Geoff Gersh
These Predicaments

‘These Predicaments’ is the new CD by guitarist/composer Geoff Gersh and is his second solo release on the Deep Listening Institute label. Created for painter David Stoupakis’s solo exhibition at the Corey Helford Gallery in Los Angeles, CA, ‘These Predicaments’ draws on drones, ambient textures and slowly developing melodies to bring another dimension to David’s otherworldly paintings and draw the viewer deeper into them.

Geoff uses manipulated field recordings, reel-to-reel tape recordings, zither and electric guitar, sometimes bowed with metal files, to create sonic landscapes that evoke the emotions of David’s paintings and take the listener on a melancholic sonic journey.

New York based composer/guitarist Geoff Gersh explores the sonic boundaries of the electric guitar with and without the aide of electronic devices and found objects to produce sounds one would normally not associate with the guitar. He uses this approach when composing ambient/textural soundscapes for choreographers, filmmakers and other collaborators. Geoff has worked with choreographers Lawrence Goldhuber, Cynthia Oliver, Karen Graham, Anabella Lenzu, Robert La Fosse, Benoit-Swan Pouffer and has an ongoing collaboration with painter David Stoupakis.

In November 2009, Geoff was awarded a Swing Space grant from the Lower Manhattan Cultural Council in NYC. During this residency he presented his composition ‘Memory In Night’, for 6 electric guitars bowed with metal files, in an old Wall St. bank vault 2 stories below street level. Also in November of 2009, Geoff performed with the German electro acoustic improvisation ensemble HKM+ at the Lodz Philharmonic in Lodz, Poland. In 2006, Geoff performed in Glenn Branca’s “SYMPHONY NO. 13 (HALLUCINATION CITY)” for 100 guitars that took place at Montclair State College in NJ. In 2009, he performed in Rhys Chatham’s “A Crimson Grail for 200 Electric Guitars” at Lincoln Center’s Damrosch Park.

In 2005, he worked with composer Jonathan Bepler as a multi-instrumental performer for video artist Eve Sussman’s video-opera, The Rape of the Sabine Women, which premiered in NYC in February 2007. Geoff worked with Bepler again on artist Matthew Barney’s latest piece, Guardian of the Veil, which he performed in at Barney’s workspace in LIC, NY in 2007 and again in 2009 in Basel, Switzerland as part of Art Basel’s ‘Il Tempo del Postino’

He has received grants from the American Music Center, Meet the Composer, SOS from NYFA, was awarded a New York Dance & Performance Award (Bessie) and received a Swing Space grant from the Lower Manhattan Cultural Council in 2009.

http://www.deeplistening.org

Images and video from White Fungus Issue 11 launch at P.P.O.W

http://www.thehostessproject.com/2010/01/past-event-white-fungus-issue-11.html

White Fungus at P.P.O.W
 
  

White Fungus is set to launch its 11th issue at P.P.O.W in New
York on Thursday, January 14 with a night of performances as part
of the gallery’s Hostess Project series of events.

Kick-starting at 7pm, the event will feature:
Our Love Will Destroy the World (Campbell Kneale)
David Watson
Tao Wells
Anne Fiero
Millions (David Suss)
If, Bwana (Al Margolis) with Tom Hamilton, Jacqueline Martelle
and live video by Katherine Liberovskaya

White Fungus issue 11 is the first to be produced in the formerly
Wellington-based publication’s new home, Taichung City, Taiwan.
The new issue comes with a CD compilation of artists off New York
record label Pogus Productions. It includes articles on Miya Masa-
ka, Hijokaidan and experimental and non-academic music in Beijing.
It features interviews with David Watson, Taiwan artist Isa Ho, Robert
Voicey of Vox Novus and New Zealand curator Laura Preston; articles
on artists Don Driver (Auckland), Jonathan Terranova (New York) and
a critical look a Post-colonial and Oceanic art by Rudolph Hudsucker;
art works by Yao Jui-Chung, Dan Arps, Su Hui-yu and Chung Shih-
shun; poetry by McArthur Gunter and Peggy Chang; part three of
Juan Santos’ series Capitalism at the Expense of All Life, an article
by Jane Janesly on New Zealand’s Neo Liberal economic reforms of
the 1980s, a reflection by Tao Wells on the letter-writing of Lazlo Toth,
a review of The Coming Insurrection by Harold Grieves, and a 20-page
black & white comic adaptation of The Mysterious Case of Dr. Jekyll
& Mr. Hyde by Tim Bollinger.  

