Concert
Escape from America [Total Recall]

Live Stream with Olivia Block, DeForrest Brown, Jr, Forbes Graham, Bonnie Jones and Jan St. Werner / Andi Toma from Mouse on Mars

Sat, 11/14/2020
3:00 PM Online

Live Stream Link
featuring
Olivia Block – found recordings, electronics (Chicago)
DeForrest Brown, Jr – electronics (NYC)
Forbes Graham – trumpet, computer (Boston)
Bonnie Jones – circuit-bent electronics, text, video (Providence)
Andi Toma – live mix, electronics (Berlin)
Jan St. Werner– live mix, electronics (Berlin)

Visualisation by Michael Akstaller

A collaborative, experimental live stream performance featuring four musicians from the US – Olivia Block (Chicago), DeForrest Brown, Jr., aka Speaker Music (New York City), Forbes Graham (Boston), and Bonnie Jones (Providence) –  playing together, while far apart, from their home studios. The incoming audio & video streams are mixed live by Jan St. Werner and Andi Toma (Mouse on Mars) for a concert/installation at the HKW (Haus der Kulturen der Welt) in Berlin and live streamed via Non-Event's and the Goethe-Institut Boston's YouTube & Twitch channels. 

Presented in cooperation with Haus der Kulturen der Welt (HKW) and Non-Event.
 
 

Olivia Block is a composer and media artist based in Chicago. Her recorded compositions combine field recordings, chamber instruments, and electronic instruments. Block creates multimedia installations and performances utilizing field recordings, found sounds from micro cassette tapes, video, and curated 35mm slides.
Block often performs her own solo pieces, utilizing electronically processed amplified objects, found recordings on tapes, and various techniques inside grand pianos. Her studio based compositions are published on Room40, Erstwhile, Glistening Examples, NNA, and Sedimental, among other labels.

 

DeForrest Brown, Jr. is a New York-based theorist, journalist, and curator. He produces digital audio and extended media as Speaker Music and is a representative of the Make Techno Black Again campaign. His most recent writing can be found at Afropunk, Artforum and Hyperallergic. Primary Information will publish his book Assembling a Black Counter Culture in August 2020.

 

Forbes Graham is a trumpet player, electronic musician, and composer living and working in Boston, Massachusetts. He is the founder of the Rock Flint Artists Retreat, and has appeared at numerous festivals including High Zero, Full Force, and Vision.




 

Bonnie Jones is a Korean-American improvising musician, poet, and performer working with electronic sound and text. She performs solo and in numerous collaborative music, film, and visual art projects. Bonnie was a founding member of the Transmodern Festival and CHELA Gallery and is currently a member of the High Zero Festival collective. In 2010, she co-founded TECHNE, an organization that introduces young female-identified women to technology-focused art making, improvisation, and community collaboration. TECHNE’s programs are delivered through partnerships with grassroots organizations that share an aligned commitment to racial and gender equity. She has received commissions from the London ICA and Walters Art Museum and has presented her work extensively at institutions in the US, Mexico, Europe and Asia. Bonnie was a 2018 recipient of the Foundation for Contemporary Arts Grants to Artists Award. Born in South Korea she was raised on a dairy farm in New Jersey, and currently resides in Baltimore, Maryland and Providence RI on the lands of the Susquehannock, Piscataway, Algonquian, and Narrangansett.

 

Andi Toma is mostly known as one half of electronic music pioneers Mouse on Mars. He produced albums by The Fall, Stereolab, Moondog, Junior Boys, Damon Albarn’s Africa Express, Members of Kraftwerk and many more. Toma has written music for installations and films and is running Paraverse Studios together with Jan St. Werner.       

Jan St. Werner is an artist and electronic music composer based in Berlin. Best known as one half of the electronic duo Mouse on Mars, he has also pursued a solo career creating music under his own name as well as Lithops, Noisemashinetapes and Neuter River. Starting in the mid-1990’s as part of Cologne’s A-Musik collective, St. Werner released a steady stream of records both as a solo artist and with Mouse on Mars. He has been collaborating with Oval’s Markus Popp as Microstoria and with Andi Toma and Mark E. Smith as Von Südenfed. From the 1990’s until today he has been collaborating with visual artist Rosa Barba on music for her installations and films. During the 2000s, he acted as the artistic director for Amsterdam’s Institute for Electronic Music (STEIM). In 2013 Blaze Colour Burn was released as the first of a series of experimental recordings called the Fiepblatter Catalogue on Thrill Jockey Records, Chicago.  Werner has been a visiting lecturer at the Arts Culture and Technology department of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology MIT and holds a position as a professor for Interactive Art and Dynamic Acoustic Research at the Academy of Fine Arts Nuremberg, Germany.