Blog

  • Kerry Laitala: Recent Works

    UntitledKerry Laitala’s camera-less, electro-photographic images lie at the direct intersection between science and superstition, belief and manifestation. Using an electrical generator, she exposes light-sensitive 4×5” film with the build-up of ions that creates a corona discharge on the surface of conductive objects. The light generated comes directly from electricity; the corona discharge creates the photographic impression. This body of work takes into consideration Walter Benjamin’s seminal essay, “The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction” with regard to the aura of objects. Laitala works directly with small metal objects such as souvenirs, charms, or other artifacts that have been made conductive with the application of metal paint. Working with this process is rather new to her practice, but she has been experimenting with it for over three years. She merges digital technologies with analog processes for greater control over the composition at all stages of its creation.

    The photographs on display at Artists’ Television Access through December 4th include several works dialoguing with the 1915 Pan-Pacific International Exposition that transformed San Francisco’s Marina District one hundred years ago. Thanks to PPIE historians Laura Ackley and Donna Ewald Huggins for the use of archival images from the fair, and to the San Francisco Arts Commission for their funding of this project.

  • SOLO ORGAN Record Release show with SOLO ORGAN, BLACK SPIRITUALS, ETTRICK

    soloSOLO ORGAN
    Something along the lines of free gospel drone blues jazz n roll. Douglas Katelus playing alone on Hammond Organ is the final extension of ones obsession with the instrument. Pulling away everything from the extremity and keying in on the soul source… the organ/leslie speaker sound. Freeing oneself from the main structural being of what the Hammond sound is considered. Pulling outside of the structured musical genres one normally expects from the instrument. While still inspired by great players such as  Jimmy McGriff, Larry Young and Wild Bill Davis SOLO ORGAN is an attempt to strive away and grow off these influences.
    Allowing them to become into something “other” something from within. The long chords holds and lack of rhythm of this project are as far from organ jazz as you can get. But that’s still where it all comes from. dk

    http://www.douglaskatelus.com/ solo-organ.html
    BLACK SPIRITUALS
    Black Spirituals is a collaboration between two soloists who have found a new platform for the intersection of tone-generating electronic technology and the heart-thumping technology of acoustic percussion. This duet features a new tradition in conversant, duo vernacular dynamics that sparked a revolution in our conceptions of space, stage, ritual, performance, geography, praxis, brotherhood, relationships, rockin’ out, and more.

    Multi-Aesthetic percussionist Marshall Trammell’s STTRCRFT platform articulates his commitment to the study of the worlds’ percussive arts in his multi-limbed Improvisation system. Utilizing super bananas electronic and guitar sounds, live processing, and heavy-heavy percussion Mr Watkins “weaves…undulating dronescape(s), of deep sonic swells and muted electronic buzz, utilizing analog synths, guitars, drums and percussion, cassette, Casio, bass, and of course electricity(!)“

    http://blackspirituals.com/
    ETTRICK
    San Francisco Weekly review, John Graham, Feb 2010
    “Jazz for the Aftermath”
    The reeds-and-rhythm duo of Ettrick plays an improvisational, tabula rasa-type of thrashing free jazz that’s almost post-apocalyptic. At the very least it’s unconstrained by any normative form of architecture, occupying the wide open terrain vague between the turbulent saxophone cyclones of free jazz and the nuclear blast beats of avant-metal: imagine German sax titan Peter Brštzmann getting into a wild ‘n’ woolly rumble with Naked City drummer Joey Baron, or Anthony Braxton battling Orthrelm. In Ettrick, however, both members Ñ Jacob Felix Heule and Jay Korber Ñ play both instruments, tag-teaming each other by swapping instruments in mid-set, or both playing drums or saxophone simultaneously, inevitably choosing to do whatever causes the maximum amount of musical ruckus. It’s an exhausting, frenetic spectacle that, by dint of the effort expended at each gig, can only last a few minutes before either the players or the instruments end up half-wrecked. But all is not wanton destruction in Ettrick’s world: after the show, a few smiles are always sure to bloom like flowers amid the debris.

    http://ettrick.org/

    http://www.douglaskatelus.com/ record-release.html

  • Almost Public/Semi-Exposed II

    ATA Window Gallery presents: Almost Public/Semi-Exposed II
    November 3 – December 3

    ATA Window Gallery’s second annual month-long festival of installed performance art.
    From November 3rd to December 3rd we are hoping to host as many performers as possible to turn the ATA Window into an epicenter of constant live performance.

    Schedule:
    November 14 – To Skin a Catcaller (Mirabelle Jones)
    November 15 – The Object Body (Nathalie Brilliant & Christine Lee)
    November 17 – Blemished Pleasure (Maribel Lopez and Nicole Casado)
    November 20 – Thought Pilot (Ryan Bealer)
    November 21 – Hanging Out with the Victorians (Paula Morales)
    November 23 – A Ritual to Restore Identity (Jake Micron)
    November 27 – Tech is 4 No Bodies (Oscar Tidd)
    November 28 – Weird Garden – Icky Pavilion (Claire Bain)
    November 29 – Guarded Tactics (Melissa Koziebrocki)
    November 30 – EVøKE (Ryan Bealer and Darius Sohei)
    December 2 – Lust, Caution (June Li)
    December 3 – Marcelle Marais/Princess VuVu

    Detailed Schedule:

    November 14
    To Skin a Catcaller
    Mirabelle Jones

    Mirabelle Jones will expose 8 hours of street harassment within an increasingly constrictive & threatening space. This performance aims to reveal how perpetual street harassment can affect not only the psyche, personality, and behavior of the individual, but the quality of interpersonal relationships in regard to trust, safety, and mental-emotional well-being of an entire generation.

