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Event
Lee Ranaldo and Leah Singer: Sight Unseen
Iconic guitarist, poet, and artist Lee Ranaldo and visual artist and writer Leah Singer have worked together since 1991 with film and music in a live setting, performing work that explores how sound and image interact -- with elements of chance embraced. Sound and images are culled from the everyday, where the experiential nature of the work takes precedent over overt narrative. Careful attention is paid to the everyday things that often go unnoticed, to how close observations can reveal something new. The duo performs Sight Unseen at ISSUE's 22 Boerum Theater on June 30th, with open installation hours following July 1st and 2nd.
Sight Unseen consists of a guitar suspended from a rope in the middle of the performance space. Wireless equipment is used so the guitar can move around the space un-tethered from the amplifier. Projection screens are placed site-specific in the space, sometimes two screens facing each other, or two screens side by side on one plane of the room, or three screens with one used as an entry way. There is no fixed stage but rather the bare floor with no separation between audience and performer. The overall intention is to create an environment where the performers and the audience are engaged in an immersive sight and sound experience that is more circular than linear, allowing for personal interpretation rather than fixed exposition.
At ISSUE, the artists will set up the room as an installation where the audience is invited to sit and absorb sound and image an opportunity to get off the street and enter into an open sensory environment. Visitors are invited to stay for as long as they want during installation hours on July 1st and 2nd. The program is one hour and will loop. Announced and unannounced short performances by Lee with the hanging guitar run throughout the scheduled hours of the space.
Lee Ranaldo co-founded Sonic Youth in 1981, and has been active from New York for the past 35 years, recording, performing, collaborating with numerous others, producing discs, exhibiting visual art and publishing volumes of poetry and journals. He has performed with partner Leah Singer throughout the world. His recently completed new album, Electric Trim, is out for release. He is music producer for HBOs VINYL series. His Hurricane Transcriptions (based on wind recordings made during Hurricane Sandy in NYC in 2012), originally written for Berlins Kaleidoscop String Ensemble, was recently reduced for performances with Brooklyns Dither Electric Guitar Quartet. Recent live performances with Singer, Contre Jour, have been large scale, multi projection sound+light events with suspended electric guitar phenomena that challenge the usual performer/audience relationship via in-the- round staging.
Leah Singer was born in Winnipeg, moving east to Toronto, Montreal and Tokyo before settling in New York City. She is a visual artist and a writer. Her artist publications are in the collections of the Museum of Modern Art and the Whitney Museum of American Art. The live manipulated film and video performances she started doing in the early 1990s in collaboration with musicians, including husband Lee Ranaldo, have toured widely including to The Rotterdam International Film Festival, The Reykjavik Arts Festival, and the JUE music festival in Shanghai. She continues to develop site-specific video installations intended to exist both as static artworks and components to live music performances. She recently contributed video to the multi artist project, The Exhibition of a Film, curated by Mathieu Copeland with recent screenings at the Tate Museum and the Centre Georges Pompidou.
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LocationISSUE Project Room (View)
22 Boerum Place
Brooklyn, NY 11201
United States
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