Pogus CD compilation is compiled by Al Margolis and features artists:
Ellen Band & David Lee Myers, Annea Lockwood, Noah Creshevsky,
Anla Courtis, Big City Orchestra, Chris Brown, Jorge Antunes, Nick
Didkovsky, Tom Johnson, Beth Anderson, Tom Hamilton/Bruce Eisenbeil,
Christian Wolff/Larry Polansky/Chris Mann/Douglas Repetto/Tom Erbe,
MartÌn Alejandro Fumarola and If, Bwana.

P.P.O.W is located at:
511 West 25th Street, Room 301
(at 10th Avenue)
New York
White Fungus at P.P.O.W is kindly supported by Creative New Zealand.
White Fungus’ relocaton to Taiwan is kindly supported by Asia New
Zealand Foundation.

Obama’s Big Sellout

The president has packed his economic team with

Wall Street insiders intent on turning the bailout into

an all-out giveaway

MATT TAIBBI

Posted on Rollingstone Dec 09, 2009 2:35 PM

Barack Obama ran for president as a man of the people,
standing up to Wall Street as the global economy melted
down in that fateful fall of 2008. He pushed a tax plan to
soak the rich, ripped NAFTA for hurting the middle class
and tore into John McCain for supporting a bankruptcy bill
that sided with wealthy bankers “at the expense of hard-
working Americans.” Obama may not have run to the left
of Samuel Gompers or Cesar Chavez, but it’s not like you
saw him on the campaign trail flanked by bankers from
Citigroup and Goldman Sachs. What inspired supporters
who pushed him to his historic win was the sense that a
genuine outsider was finally breaking into an exclusive club,
that walls were being torn down, that things were, for lack
of a better or more specific term, changing.

Then he got elected.

What’s taken place in the year since Obama won the presidency
has turned out to be one of the most dramatic political about-
faces in our history. Elected in the midst of a crushing economic
crisis brought on by a decade of orgiastic deregulation and un-
checked greed, Obama had a clear mandate to rein in Wall Street
and remake the entire structure of the American economy. What
he did instead was ship even his most marginally progressive
campaign advisers off to various bureaucratic Siberias, while
packing the key economic positions in his White House with the
very people who caused the crisis in the first place. This new team
of bubble-fattened ex-bankers and laissez-faire intellectuals then
proceeded to sell us all out, instituting a massive, trickle-up bailout
and systematically gutting regulatory reform from the inside.

How could Obama let this happen? Is he just a rookie in the pol-
itical big leagues, hood-winked by Beltway old-timers? Or is the
vacillating, ineffectual servant of banking interests we’ve been seeing
on TV this fall who Obama really is?

Whatever the president’s real motives are, the extensive series of
loophole-rich financial “reforms” that the Democrats are currently
pushing may ultimately do more harm than good. In fact, some
parts of the new reforms border on insanity, threatening to vastly
amplify Wall Street’s political power by institutionalizing the tax-
payer’s role as a welfare provider for the financial-services industry.
At one point in the debate, Obama’s top economic advisers demanded
the power to award future bailouts without even going to Congress
for approval — and without providing taxpayers a single dime in equity
on the deals.

How did we get here? It started just moments after the election — and
almost nobody noticed.

Read the full article here

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http://taowells.blogspot.com/

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我跟你說

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程 少鴻

 
東海大學創藝實習中心(東海43號)

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12/1~12/6.2009

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Gore Vidal:  Obama ‘incompetent’ but GOP ‘like Hitler Youth’

Storied writer and historian Gore Vidal, in a lengthy interview published
Wednesday by The Independent, had more than a few stones to throw at
modern Americana.

Calling President Barack Obama “incompetent,” Vidal predicted he will
lose his bid for reelection amid the “madhouse” that is present-day politics.
As for the political opposition, the iconic intellectual said that Republicans
are no longer a party, having morphed into a “mindset,” full of hate “like
Hitler youth.”

Speaking with writer Johann Hari, Vidal addressed dozens of key mo-
ments in American history, from “unnecessary” foreign entanglements
to the coming-soon collapse of U.S. empire in the barren sands of Afghan-
istan. He called the 2000 election “stolen” by the Bush administration, then
added they were “probably” involved in the Sept. 11 attacks on New York
City and the Pentagon.

The mention is not the first time he has assailed the government’s public
theory of the attacks. Vidal said in 2008 that 9/11 was “a coup d’etat” to
overthrow the government, allowing the Bush administration “[to] make
legal each and every breach of the constitution that [they] had in mind.”

In a much lengthier extrapolation, “The Enemy Within,” published by
The Observer in 2002, Vidal argued the administration was complicit
with the terrorists.

