I spoke with Richard Garet on April 25th, initially about the Subtropics festival which we’ll both be participating in in Miami next month, and then about the broader set of questions I’ve been discussing with others. Here are a few relevant links if you want to get a sense of his work before reading further.
Live recordings
Sound Art Installations Solo Exhibit
MAAS Performance 1 / 2
SFMoMA Performance
2 multichannel works streamed from Leerraum, Bern
Publications
Fridman Gallery performance
Times Square Midnight Moment Project
press release
about the piece
promotional clip about the piece and process
opening video
Midnight Moment
pictures from June 5th
JG: Maybe we’ll start with talking about the Subtropics piece, just since that’s the most immediate thing. And I got some sense of it. What you sent was great, and I imagine it’s not finished yet, because it’s still a couple months off.
RG: For many years now I have known of Gustavo [Matamoros], because of the sound field interests and also because he’s originally from Venezuela, and although I was born in Uruguay, I have also lived in Venezuela ten years and change, from 1985 till 1996, something like that.
Oh, so you knew him there?
No I did not. Once I became very active in the world of sound and experimental music, a lot of people mentioned, oh, you probably know Gustavo, and I was like, no, I know of him, but we never met. We actually met in November 2015 in Spain during a festival in which we both participated in Valencia and Madrid. From the moment we met, I felt like I’d known him already. We hit it off. And we exchanged materials and kept in touch ever since. Time has passed and recently he invited me to be part of his subtropics programming that he’s running in Miami this summer of 2017.
About my work, I’m always working on a lot of things at the same time and I have pieces that are constantly evolving due to modifications and additions of material. My generative works for multi-channel systems are like that. I’m constantly working on the sounds, or adding on new ones, and so forth, seeking always to achieve an organic flow. It feels natural that way and in every new presentation they seem to mature and evolve. The timeframe in such cases vary depending on the approach. In a performance it can be something around a 30-60 minute range. If it is more inclined towards the installation approach it could be something that I leave ongoing in a room as long is necessary. In such installation cases the more it runs, the better it gets, organically speaking.
Nonetheless, I also compose durational pieces that are both stereo and multi-channel. However, they are composed and then the sounds become permanently fixed. For such multichannel compositions, a number that I became very fond of is 4 channel settings (quadraphonic). It’s a good approach to space, and limitations, too. I find it to be more efficient, functional, and significant to have a quadraphonic setup instead of larger numbers, because within this practice, spaces often are not ideal and quite irregular. So a larger number could become redundant and not as effective as it should be. I have been there. So I’ve been working on these quadraphonic pieces for a long time, now, and then when Gustavo approached me, I said to myself, I don’t know exactly what I’m going to do, but it will either be a finished quad piece, or I’ll do something more performative using an algorithmic patch, and then I can work on the spatialization in real time. However, when opportunities come up, I always tend to go with the last thing that I’m working on, if suitable, and that helped me make the decision in addition to the pressure to give a quick answer because of the programming. And I was like, okay, I think I should go with this quad composition piece that I’m working on. And that’s the information I sent you both. So I will be presenting a quadraphonic composition, and it’s not something that I’m really making in a specific space. In this case I will play the room, in terms of EQing the piece or making sure that the work suits the environment. It’s a listening piece that I’m arranging in my studio, and from the studio it will go to the listening space. So it’s mostly focused on material and listening. And then I think when I bring it to an environment; it will reach its full expression, because then it’s something that will become fully articulated for the environment, in a physical space, and in front of an audience. Therefore I believe the space will conclude the work. The materials that I’m using for the work are also what I described in the text I sent, and it’s pretty much my approach to sound, which is in a way outside of music, per se, because I’m not necessarily interested in harmony, melody, and tonality, musical instruments, or music notation. I’m interested in material, initially from a listening perspective, and secondly, from an ontological one. Process is also relevant to the work. Sometimes I listen to a sound and I like it, but you know, if it doesn’t really connect to anything that I find exciting, I tend to move on. So yeah, that basically is what I’m bringing in. And then in terms of titles, titles are personal, and they usually can be direct or scientific, or it can be something more personal and poetic. I would say in this particular title, it’s more imaginative, and it kind of provides the listener, the audience, something to grab and activate their imaginations as they listen to the work.
