Tuesday, January 17, 2012

requited journal: issue 6


my work is currently being featured in the online publication requited journal. scroll under SOUND on the left hand side to see and hear. from poetry to visuals to reviews, so many great pieces to explore.

Requited is a journal that explores the convergences between literary writing and the experience of art as a creative exchange, a contract. These convergences evoke the blurry in-between where an infinite number of possibilities manifest. As Hélène Cixous says of relationships, the convergences of human-to-human contact are co-created spaces; they are the 'entre-deux,' the spaces of love, language, and eroticism that exist between the two. Meaning is dependent upon this exchange, and we wish to draw attention to this amorphous space between bodies. In a sense, the text is the mother, the generative body, and the audience, in its private space, must seed the experience for creation to successfully take place.

Wednesday, January 11, 2012

rock sounds


besides the world's largest glacial pothole, pennsylvania has a little-publicized but mystifying natural wonder known as the ringing rocks. a couple of miles west of upper black eddy on the delaware river are four and a half acres of broken pock-marked red rocks which ring mysteriously when struck with a hammer or thrown onto the huge pile. in 1890 a dr. ott of pleasant valley assembled a musical scale of these stones and gave a concert accompanied by the pleasant valley brass band. these jagged stones differ from others in the area and no one knows where they came from or how they became to be pock-marked and broken into these jagged pieces. for size, note leaf in cavity of rock in close-up. some rocks are as big as footballs, others weigh many tons, but all are exceptionally heavy for their size.

from america's natural wonders: strange forests, mysterious caverns and amazing formations
by c. b. colby
1956

Friday, December 23, 2011

cabin fever


i have a new architectural obsession—cabin porn! these are a just a few that strangely (or not so strangely) resemble my sculptures (people were referring to the last installation as 'little houses'). so now, along with a daily dose of architecture, the brick house, my scandinavian retreat, and emmas design blog, my virtual holiday plans are complete! enjoy x

Monday, December 19, 2011

kclog blog


my work was recently featured on KCLOG blog (pronounced clog), created by artists vince contarino and kris chatterson to share a dialog with the communities that keep art and artists at the forefront. starting as a simple journal, KCLOG has turned into a supportive network of artists working in nyc, la, eu and points in between...

reading their blog is a like a virtual gallery tour. they also are behind the curatorial team progress report and have a nice show up right now—ritual aesthetics—at tompkins projects in brooklyn.

Saturday, December 3, 2011

if we know how it is made and how it falls apart, we will know how to rebuild it

"i want labor to be the point. because everything in our lives is miraculously made with no idea of how it's done. as an active and critical consumer, and as someone who has attempted to make the flawless and failed, i wanted a transparency of construction here. if we know how it is made and how it falls apart, we will know how to rebuild it."

tom sachs

Wednesday, November 30, 2011

no one belongs here more than you

"i'm probably kindest to myself in my work," she says. "it's how i practice self-love. i'm crippingly critical of myself in every other area, not permissive, not letting myself be free, and feeling like i'm doing every single thing wrong all the time. but in this one area i tell myself: you can do no wrong. let's just try this. it's OK. like a really wonderful teacher or something." referring back to the title of her first book: "I'm saying, no one belongs here more than you, to myself—because I totally don't belong."

miranda july

Sunday, November 20, 2011

drawing on the utopic at norte maar


the artist austin thomas stopped by concrete sound with her class on a tour of bushwick last week. she took some great photos and posted them on her inspiring blog drawing on the utopic. i love this one with gallery director jason andrew of norte maar.

Wednesday, November 16, 2011

concrete sound—a reading

please join me at norte maar for a reading with writer and poet christine shan shan hou tomorrow at 7:30pm. she will be reading excerpts from concrete sound, our collaborative publication that accompanies the exhibition—an experiment that unfolds the poetics of responding.

