center

She burns at the center of her longing. She explores the brokeness, the vast emptiness and things that are hollow. She moves with color and dances with the unknown. She disintegrates with the collaboration and channeling of things that long to be spoken; things that call to be born on this plane. She burns in the fierce embrace.

My Band's Review. Wire Magazine.

The Revolution Everyday Life

Taking their title from the Situationist text by Raoul Vaneigem, and marshaling the forces of alchemy, magic and the words of Giles Deleuze and William S. Burroughs, this large ensemble explodes in a mess of 'signifying' to match any evangelist, vowing to raise your consciousness to a higher plane.
Their chaotic music theatre noise, propelled by HipHop beats, is supplemented by NYC experimentalists from Sonic Youth, Thurston Moore and Lee Ranaldo, Mike Watt from the Minutemen and guests including DJ Low and Nels Cline. The recording is a multi-layered nightmare; a sense of paranoia prevails, and shock tactic samples disrupt the smooth flow; the notion of 'the city as a jungle' never felt more resonant. The BPLF collective enschews the cult of personality and star systems; a strategy embodied in their colorful alternative names (my personal favourite is Kosimar The Magneticist). However it seems Denis Mahoney alias Tariq Zayid is the main ideas guy. A prolific poet and writer(and man behind Ring Tariq press), he declaims his inventive poetry against the heavy beats. The Black Pig is a mythical figure of rebellion, borrowed from Celtic religion by WB Yeats, although Zayid claims to have found parallels to the image across Europe and the Middle East. BPLF wear their terrifying pig masks at their ecstatic, shamanistic performances to promulgate the image of destruction. Like the semi-obliterated texts on the cover, Zayid's meanings are obfuscated by layers of additional sound collage from the Torres brothers and treated distorted vocal noises and the ubiquitous TV samples which overload tracks with information.
Each recording is a soundtrack map, filled with foreign hieroglyphs; as with Burroughs, hidden meanings will leak out through the gaps in this contrived chaos.

Ed Pinsent (Wire)

Performing at SXSW. Plutopia. 2010.

The event underscores the integrated and interconnected nature of music and science, as they coalesce in aesthetics, plasticity and form. At the core is experientialism - the desire to explore, encode, compose, create, experiment, record, remix, perform, manifest, visualize, or simply enjoy.

Buy the ticket, take the ride.

Over

The Edge... there is no honest way to explain it
because the only people who really know where it is are the ones who
have gone over. --Hunter S. Thompson

Fierce Embrace

Self Portrait

It doesn't interest me if there is one God
Or many gods.
I want to know if you belong -- or feel abandoned;
If you know despair
Or can see it in others.
I want to know
If you are prepared to live in the world
With its harsh need to change you;
If you can look back with firm eyes
Saying "this is where I stand."
I want to know if you know how to melt
Into that fierce heat of living
Falling toward the center of your longing.
I want to know if you are willing
To live day by day
With the consequence of love
And the bitter unwanted passion
Of your sure defeat.
I have been told
In that fierce embrace
Even the gods
Speak of God.

~ David Whyte ~

(Fire in the Earth)

Performing at SXSW.March 15th with BPLF and a set w/DJ Spooky

I am happy to announce that I'll be following DJ Spooky at SXSW March 15th at the MACC. DJ Spooky will join us for the close of our set. I'm the one in purple on the posters:). For more info: http://plutopia.org/headliners/

BLACK PIG LIBERATION FRONT

"Black Pig Liberation Front will present a ritualistic text/sound/body work conceived by Tariq Zayid and Maranda Pleasant called raga erotica, ripped from a longer work experimenting with frequencies and movements associated with shuddering erotic gestures called Orgasmic Oscillations. Our homage to the incomparable Donna Summer.

Utilizing frequencies as specific magical sound pulses to help induce the body in a fertility of text, the delirium of a dancer’s movement, the touch of the person next to you, sound vision flowing between contact. Drone pulse. Monkey Chant.

An attempt to achieve ‘sacred time’ - as Bataille would call the moment of annihilation, ultimate inner experience, metaphorical or actual exchange of fluid, compounds, electrical waves. The impossible — as knowing what is beyond the model-building activity and the model itself does not lie within the scope of representational thought.

It may be that every one of us is set upon the earth to find a new method of divination, a syntax of the heart to locate the center of ourselves in the structure of process. Across sexual platforms, cognitive science, gender, word, scent, movement, and sound to develop a theoretical and philosophical approach responsive to our changing understanding of our selves and our world.

Is it possible to craft a mode of philosophy, ethics, and interpretation that rejects the classic humanist divisions of self and other, mind and body, society and nature, human and animal, organic and technological? Can a new kind of humanities — a post-humanities — respond to the redefinition of humanity’s place in the world by both the technological and the biological or “green” continuum in which the “human” is but one life form among many?

Note: If text/sound/body project works as proposed in prepared setting, becomes ritualistic event. There is the possibility of confirmation. When performed live, microphones will be strategically placed for addition of real time guttural vocal expressions from the participants (there is no audience here, only a communal experience)."

See www.blackpigliberationfront.com for more information.

Houston Art Benefit. National Artists come together to raise funds for AIDS research.

I along with 30+ other nationally recognized artists will be donating pieces for Art4Life in Houston, Texas January 30th. Deborah Colton, Alton LaDay, Carolyn Farb, Les Marks and other prestigious collectors and benefactors will be hosting the event.

A big Thanks to Neiman Marcus, Exxon and New World Museum.

Click invitation to enlarge.

What the silence swallows....

Saying it...

I am saying nothing and I am saying it....
---Nicolas de Oliveira

Creating Space

She disintegrates...
and does not rise from the ashes...

that kind of heat...
shapes
forms
one...into something entirely new

Holding Space

There is no container....

Empty

Empty is the same as full...at a different stage

Last Pick Up Times Available

The gallery will be open this weekend for final pick up and payments. Saturday 3-6pm and Sunday 2-5pm. Please have someone stop by if you can't make it.