    November 15
    The Object Body
    Nathalie Brilliant and Christine Lee

    Nathalie Brilliant and Christine Lee will shape their bodies around the sculptures and remain in dynamic positions, supporting each other and the sculptures for as long as the compositions can be held. When something must release itself downwards, the performance artists will resume new durational positions.

    nathalie_Brilliant
    November 17
    Blemished Pleasure

    Nicole Casada and Maribel Lopez

    Blemished pleasure is a study of pleasure within confinement and at the mercy of public eye. It draws inspiration from Bluebeard (a French folktale) and the eminent cycle of destruction and dismantlement catalyzing a relief from dormancy.

    echos
    November 20
    Thought Pilot
    Ryan Bealer
    Ryan Bealer will begin in the window space with only himself, a small table, chair, stack of paper, and a typewriter handed down through his family. He will write his stream of consciousness onto the pages, in continuous process, and place each filled page into the window facing toward the street. Over the course of the installation, he will not stop until all the windows are filled. People will at first be able to see Ryan in plain view, but over time will peer through his words to see what is happening.
    November 21
    Hanging Out with the Victorians
    Paula Morales

    A collection of objects as an extension of the corporeal, understanding the process of commodifying objects. Paula Morales will archive several objects based on size, color, date, utility in an attempt of understanding society through the study of its objects.

    November 23
    A Ritual to Restore Identity
    Jake Micron

    We live in the age of mass documentation and the proliferation of our identity through social media, the neo-industrial complex and different nefarious government entities. Jake Micron wants to make his dent in the wall of the machine by performing a Ritual to Restore Identity, through Anonymity. Come and watch yourself dissolve into the world of lo-fi circuit bending wizardry!

    Untitled
    November 27
    Tech is 4 No Bodies
    Oscar Tidd/Political Animal Group

    TECH IS 4 NO BODIES.COM brings a web installation of the same name to meatspace. In a city with no space left, the only place for protest is virtual.

    On Black Friday, a High Holy Day of late industrial capitalism, Political Animal Group will confront the commodity fetish with bodies in the shop window. We are the technomonkeys: but like Chairman Mao said, tools speak through men. What luck: humanism sucks for most humans and non-human nature aside. Saving the environment is becoming a matter of having ground to stand on.

    Oscar Tidd and guest artists Lil Daddy and Larry Arrington will dance the object, manufacture the subject, and engage somatics and superstition with hope of cursing capital and alleviating alienation..

    oscar_tidd
    November 28 – 4-8PM
    Weird Garden – Icky Pavilion
    Claire Bain

    This performance doubles as a video shoot for the Blooming Babel project.http://bloomingbabel.blogspot.comBlooming Babel is a photo novel with imagery derived from fiction videos that I shoot. The project is about class, gender roles, and fashion (I’m not fashionable) vis a vis parenthood and grandparenthood (I’m neither). In this scene, the main character Brandy Bobeche sees or hallucinates her grandchild in a storefront window.

    claire_bain
    November 29
    Guarded Tactics
    Melissa Koziebrocki

    How do you protect yourself at night? With the rise of gun crime in the American city, a woman walking the streets must be cautious, guarded and take every preventative measure to ensure one’s physical safety. In Guarded tactics, through the use of an enclosed public yet “safe” space for experimentation, the artist will physically and verbally enact/re-present multiple strategic tactics promoted by instructors in the self defense training industry to protect oneself from violations. Through the use of duration, one will become aware of the physical an emotional strain of constantly maintaining this protective armor within this rape culture of fear.

    November 30
    EVØKE
    Ryan Bealer and Darius Sohei

    In Danish, ø is also a word, meaning “island”. If you were stranded on a desert island… what 3 things would you take with you?What if you couldn’t choose the things?What if you were sold a ticket to an “island”?

    We are often “sold an idea” rather than a product. They are selling us the promise of connection.

    What if the “island” is also the idea of the island, of this luxury experience? In some ways our expectations and the placebo effects around the thing actually change our experience of the thing itself.

    Context matters.

    The idea here being that each attendee to EVØKE brings their enlightenment to the mountaintop or “island”. What they bring is both their own creations and what they allow themselves to believe based on the hype and circumstance that EVØKE has crafted… When they finally arrive at the island (are allowed to participate in the exclusive, limited time viewing of the exhibit and immediate recording) they are confronted by what they have brought to the island, or, what the island has brought to them.

     IMG_0833
    December 2

    Lust, Caution – A Momentary Journey to Love and Beyond
    June Li

    7:00-7:30pm

    Live Chinese Calligraphic along with Dance performance.

    LUST – CAUTION.
    I keep looking at these two words to try to write a description. I failed in finding other words more precise than these. So I decided to invite you to complete this piece with me. Please accompany me trailing tendrils of ancient calligraphy between lines, strokes and strokes, to find your own answer through being a witness.

    Look forward to go on this momentary journey with you!

    December 3
    Princess VuVu/Marcelle Marais

    Bio: Marcelle Marais (born on July 6, 1985 in Cape Town, South Africa) is a multifaceted artist working in the mediums of painting, film, music and performance. Marcelle immigrated to the United States when she was eighteen and moved to San Francisco in 2004. She attended the San Francisco Art Institute, graduating with a Bachelor of Fine Arts in Painting in 2010. Post graduation, her interests took a radical detour and she spent the next couple years playing bass in the heavy metal band, Cardinal Wyrm. Departing from the band in 2013, her capricious nature has taken over resurrecting an unquenchable thirst for expression.  Her work is provocative, demonic, psychologically enthralling, ethereal and at times endearing. At the core of each creation, is a portrait of the artist. Her heart and life’s experiences find their way into her work connecting with the universal sufferings, sacrifices, loves, and passions of the human experience.