guardian and has twice won a Golden Gate Award from the San fancisco International Film Festival. Her work has been screened internationally and in the celestial ether which connects us with the music of the spheres.
AARON NOVIK is a San Francisco composer and bass clarinetist who creates new sounds by combining as many disparate styles as possible. from Brazilian choro, death metal, chamber music, indie rock, jazz, and Indian rhythms. Each aspect of the compositional process is re-evaluated, and re-conceptualized, including melody, harmony, rhythm and timbre. The end result is music reverent to its influences without being dependent on them.
Filmmaker and curator KONRAD STEINER lives in San Francisco and makes cinema performances with musicians and writers. He has worked live with the Jon Raskin Quartet, Graham Connah (Ted Brinkley)’s large and small ensembles, and non-commercially set the music of Frank Zappa, Anton Webern and The Fall to film.
Curator Bio
LISA MEZZACAPPA is a San Francisco-based bassist, composer and musical instigator. An active collaborator and curator in the Bay Area music community, she leads her own groups Bait & Switch and Nightshade, and co-leads the ensembles duo B., Cylinder, the Permanent Wave Ensemble, and the Oakland Active Orchestra. She collaborates frequently on cross-disciplinary projects in sound installation, digital poetry, film, sculpture and public music/art. As curator, for the past five years she has programmed the annual JazzPOP concert series at the UCLA Hammer Museum in Los Angeles; the monthly Monday Makeout creative music series in the Mission District of San Francisco, and the music and film series, Mission Eye and Ear, at the Red Poppy Art House and ATA. She has also curated and produced live music and film events at 21 Grand, Pro-Arts Gallery, the Headlands Center for the Arts and the Hypnodrome Theater. As part of Neighborhood Public Radio’s residency at the Whitney Biennial in 2008, she curated a week of free performances by outer-borough experimental musicians, broadcast live from a Madison Avenue storefront.www.lisamezzacappa.com