Noise Camp 19

 

Noise Camp 19 on John C Lodge Service Drive on November 18th 2013
With Davin Brainard, Dion Fisher, Claire d’Aoust, Warren Defever and Ronald Cornelissen.

Video stills by Davin Brainard.
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Extended Organ with Princess DragonMom at MOCAD (Detroit) on November 8th, 2013

 

Extended Organ is Tom Recchion, Joe Potts, Fredrik Nilsen and Paul McCarthy with Alex Stevens. Mike Kelley was a longtime member of the group and continues to be a contributing member by virtue of the sound recordings he provided to the group before his death: “in case I can’t make a gig, I can still play.” Tom, Joe and Fredrik are founding members of the seminal West Coast experimental noise cult collective, the Los Angeles Free Music Society (LAFMS).

The roots of the LAFMS trace back to 1972 when disparate groups of improvising sound experimenters in eastern Los Angeles discovered their mutual interest and banded together to design modes of self production and distribution of recordings and publications, helping to develop and propel the DIY movement. Paul McCarthy began collaborating with the LAFMS in the late 70’s and has been an integral participating supporter since the mid 90’s.

 

Formed in 1994, Extended Organ produce a dynamic otherworldly ambience that can be simultaneously hilarious and ominously frightening. Overlaying the carpet of sound produced by Joe Potts and his self-engineered drone instrument the “Chopped Optigan” is Paul McCarthy’s vocal and guitar improvisations channeled and processed by Alex Stevens. Tom Recchion, simultaneously renowned as an inventor of crude homemade instruments and as an innovative composer of electronic and tape music, performs an array of sounds blending lush beauty and horror sensibility into the matrix. An antique Rheem Mark 7 organ is layered in by Fredrik Nilsen along with electronic sound and the aforementioned recordings provided by Mike Kelley. Mike Kelley’s varied array of sounds are unprocessed mouth generated tugs, gurgles and bubbling masterfully recorded in 2010 by Scott Benzel.

 

Opening is the Detroit collective Princess Dragonmom (Davin Brainard, Warren Defever, Dion Fischer, Claire D’Aoust and Ronald Cornelissen), celebrating their 20th year of noise-making and performance-staging.

Photo’s performance: Gregory Hallock. Video: MOCAD.
Many thanks: Greg Baise and The Netherlands Consulate General in New York.
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I Rip You, You Rip Me

I Rip You, You Rip Me (honey, we’re going down in history) was a project that Ben Schot and I organised for the Centre of The Arts (CBK) Rotterdam in June 1998. The project zoomed in on the radical and psychedelic underground of Detroit in the late sixties, early seventies with bands and collectives like Iggy & The Stooges, The MC5, Destroy All Monsters and the White Panther Party under the leadership of The MC5’s manager John Sinclair. I Rip You, You Rip Me consisted of exhibitions, a workshop, film screenings, a symposium and performances at local institutes and venues with special guests Destroy All Monsters (Mike Kelley, Jim Shaw, Cary Loren, Dave Muller, Art Byington), Charlemagne Palestine, Scanner, John Sinclair, Leni Sinclair, Princess DragonMom (Warren Defever, Davin Brainard, Ronald Cornelissen), in collaboration with artists and musicians from Rotterdam.

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PDM The Robots

The Robots by Princess DragonMom

PDM–THE ROBOTS DVD
50 minutes video with footage from Tokyo, Rotterdam, New York and Detroit. Highlights from 8 robot shows 1996-2008 featuring ROBOT RICK, THE DEVIL’S ROBOT, INFINITY ROBOT and more!!!

Released by Time Stereo and UFO Factory 2009

Order this (and more PDM items) here
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Natural Law at Busan Biennale

 

Natural Law by Princess Dragonmom
Video – color – 6 min 41 sec – 2003

In Ronald Cornelissen, Davin Brainard and Warn Defever’s video Natural Law we see a man dressed as a tree fight a man dressed as a bush on the sidewalk of an anonymous Detroit street. No reason for their altercation is given, and as we watch them clash in their cardboard costumes (reminiscent of props produced for a school play, or foliage from a cartoon landscape) we wonder what has motivated these usually peaceable vegetable life-forms to violence. One answer might be provided by the title of the piece, which evokes the philosopher Thomas Hobbes’ First Law of Nature: ‘That every man ought to endeavour peace, as far as he has a hope of obtaining it; and when he cannot obtain it, that he may seek and use all helps and advantages of war’. As for man, so, it seems, for plants. The result is a work in which political economy winds around dumb pop thrills and laughter and horror uneasily commingle.

Text by Tom Morton for the Busan Biennale catalogue.

Photo’s/foto’s: Seung-Hyun
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Robot Heart performance at MOCAD

 

CONSIDERING DETROIT – Museum of Contemporary Art Detroit (MOCAD) – 2008
With Ellen Cantor, Maurice Greenia Jr. (Maugre), Jim Gustafson, Allie McGhee, Heather McGill, Gordon Newton and Time Stereo’s “UFO Factory”

TIME STEREO/UFO FACTORY ARTIST STATEMENT:

UFO Factory is the third in a projected series of architectural models which feature a highly theatrical element. UFO Factory in MOCAD is produced from a small five inch tall cardboard replica of the original UFO Factory, a brick and mortar art-space located in an undisclosed industrial area of Eastern Market, New Detroit, less than a mile away from MOCAD.

“The underlying organizational rationale is that we are re-constructing a full-size (800 sq ft.) art gallery / performance space / nightclub entirely out of cardboard. We work not from memory, photographs, or detailed diagrams, instead we follow the example of a tiny cardboard model which lacks all but the most basic details or fixtures. We believe community is an important issue in our work. Our use of “common” materials, spray paint, cardboard, and glue, is not only a textural component that is easily recognized and afforded by all artists working in a economically depressed area but also may be seen as a rejection of so-called “high” art tradition”.

As UFO Factory continues to evolve in its three months of interactive events, audiences seeking to lose themselves in real and fake art exhibits, ufology, abnormal animal and human curiosities, flippancy, insane melodrama, man transformed into wolf, sophisticated novelties, life, action, abduction, magic, movies, and suprise can respond emotionally, individually and collectively, to the curious wedding of realism, romance, innocence, and silver spectacle.

ROBOT HEART with Davin Brainard, Warn Defever, Dion Fisher, Aliccia Berg, Mike Kearns and Ronald Cornelissen

Photo’s/foto’s: Sarah Lapinski (3,4 & 6) and Corine Vermeulen (1,5 & 7)
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Galerie Jade at Galerie Diana Stigter

 

Galerie Jade
With: Johanna Billing, Davin Brainard, Miguel Calderon, Warn Defever, Doug Fishbone, Annika Strom, Erik van Lieshout, Keith Wilson and Ronald Cornelissen – Curated by Tom Morton – Gallery Diana Stigter, Amsterdam – 2008
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