CONCRETE SOUND: a reading with writer and poet Christine Shan Shan Hou in collaboration with Audra Wolowiec
Thursday, November 17 at 7:30pm

Closing Brunch Reception for the exhibition Concrete Sound will be held Sunday, November 20th from 1-4pm.

NORTE MAAR
83 Wyckoff Avenue, #1B
Brooklyn, NY 11237
(L train to Jefferson)

Thursday, November 10, 2011

fluxus at the grey art gallery


mieko shiomi
water music, 1964

nam june paik
zen for film, 1964


at the very center of the earth is a cavity as large as your fist. in the cavity, on its back, lies a beetle. as long as he lies on his back all objects on the earth tend to fall toward him. he is trying to turn over.

from thoughts on gravity by peter longazo
translated by george brecht


i don't mind to be "an artist" or
"a composer"
i mind to be "human"
and all i do is just
simple (and complicated)
searching of life
teaching myself and others
how to live. to live
otherwise. to live better.

milan knizak, 1972


grey art gallery at new york university
september 9 - december 3, 2011

Monday, October 24, 2011

concrete sound - an introduction


To wave in comfortable abstraction. The echo remains indeterminably against the fence. Friendship weighs and flatters while approaching the uneven. Do we want concrete? As if uncertainty looms unconventionally like a black skirt in the corner. Sound waves its left hand amongst tremors. The women in search of an echo may unhook themselves from the mirror. Attention can drop thought or hearing. Senses like alert chimneys without instruction. Can personal history be detached from the body? If I start with questions will there be a sense of openness? We started this without completion. Can we succeed in openness? What is succession but a bifocal channel? As if, we women, enamored with sound and curiosity were to rejoice incandescently with candlesticks and frosting. We still perch unevenly in our skirts. Here and there we go. A month. Two. The dialogue unfolds and loops in touring momentum. Cozy habitats bind us. Bending resistance up and down. How did this appear? What made you think of me? To gray indefinitely and then lean heavily amongst leaves. I prop myself up in a popping matter. Not being reduced to smoking chatter. Depth in transparency reveals our guests’ observations. Heaves in only one direction. Audra, you are contact and outline. It is the afternoon. I am reluctant and chiming, counting words inside breath. We must travel slowly and heedfully. So too, the body may be convinced.

Friday, October 7, 2011

the poetics of responding


an echo—a tint of sound like color rushing in the wind
can sound take on a geometric quality?
is it the shape of my mouth?

a voice

         extruded

he wants to know 'if the train went under the sea'
if the line from my eyes to my hands is dotted

sensory

         disobedience

clings dramatically to the page
never a circle or persistent ringing
we meander along frivolous edges meantime



these are just a few lines from a project i've been working on with the very talented writer christine hou. we're putting together a publication of our conversations, a series of image and text exchanges that took place over email. the book, concrete sound, will be featured in conjunction with my upcoming solo project at norte maar opening at the end of october.

her work, a beautiful collection of poems titled accumulations, was recently published by the independent press publication studio. you can read a selection of writing on her blog hypothetical arrangements and be sure to keep an eye out for her reviews on dance and performance in the brooklyn rail.

Monday, September 19, 2011

experimental notations


i am pleased to have a few pieces in the group show experimental notations:

an exhibition of dialogues between sound and visual representation and the systems or interpretive strategies that inspire them. Through video, drawing, and sculpture, these non-traditional scores will be accompanied by the sound which inspired their creation or, resulted from the score.

curated by Jeff Ray, Kevin P. Clarke, Carrie Hott, and Elizabeth Bernstein in collaboration with the Mission Creek Music Festival, Royal NoneSuch Gallery and MacArthur B Arthur
September 9 – October 2, 2011


featuring artists:

Jill Auckenthaler, Jesse Boardman Kauppila, Brian Caraway, Veronica Graham & Jesse Eisenhower, Wayne Grim & Carey Lin & Kate O’Donnell, Farley Gwazda, Matt Ingalls, Jeff Kaiser, Michael Kelly, Scott Kiernan, Michelle King, Katrina Lamb, Andy Lambert, Colin McKelvey, Joel St. Julien & Jesus Beltran, Chris Vogel, Audra Wolowiec

