WORDS TO BE SEEN & THE SOUND OF SPEECH
9/14–10/7
Opening, Friday, 9/14, 7pm – 9pm
Reverse Space
Williamsburg, 28 Frost Street
Brooklyn, NY 11211
A group show of visual work, installation and sound performance focused on text and speech as distinct from their everyday communicative functions. Featuring the work of FAMED, Nathan Gwynne, Bonnie Jones, nicoykatiushka (NyK), David Schoerner, Andrea Wolf, and Audea Wolowiec.
Words to be Seen & The Sound of Speech seeks to flesh out the contradictions that exist between words and images, and thus between description and representation. By emphasizing new and experimental approaches of expression within a curated setting, Words to be Seen & The Sound of Speech promotes the gallery’s mission of providing an alternative space that fosters innovation and exploration. The artworks included represent a contemporary take on the use of text in multiple mediums, exhibiting the aesthetic properties within them. Some works portray the rhythmic translation of speech as visual or sound installations. Others use words themselves as visual cues thereby expanding and confounding the boundaries that lie between art, speech and text.
Accompanying these visual works and installations will be a series of sound performances, scheduled throughout the exhibition, entitled The Sound of Speech. This performance series will focus on highlighting the sonant qualities of speaking. A group of sound artists and musicians will interpret the works exhibited in the gallery as well as perform some of their own contemporary sound pieces. They will also enact an interpretation of past speech scores selected by sound artist, Maria Chavez.
These works remind us that language is a fragile and illogical construct, loosely bound to reality by cultural convention. By exploring the latent potential of language and the systems we use to communicate, Words to be Seen & The Sound of Speech aims to separate the message of text and speech and highlight the fascinating nuances that are hidden by their everyday uses.
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A 12 Hour performance
with Stephanie Barber & Bonnie Jones
9/22, Noon to Midnight
http://reversespace.org/?p=180
A New Collaboration in Translation and Aliveness
As part of the exhibition Words to be Seen & the Sound of Speech, filmmaker / writer Stephanie Barber and musician / writer Bonnie Jones will present a “a new collaboration in translation and aliveness” a 12-hour long improvised text and sound performance from Noon to Midnight on Saturday, September 22nd, 2012.
“Translation is entirely mysterious. Increasingly I have felt that the art of writing is itself translating, or more like translating than it is like anything else. What is the other text, the original? I have no answer. I suppose it is the source, the deep sea where ideas swim, and one catches them in nets of words and swings them shining into the boat…where in this metaphor they die and get canned and eaten in sandwiches.” – Ursula K. Le Guin
Video Excerpt, AS220
Bonnie Jones and Stephanie Barber Text Improvisation
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Friday, September 28, 2012
7:30pm, FREE
MATÉ_series / number 2
The Invisible Dog
51 Bergen Street, Brooklyn, New York 11201
https://www.facebook.com/events/155766664547799/
http://www.theinvisibledog.org/mate_series-2/
PROGRAM
Set 1: C. Spencer Yeh / 8:00pm — sharp
Set 2: Samita Sinha and Bonnie Jones / 8:35pm – sharp
15’ intermission
Set 3: David Moscovich / 9:20pm – sharp
Set 4: Stephanie Loveless / 9:55pm – sharp
MATE is a series, curated and organized by Richard Garet, dedicated to sound and moving image presentations that are derived from ideas, processes, material, and media experimentation. This series attempts to present from within a large spectrum of today’s experimentalists, the work of artists that are vigorously contributing to our cultural landscape. These sound and moving image performances can be expected to range from algorithmic media and technology oriented gizmos to the wide range of analog media while engaging in approaches such as improvisation, composition, performance-installation, and interdisciplinary methods and techniques that expand on both artistic practice and audience reception. Each evening will be be orchestrated around a specific focus.
Bonnie Han Jones 
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