Over the course of October 2016, Jacqueline Kiyomi Gork (formerly Jacqueline Gordon) created Inside You Is Me, a dynamic sculpture with moveable walls, a multichannel sound piece, and staged performances. Local artists Maryanna Lachman, Jose Abad, Oscar Tidd, and Sam Hertz were joined by Los Angeles composers FAY and Jonathan Mandabach, and New York dancers Rashaun Mitchell and Silas Riener. The eight artists used Gork’s installation as a system in which to create new sonic and visual compositions.
When we think about perception – the ways that we move through the world – we often focus on the visual. Instead, Gork speaks about the feeling of being eaten alive by an Adele song playing at the gas station pump. After all, sound has the capacity to turn corners, to bounce off surfaces, to penetrate us. Sound has the power to redefine how reality feels.
Gork’s installation integrates the sound of your footsteps moving through space, the taps of your fingers on your cellphone – you are as intrinsic to the composition as are the pre-assembled sculptures and sounds. When we listen we are reminded that our world reverberates and changes with our every action. Here our being is not given, it emerges over time.
SOUND INSTALLATION: Inside You Is Me
Thursdays, October 13, 20, 27, from 6-10pm
Sundays, October 16, 23, 30, from 12-4pm
Available for workshops and off-hour visits by appointment. Email thelabsf@thelab.org or call 415-864-8855 for information.
Free, RSVP
Inside You Is Me will feature an ongoing sound composition created by Jonathan Mandabach and Jacqueline Kiyomi Gork. It explores sonic hierarchies in public and private space; modeling how powerfully sound can communicate and create emotion with or without our consent. Integrating sound design techniques with live and recorded voice recordings from the neighborhood, the composition will be changed throughout the residency and continually build and shift with the different wall configurations and choreography. A library of reading materials and tools that influenced Grok will be available for perusal.
PERFORMANCE: Playlist with Maryanna Lachmann, Jose Abad, and Oscar Tidd
Saturday, October 15, 2016; 7pm doors / 8pm performance
Sunday, October 16, 2016; 12-3pm installation open / 3pm performance
Free, RSVP
For Playlist, dancers Maryanna Lachmann, Jose Abad, and Oscar Tidd, will inhabit their own sound zones inside the installation, each choosing from a playlist of preselected sounds to compel their movement. Over the course of the performance the sounds will shift and change, using granular synthesis and reverb to move from cacophony to cohesion. Sam Hertz and Gork created the software used in Playlist.
PERFORMANCE: FAY
Saturday, October 22, 20162016; 7pm doors / 8pm performance. Free, RSVP
Rhythm has an immediate, often involuntary effect on the body — heartbeats adapt to sonic rhythm quickly, depending on rate and volume, and aperiodic rhythms like ocean waves or the sound of city traffic often lull us to sleep. FAY creates music that takes immense pleasure in creating hand-edited repetitions: feedback loops between woman and machine. During the performance Gordon will do a live dismantling of FAY’s songs in the space, revealing their inner heartbeat.
PERFORMANCE: Rashaun Mitchell and Silas Riener
Saturday, October 29, 2016; 7pm doors / 8pm performance, RSVP
Tickets must be purchased or reserved in advance, $15 General / Free for members
Since 2010 Rashaun Mitchell and Silas Riener have created dance in response to complex and active spatial environments, often merging elements of fantasy, absurdity, and quiet contemplation. Their collaborative work revels in the possibilities of the highly articulated dancing body where current and historical influences and aesthetic forms are collapsed into a hybrid physical and visually charged language. Their work takes many forms, from site-specific installations, improvisational dances, traditional proscenium pieces, to highly crafted immersive experiences. After working together in the Merce Cunningham Dance Company, Mitchell and Riener began collaborating on dance projects at MoMa PS1, The Chocolate Factory, New York Live Arts, Baryshnikov Arts Center, Danspace Project, REDCAT, and ICA Boston that continually push at the unraveling boundaries of dance research. They are both drawn to space as an agent of performance and have been particularly interested in creating dance in response to complex and active spatial environments.
THE LAB BOX: Inside You Is Me
The Lab Box is a proposition to both artist and collector: how do we think beyond objects, collecting, archiving, and stewarding nontraditional practices? Gork, who has been working with sound and movement for over a decade, is now seen as a critical player exploring the intersection between the performing and contemporary art worlds. In the tradition of the Fluxus Boxes, Merce Cunningham's Capsules, and Duchamp's Boîte-en-valise, The Lab invited Gork to create a 3-D representation of her project using materials from the installation, conceptual ephemera, sonic documents, and publications. Five editions of the box will be made available for $3K each. Two remaining – contact dena@thelab.org to reserve.
Jacqueline Kiyomi Gork: Inside You Is Me is supported by generous grants from the San Francisco Arts Commission, the Jay DeFeo Foundation, and New Music USA, which is made possible by annual support and/or endowment gifts from Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, Mary Flagler Cary Charitable Trust, Baisley Powell Elebash Fund, and Gladys Krieble Delmads Foundation. The Lab's commissioning program is also funded by the Andy Warhol Foundation, San Francisco Grants for the Arts, and with crucial and continuing support from our Board of Directors and Members.