Sunday, September 4, 2011

a found score to a silent hymn

1. [silence] RE: Hmmmm
2. [silence] Re: Hmmmm
3. [silence] Re: Re: Hmmmm
4. [silence] Re: Re: Hmmmm
5. [silence] Re: Re: Re: Hmmmm
6. [silence] Re: Re: Re: Re: Hmmmm
7. [silence] Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Hmmmm
8. [silence] Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Hmmmm


this is a shortened thread from silence digest, a mailing list dedicated to the work of john cage. i love how it reads as a silent score. some interviews with john cage HERE and HERE.

—i do my best to make each moment like something that i am not familiar with
—to reach the impossibility of transferring from one like image to another
—i want something i don't yet know

Tuesday, August 30, 2011

found (in the blue august moon)

on a clear moonless night in august, among the numberless faint and bright stars strewn all over the darkness of the summer sky, a delicately luminescent band of light, without sharp outlines, stretches overhead, rising from the northeast and approaching the horizon.

the oscillating universe by ernst j. opik
title by brian eno

Thursday, August 18, 2011

Friday, August 12, 2011

towards poetic activism

SOMETIMES DOING SOMETHING POETIC CAN BECOME POLITICAL
AND
SOMETIMES DOING SOMETHING POLITICAL CAN BECOME POETIC

poetic activism promotes provocative and compelling ways of talking and writing, ways that unsettle the common sense, taken for granted realities, and invite others into new dialogic spaces.

poetic activism is based on the appreciation of the power of language to make new and different things possible and important—an appreciation which becomes possible only when one's aim becomes an expanding repertoire of alternative descriptions rather than 'the one right description'.

Tuesday, August 2, 2011

group show at A.I.R. Gallery

i'm pleased to announce a group show at A.I.R. gallery that opens this thursday. artists include: mary billyou, amanda browder, caroline burghardt, lisa caccioppoli, david coyle, martin esteves, jamie kim, deirdre mcconnell, katherin mcinnis, christopher rose, stephanie rothenberg with dan s. wang, janos stone and audra wolowiec. A.I.R. (artists in residence) gallery has a rich history of supporting women artists—it was founded in 1972 as the first artist-run gallery solely for women in the united states and has served as a model for other alternative organizations to follow.

artist presentations are scheduled on thursday evenings starting at 7 pm:

mixed use, a selection of videos and films on the alternative use of public space, organized by mary billyou, will screen on tuesday, aug 16, 6-8 pm.

111 front St, 2nd floor
brooklyn, NY 11201
august 5th through august 27th
opening: thursday, august 4th from 6-9pm

Thursday, July 28, 2011

weavers of speech

truly the telephone operators have been called "weavers of speech." their swift, skilled fingers intertwine the voices and activities of communities and continents. for daily, as upon a magic loom, the world is bound together by telephone.

bell telephone system advertisement
national geographic magazine
oct 1935

Wednesday, July 27, 2011

the music of the city is free

you need not leave your room.
remain sitting at your table and listen.
you need not even listen,
simply wait.
don't even wait;
just learn to become quiet,
and still,
and solitary.
the world will offer itself to you freely,
to be unmasked.
it has no choice;
it will roll in ecstasy at your feet.

-franz kafka


title from my recent text installation
on view at A.I.R. gallery in august

Saturday, July 23, 2011

from the ear to the page


a few weeks ago i led a children's workshop in upstate new york at the wassaic project artist residency. taking note from christian marclay's graffiti composition, we talked about what sounds might look like, listened very closely, and drew sounds on blank music composition sheets. we also experimented with making tin can telephones. the kids were great, sofie drew an amazing volanco, and the telephones actually worked!

my work is currently being shown as part of the wassaic summer exhibition on view through the end of august with a three day free music festival august 5-7th.