“Complicity,” he wrote. “The behavior of President George W. Bush
on 11 September certainly gives rise to all sorts of not unnatural suspicions.
I can think of no other modern chief of state who would continue to pose
for ‘warm’ pictures of himself listening to a young girl telling stories about
her pet goat while hijacked planes were into three buildings.”

In The Independent’s piece, he also defended Timothy McVeigh, the Okla-
homa City bomber, as “a dedicated student of the American way” and
“a noble boy” who lashed out so violently as a way of defending the Con-
stitution.

In a 2001 piece for Vanity Fair entitled “The Meaning of Timothy McVeigh,
” Vidal elaborated on his correspondence with the Oklahoma City bomber,
who claimed to have been in-part inspired to act by Vidal’s writing.

Of the resulting media coverage after McVeigh’s act of terror, Vidal damned
popular belief. “There was to be only one story; one man of incredible innate
evil wanted to destroy innocent lives for no reason other than a spontaneous
joy in evildoing,” he wrote. “From the beginning, it was ordained that Mc-
Veigh was to have no coherent motive for what he had done other than a
Shakespearean motiveless malignity.”

On the election of President Obama, Vidal told The Independent that he was
initially optimistic, but after witnessing the administration at work he’s rele-
gated himself to despair. “[He's] incompetent. He will be defeated for re-
election. It’s a pity because he’s the first intellectual president we’ve had in
many years, but he can’t hack it. He’s not up to it. He’s overwhelmed.”

“[Obama] wants to be liked by everybody, and he thought all he had to do
was talk reason,” Vidal continued. “But remember – the Republican Party
is not a political party. It’s a mindset, like Hitler Youth. It’s full of hatred.
You’re not going to get them aboard. Don’t even try. The only way to handle
them is to terrify them. He’s too delicate for that.”

Briefly touching on his time spent as a soldier stationed in Alaska, he called
the state “the place where all the crooks in America went to hide” and a
“frozen hell” that ultimately produced Sarah Palin, “the latest idol in America’s
long cult of stupidity.”

Vidal added that because the president has never even heard a gun fired in
anger, he is “bowled over” by the generals “who tell him lies and he believes
them.”

Challenged by the interviewer on the justification for Japan’s attack on Pearl
Harbor, Vidal went cold.

“[Roosevelt] taunted the Japanese so they would have to hit us, at Pearl
Harbour, and they did,” he said. “We have conveniently forgotten because
we don’t teach American history to anybody, but he sent an ultimatum to the
Japanese telling them to get out of China, which they’d been trying to conquer
for years. He was laying down the law to them, [saying they had to] surrender
their rather proud nation’s empire. And they said fuck you. And the next thing
we knew the fleet was moving towards Pearl Harbour.”

He further predicted that “Afghanistan will be terminal for the American empire,”
which he sees as a positive development. “To a better Republic,” Vidal quipped
before gulping down a glass of scotch.

Read the full interview.

 Larissa Voltz

IO.

DOOJIN AHN

VALERIO RICCI

LARISSA VOLTZ

Please join us at HSF for the opening of io.,
the tenth group exhibition of artists-in-res-
idence since the program’s foundation in 2007.
io. presents works by: Doojin Ahn (Korea),
Valerio Ricci (Italy), and Larissa Voltz (Ger-
many-Israel). Co-curated by HSF Chief Curator,
Raffaele Bedarida with Junior Curator, Teresa
Meucci, the show presents works achieved by
the three artists during their stay in New York
(August-November-2009).
Opening reception:
November 2nd  6.00-9.00 pm

By appointment:
November 3rd -30th , 2009
HSF by Montrasioarte
128W 121st street
Subway 2, 3 to 116th street

www.harlemstudiony.org
Harlem Studio Fellowship is a privately funded,
non-profit Residency Program for international
artists founded in 2007 by Ruggero Montrasio
and curated by Raffaele Bedarida. The Studio
Harlem Fellowship is designed to encourage
the creative, intellectual and personal growth
of emerging visual artists. We invite two or
three young artists every three months, provid-
ing them with housing and studio in a town-
house in the district of Harlem. Every residency
ends with a group exhibition, displaying works
and projects accomplished by each artist during
his/her stay in New York In addition to this,
a complete show of the artists in residence
will be held at the end of the first 3 years,
displaying a selection from the artists in res-
idence invited.

War is peace. Ignorance is strength 

By John Pilger
 

Barack Obama, winner of the 2009 Nobel Peace Prize, is planning another war to add to his
impressive record. In Afghanistan, his agents routinely extinguish wedding parties, farmers
and construction workers with weapons such as the innovative Hellfire missile, which sucks
the air out of your lungs. According to the UN, 338,000 Afghan infants are dying under the
Obama-led alliance, which permits only $29 per head annually to be spent on medical care.

