The Society for the Activation of Social Space through Art and Sound (SASSAS), in conjunction with the MAK Center for Art and Architecture, presented sound. at the Schindler House 2014: Space as Raw Material with Woody Sullender, Odeya Nini and Carmina Escobar. Space as Raw Material embraced the intersections of divergent creative practices, including architecture and sound, performance and installation. The durational performances included Furniture Music, a new site-specific installation by Brooklyn-based artist Woody Sullender, making his Los Angeles premiere, and vocal performances of A Solo Voice by Odeya Nini and Source by Carmina Escobar. Over the course of the four hour event, the artists highlighted the subliminal acoustics of the Schindler House, creating multiple listening spaces in the interior and exterior spaces of the historic structure. For this concert, SASSAS transformed the four studios and outdoor courtyards of the Schindler House into listening spaces resounding with temporal sonic investigations of architecture, voice and interactions with one another. Woody Sullender utilized modular cardboard forms outfitted with audio transducers resulting in resonating ‘speaker’ objects that were used to divide and shape the space into a reverberating ‘living room’ on the Schindler patio. Vocalist Odeya Nini explored extended bodily resonances, communicating textural harmony, gesture and tonal animation. Carmina Escobar reflected upon the body as a space that reveals, measures and recognizes itself through vibration.
About the Artists
Woody Sullender is an artist based in Brooklyn, NY. His work primarily deals with the socio-political aspects of sound in various arenas such as public space, music, radio, and other media. Recent performances and installations involve constructing physical spaces which intend to disrupt normative modes of music reception. Cutting his teeth in the Chicago free improvisation community, Sullender was recognized as a pre-eminent experimental banjo improvisor, exploring a range of identity politics while playing with and against the cultural baggage of the instrument. With technical advising from STEIM and Harvestworks, he developed an “electro-acoustic banjo”, rupturing its rustic identity. Sullender has worked with pioneering electronic composers such as Pauline Oliveros and Maryanne Amacher (incorporating his banjo recordings into Amacher’s TEO! A sonic sculpture which won the Golden Nica prize at the 2005 Ars Electronica festival). He has performed at venues such as the Kitchen, Issue Project Room, the River to River Festival, SculptureCenter (NYC), Abrons Art Center, GartenKultur Musikfestival, Chicago Cultural Center, DNK-Amsterdam, and many others. He teaches new media at various New York institutions and occasionally can be heard on the airwaves at WFMU. This is his Los Angeles premiere performance.
Odeya Nini is a vocalist and composer of contemporary experimental music. Her solo vocal work extends the dimension and expression of the voice and body, allowing a sonic and physical spectrum of silence to noise and tenderness to grandeur.Odeya has collaborated extensively as both a performer and composer, and has been a part of works by artists such as Meredith Monk, Butch Morris, Maureen Selwood, and the Yelleb Dance Ensemble. Her work has been presented at numerous venues including REDCAT, the Hammer Museum, Joyce Soho, Art Basel Miami, and from Los Angeles to Tel Aviv to Odessa and Mongolia. Odeya holds a BFA from the New School for Jazz and Contemporary Music and an MFA in composition from CalArts. Her debut album for solo voice, Vougheauxyice, was released in April 2014 on pfMENTUM records.
Carmina Escobar is a vocalist and intermedia artist from Mexico City whose work focuses primarily on sound, the voice, the body and their interrelations to physical, social and memory spaces. She has developed and collaborated in many different projects that explore a diversity of sonorous languages such as electronic music, experimental music, contemporary, improvisation, folk, opera, and new works involving interdisciplinary collaborations, and technology. She has been an artist in residence at Music Omi (NY), Steim (NL), Krakow Academy of Music (PL), Binaural (PT), Guapamacátaro (MX), University of Albuquerque, I Park (CT) and Montalvo (SF). She is co-director and vocalist of the renowned experimental and contemporary music ensemble from Mexico [liminar] and is currently a grant holder of the Creadores Escénicos 2013 program by the Fondo Nacional para la Cultura y las Artes (National Fund for the Arts) of Mexico. She performs and presents her work frequently both in Mexico and internationally.