New music/sound + film/video collaborations by:
Suki O’Kane + John Davis
Jason Hoopes + Azin Seraj
Marielle Jakobsons + Kirthi Nath
with film scores performed live by:
Emily Packard, violin
Mia Bella D’Augelli, violin
Cory Wright, clarinet
Nava Dunkelman, percussion
Jeanie-Aprille Tang, electronics
Mission Eye & Ear is a live cinema series that brings together Bay Area composers and improvisers with filmmakers and video artists drawn from ATA’s diverse and geographically sprawling family, to create new works performed live at ATA by a stellar ensemble of local musicians. Composer-performers Jason Hoopes, Suki O’Kane and Marielle Jakobsons represent a rich cross-section of the local creative music scene, influenced by electronic music, acoustic improv, noise, avant-garde jazz, alt-rock and theatrical musical traditions of Asia. Filmmaker/media artists John Davis, Azin Seraj and Kirthi Nath explore cultural identity, documentary storytelling, dreamlike cinescapes and formal abstraction in a wide range of narrative and experimental works.
This March event is the first in a series of three Mission Eye & Ear events this year, organized by Bay Area musician and curator Lisa Mezzacappa with ATA. The first edition of Mission Eye & Ear, in 2011, commissioned nine composer-filmmaker teams to create new works. The series was remounted in a day-long marathon at Yerba Buena Center for the Arts in 2012, and has since traveled to cities in Italy and Germany, where local musicians provide live scores for films commissioned for the series.
Visit: www.missioneyeear.com
Artist bios
Bassist Jason Hoopes holds a Master of Arts degree in composition from Mills College. In addition to his versatile work in Bay Area rock bands Jack O’ The Clock, Satya Sena, The Atomic Bomb Audition, and powerdove (among others), Jason’s compositional work with dancers (Molissa Fenley, Peiling Kao, Alyce Finwall) has been performed nationally and internationally. Jason is also an improviser in the Fred Frith Trio (add drummer Jordan Glenn), and Eat The Sun with kotoist/composer Gretchen Jude and guitarist Noah Phillips (EFFT, Date Palms).
Sound artist and violinist Marielle V. Jakobsons creates electro-acoustic compositions of evocative, pulsing drones. She has published prolifically on Thrill Jockey, Important Records, Digitalis, Mexican Summer, Root Strata, among others, and has toured across the Americas & Europe. A classically-trained musician turned sound designer and educator by trade, she creates and collaborates extensively in the experimental arts.
Suki O’Kane is a classically trained mallet percussionist, composer and instigator working with artists from a wide array of of music, movement and public art genres. She plays percussion with Moe! Staiano’s Moe!kestra!, Dan Plonsey’s Daniel Popsicle, with Dohee Lee in realizations of her multidisciplinary performance and installation piece Mago and is a member of both the Cinepimps, an expanded cinema project, and the Thingamajigs Performance Group. Her compositions for experimental theater include three commissions for Theatre of Yugen with playwright Erik Ehn, and two commissions with inkBoat. She is directing the development of music for What A Stranger May Know, Ehn’s 32-play cycle remembering the victims of the Virginia Tech Massacre while developing new site-specific work for the Illuminated Corridor, a nomadic public art project that creates streetscapes of live experimental music and performative projection in Oakland (2014), San Francisco (2015), West Marin (2016).
John Davis is a Northern California visual artist and musician. His current work builds on the transcendental qualities of experimental film, while expanding the relationship between moving image and sound through live performance, collaboration, experimentation and improvisation. John’s performance work involves partnerships with other media artists, alternating both as musician and filmmaker. Improvisation typically defines these collaborations, giving priority to spontaneity and chance over formal rehearsal. John Davis will present “Untitled” a 16mm film accompanied by a live score by Suki O’Kane plus an earlier piece ”Frequency Mass”.
Kirthi Nath makes films that seem spun from dreams. As an award-winning independent South Asian filmmaker, Kirthi has established a body of creative work that fluidly straddles genres, occupying a fertile landscape of cultural poetics, experimentalism, documentary and hybrid narrative. Tactile and dreamlike, her work explores storytelling, desire, spirituality, cultural identities and moments of being. Current projects include a series of multimedia projects about magical messages, creative presence and modernday mindfulness. In addition to her own artistic work, Kirthi is the founder and lead media producer at Cinemagical Media, a media production house that collaborates with companies, non profits and entrepreneurs to create videos that transform lives and open up possibilities. Kirthi will present Presence Prayer accompanied with a score by Marielle Jakobsons Plus an earlier work Flying.