Within weeks of his inauguration, Obama started a new war in Pakistan, causing more than
a million people to flee their homes. In threatening Iran, which his secretary of state, Hillary
Clinton, said she was prepared to obliterate, Obama lied that the Iranians were covering up 
a secret nuclear facility, knowing that it had already been reported to the International Atomic
Energy Authority. In colluding with the only nuclear-armed power in the Middle East, he bribed
the Palestinian Authority to suppress a UN judgment that Israel had committed crimes against
humanity in its assault on Gaza ?crimes made possible with US weapons whose shipment
Obama secretly approved before his inauguration.

At home, the man of peace has approved a military budget exceeding that of any year since
the end of the Second World War while presiding over a new kind of domestic repression.
During the recent G20 meeting in Pittsburgh, hosted by Obama, militarised police attacked
peaceful protesters with something called the Long-Range Acoustic Device, not seen before
on US streets. Mounted in the turret of a small tank, it blasted a piercing noise as tear gas
and pepper gas were fired indiscriminately. It is part of a new arsenal of crowd-control
munitions supplied by military contractors such as Ray­theon. In Obama’s Pentagon-con-
trolled National security state the concentration camp at Guantanamo Bay, which he prom-
ised to close, remains open, and rendition, secret assassinations and torture continue.

The Nobel Peace Prize-winner’s latest war is largely secret. On 15 July, Washington finalised
a deal with Colombia that gives the US seven giant military bases. The idea, reported the
Associated Press, is to make Colombia a regional hub for Pentagon operations… nearly
half the continent can be covered by a C-17 [military transport] without refuelling, which 
helps achieve the regional engagement strategy.

Translated, this means Obama is planning a rollback of the independence and democracy
that the people of Bolivia, Venezuela, Ecuador and Paraguay have achieved against the odds,
along with a historic regional co-operation that rejects the notion of a US sphere of influence.
The Colombian regime, which backs death squads and has the continent’s worst human rights
record, has received US military support second in scale only to Israel. Britain provides military
training. Guided by US military satellites, Colombian paramilitaries now infiltrate Venezuela
with the goal of overthrowing the democratic government of Hugo Chaez, which George
W Bush failed to do in 2002.

Read the rest at:  http://www.johnpilger.com/page.asp?partid=551

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pool gallery presents:

Harald Hauswald: “Auferstanden aus Ruinen”

Opening Reception: Friday, October 16th, 19:00 – 23:00
Exhibition: October 17th, 2009 – November 14th, 2009

Harald Hauswald did what no other photographer in his time succeeded in doing:
he documented everyday life. While that may sound like the simplest thing to do,
in East Berlin under the GDR, it was quite the opposite. The documentation of
that particular everyday life was sternly forbidden, any glimpse of it lost amidst
propoganda – rendering the very existence of Hauswald’s work a feat.

Intense yet distanced, the dynamic works of Hauswald serve as a detailed account
of Berlin in the 70s and 80s. He didn’t stop there, however, continuing with his
camera through the transformation into a reunified Germany, up to this very day.

There’s just something about Hauswald’s photographs. For one thing, the
characteristic distance between camera and subject gives the distinct impression
that he is watching, not participating – and hints at a subtle skepticism. Coupled
with this skepticism, however, is a certain sense of change – that which evolves,
next to that which remains the same. This binary lies within so many of his
photographs – a movement within a frozen moment, a truth hidden amongst
many lies, a hope buried deep under many disappointments.

Hauswald, a founding member of the well-known photo agency Ostkreuz, was
born in 1954 in Radebeul, a small town near Dresden. He became an apprentice
to a photographer and later, in 1976, graduated from photography school. Around
that time, already under state surveillance, he made his way through the GDR, to
Berlin, exploring, documenting. His works from the late seventies through the
early eighties depict the binary that was present even within Hauswald’s
relationship, as a German, with the GDR; as the writer Lutz Rathenow put it,
“We hated the government, but loved the people.”

But even after 1990, Hauswald, has found that even with major changes in Ger-
many, the struggle, his subject, remains – albeit under a different name. Thus he
continues to document, as he always has, turning his lens on the contradictions
and pitfalls of capitalism.

Uninterested in spectacle, mesmirized by the seemingly mundane, Hauswald
continues his dissection of everyday life, the little things – the things that can
only be seen when one takes a moment to stop, really look, and recognize them.

pool gallery
tucholskystr.38
10117 berlin germany
fon.49.30.24342462
info@pool-gallery.com
www.pool-gallery.com

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