Gravity Spells: Bay Area New Music And Expanded Cinema Art

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This limited release (ed.100) consisted of a hand-silkscreened gatefold jacket that housed four DVD’s and two LP’s of original films and music, as well as a 50-page booklet of writing and images bound in a hand letterpress cover.

The project was conceived to publicly showcase emerging and established strains of expanded cinema and music collaboration in the San Francisco Bay Area, as well as to create a physical document that captured that energy.

Although commissioned as pairs (Craig Baldwin with Maggi Payne; Paul Clipson with Tashi Wada; Lawrence Jordan with John Davis; Kerry Laitala with Ashley Bellouin & Ben Bracken), the edition was designed so the works could be experienced interchangeably. This encouraged a matrix of possibilities, but also emphasized the element of chance tied directly to live cinema and music performance (dropping the needle on the record and hitting “Play” on the DVD player will always result in a different event).

Musicians and filmmakers featured on the publication LP’s and DVD’s:

Craig Baldwin: Time Bomb (DVD 1), Ashley Bellouin & Ben Bracken: After Image (LP Side A) , Paul Clipson: Trajections (DVD 2), John Davis: Strategy of Belief (LP Side B), Lawrence Jordan: Driving Demons (DVD 3), Kerry Laitala: Solar Furnace (DVD 4), Maggi Payne: Black Ice/Static (LP Side C), Tashi Wada: Duet Takes: 1. Duet [Take 2], 2. Duet [Take 4] (LP Side D). Music Mastered by James Plotkin.

Contributing writers for the publication booklet:

Courtney Fellion "The Phantom Limb" - Steve Polta "For Gravity Spells" - Federico Windhausen "Commitments".

To celebrate the publication release and extend the series to as many friends and collaborators as was humanely possible, a performance series showcasing irregular pairings of publication artists alongside select Bay Area filmmakers and musicians were held over four Saturdays in July, 2014 at the Kala Art Institute in Berkeley. The series included sixteen performances over four weeks, with over 100 guests in attendance each night. The Kala Art Institute, Meyer Sound and the San Francisco Cinematheque provided generous in-kind support for the events, and were instrumental in helping promote the publication and live series.

Performance series participants:

7/5/14 - Jeremy Rourke, Mary Helena Clark with Andy Roche, Jim Haynes, Kerry Laitala with Ashley Bellouin & Ben Bracken. 7/12/14 - Mark Wilson with Marielle Jakobsons, Andy Puls, Keith Evans, Lawrence Jordan with John Davis. 7/19/14 - Zach Iannazzi, Thad Povey & Mark Taylor, Steve Dye with Anthony Iamurri, Paul Clipson with Ashley Bellouin & Ben Bracken performing works by Tashi Wada. 7/26/14 - Chris Duncan, Beige, Tooth with Collin McKelvey, Craig Baldwin with Maggi Payne.

Performance series photographs by Dianne Jones.

About:

The Gravity Spells project is a multimedia publication launch and four-night performance series showcasing collaborative strands of San Francisco Bay Area art across disciplines. Created in 2006, its purpose is to highlight established, emerging and often overlooked Bay Area artists working within the genres of music, film performance art and beyond. While the publication serves to create a tangible embodiment of the ineffable qualities inherent in live performance, it also reinforces the spirit of collaboration, chance and excitement that accompanies live collaborative performance.

The films and music within the publication are meant to give form to the ineffable. A physical set of transposable time-based variables that, when combined, approximate the uncanny and unpredictable inherent in live cinema and music performance.

The LP records and corresponding DVD media are designed to be interchangeable, emphasizing the project’s focus on chance and serendipity, while furthering an interest in the confluence of energies and synthesis of forms resulting from collaborative performance.

The artists selected for the live series were encouraged to collaborate with individuals they hadn’t worked with previously as a way to promote new works, while also helping extend community overlap and grow diverse audiences.

The writing contributions add unique perspectives from individuals embedded both within the project and beyond - scholars, artists, historians and curators (some, all of the above), each providing informed transmissions at various intersections from within the constellation of contemporary Bay Area Media Arts practice.

Reviews

Bimodal Press, BMP 001, 2014