Activating The Medium XV with Blevin Blectum, Pod Blotz, & Andrea Williams

Description

23five Incorporated presents the fifteenth annual Activating The Medium festival
in collaboration with Art Practical, The Lab, and the San Francisco Art Institute

Activating The Medium XV : Chapter Two
Saturday, April 21, 2012 : San Francisco Art Institute
Bevin Kelley / Blevin Blectum (Providence)
Pod Blotz (Oakland)
Andrea Williams (Oakland)

Since 1998, 23five Incorporated has produced the annual Activating The Medium festival -- an internationally recognized showcase for the most innovative and visionary practitioners of sound art. Now entering its fifteenth season, Activating The Medium addresses the theme of a 'dark ecology' -- a term which comes from the philosopher Timothy Morton, who argues that the idea of nature and the attitudes surrounding those ideas are the stumbling blocks to environmental thinking. A glance through the lens of dark ecology refuses to idealize nature as a Romanticized other; furthermore, it eschews the notion that mankind has disturbed and transgressed nature through our engineering and manipulation. A dark ecology frames reality that anything has the potential to disrupt everything, with global catastrophes inevitably occurring through such relationships. As such, Morton beseeches an aesthetic that does not forget the murk, the grime, and the filth that are the symptoms, causes, and glue of what might have once been described as 'nature.' It is from this vantage point that 23five is curating the 2012 Activating The Medium festival, seeking works that engage the specter of noise pollution, the melancholy of eco-acoustic blight, the horror of technological chimeras, and / or the altered states that may emerge from such meditations through sound-based composition and performance.

Bevin Kelley is an electronic music / multimedia composer-performer. She is half of the e-music duo Blectum from Blechdom (Prix Ars Electronica, Digital Musics Distinction, 2001) with Kristin Erickson, and was 1/4 of the audio-video band Sagan (with Wobbly, Lesser, and Ryan Junell). Over the past decade she has released four critically acclaimed solo albums under the Blevin Blectum nom-de-guerre, and many more in collaboration. A new solo release is slated for 2012, titled EMBLEM ALBUM. She continues to perform extensively throughout the US and Europe. Her sound has been applied to: FurReal toys, the Welsh variant of MTV's Jackass, videos for Omar Salazar Nike Skateboarding, and theater productions of Providence-based playwright Theo Goodell. Bevin lives and works in Providence, Rhode Island, where she is a third year PhD student in Brown University's Multimedia and Electronic Music Experiments (MEME) program. 

Suzy Poling is a multi-dimensional visual artist working with photography, sound, film, collage, video, optics, light art, performance, silk screening, installation and sculpture. She exhibits her large scale photographs and also creates elaborate video and refractive light art experiments along with sound. Poling has performed experimental organ drones, electronics and tape manipulations under the moniker Pod Blotz since 2002. Her visual work has been shown or performed at the Berkeley Art Museum, Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, Southern Exposure, Chicago Cultural Center, Queen's Nails Projects, Bemis Center for Contemporary Art, Australian Center for Photography, Aperture Foundation, Pro Arts, and various galleries and art centers in Los Angeles and Chicago. She is represented by Zg Gallery. Musically, Pod Blotz and has recorded or worked with Zaimph, Smegma, MV Carbon, Twig Harper, Blood Stereo, Inca Ore, David Scott Stone, Future Blondes, Chiara Giovando, Russian Tsarlag and Mick Goldwater. She has performed shows with Nautical Almanac, Mat Brinkman, Kites, Dolphins into the Future, Jaap Blonk, Daniel Higgs, Hair Stylistics, John Wiese, Black Dice, Metalux, Astro and Haters. She has releases on DNT, Taped Sounds and Chocolate Monk. And upcoming LP releases Nihilist and Scumbag Relations.
In performing at Activating The Medium, Pod Blotz will present modular synthesized compositions accompanied with voice, organ, various tape manipulations, and a video presentation with her light phenomenon experiments and activities in Obsidian Caves. 

Andrea Williams is an artist, composer, and educator currently based in Oakland, CA.  She enjoys using site-specific elements and perceptual cues to reveal the unseen connections between people and their environment.  Listening, memory, urban ecology, and group collaboration are recurrent themes.  Her compositions, soundwalks, installations, and videos have been exhibited and performed both solo and with various artists at galleries and alternative spaces, most recently at the Whitney Museum, Yerba Buena Gardens Festival, Joyce Theater Soho, Children's Creativity Museum, Fountain Miami Art Fair, and the Mamori sound artist residency in the Amazon rainforest. Andrea is a Director for the sound art non-profit, 23five Incorporated, a Co-Founder of the New York Society for Acoustic Ecology, and has an MFA in Electronic Music and Recording Media from Mills College. 

23five Incorporated is a nonprofit organization dedicated to the development and increased awareness of sound works in the public arena, and to the support and education of artists working with and discussing the medium of sound. 23five was founded in 1993, and secured federal 501(c)(3) status in 1995.