You talked about, it’s not really dealing with the space specifically, where it’s going to be realized. So do you envision it being transparent to the space, or that’s just where it comes into being?
In situations like this where I get invited to present sound work, I like to get to know the space. I like to have a sense of what the space is, in order to make my final decisions. In this case, I was fortunate because I happened to be in Florida in March and I visited the sound gallery. I asked Gustavo the important questions about the space and the speaker configurations, audience, etc. So that helped me also tailor the work imagining how sound could behave and exist in there. So if I get a proper sense of it, I can imagine it, right? And the Subtropics environment is quite intimate. It’s quite small. So in this particular case, I’m not interested in basically overpowering the audience with excessive amplitude or physicality, like in some other situations might be the case. For this particular case, I’m more interested in a focused listening approach, nuances, and subtleties of sound, and how things will integrate with the environment as people listen to the work. And this is going to be my approach here. And the piece itself, like I said, it’s a listening piece. It’s not something abrupt or dynamically abrupt. I think it has a good balance between low end and mid-high frequencies, textures, timbre, and movement. The movement involves panning and discrete sounds. So in this case, I think it’s going to be more directed to the ear than to the body. The work will be enveloping the audience with a listening purpose and less physicality targeting the body. And that’s also why I decided to bring this work, because considering the environment, to bring this kind of work made absolute sense. Though I also make pieces that are the opposite of what I just said, which are very physical, and with sensory overload qualities, and with everything in between. But for this particular situation, I’m bringing a more focused listening type of work.
That makes sense. Are there releases of yours that you would characterize along those lines as being listening pieces?
Yeah, I would say that all my releases, my CD pieces are along these lines.
So more like installations would be the other?
Not necessarily. I think each approach targets and considers a unique listening approach. Because, for example, I always try to aim to the psychology of listening and the headspace, right? And I feel that a CD publication for example, is something composed for intimate listening, and not about the sonic expansion and the acoustics of physical space. It’s about how we process that sonic information in our heads, because people will be listening to this kind of work in either a near field monitor or a boom-box, in their car, or headphones, depending on who you are, what kind of equipment you have, or what kind of audiophile you might be. So I feel that a composition that goes into a thing such as CD, or a cassette or something of that nature, has a higher level of refinement and focus that is more related to that headspace approach. In such cases you cannot really tackle down different ideas that relate to space, or relate to a certain degree of physicality. Right? You have to tailor the work in such a way that it fits the parameters of such a mediated context. So yes, I would say that my compositions that have been polished and articulated after long periods of listening and making arrangements to it have that sort of characteristic. If I perform live, then I tend to take things to the space, to the directness of executing a tactile approach to materiality, where all the sounds, or the sonic experience is constructed in the moment. I believe that such level of directness and physicality brings the audience and the performer together.
And if I do an installation such as a multi-channel sound piece, I think it has a balance of everything, because it’s somewhat sound that has been pre-made, tailored, but it might leave room for some actions made in the moment, while also having the capacity to make choices that target and shape the sound in the room. Also the relationship to material, space, and putting the work together is more expansive and more goes to it. This approach would consider speaker location and the acoustics of the space, the people visiting and moving around, and the entire phenomenon that occurs from experiencing the room. So I think a multi-channel installation or performance-installation per se may encompass all various approaches combined. And like I was mentioning, if I’m sitting down at a table working with my hands, creating a sonic experience, then I could do that either as a stereo output or go from there into more channels. But usually when I perform live, I like to think of it or approach it in such a way where the tactile and the directness of me working with sound is more present. So in my practice, depending on what I need to get done, things might take a different level of involvement, thinking, and process. It’s never the same. And then beyond all that, I also make objects, sound pieces that are more like for gallery spaces or site-specific spaces, which also means a different type of reception or experience. And that can be something with different levels of complexity, or something such as a simple gesture or a simple idea happening consistently over time. And that’s also a different approach that relates to function, objects, and experience too. It conceptualizes things differently with a reductive and parsed approach to sonic matter and its sources.
It’s refreshing to hear it differentiated so sensibly. I haven’t heard someone lay out the differences in approach based on situations so clearly before, and it’s helpful. It’s great.
Thank you.
It’s obvious in the way you’re describing these things that you’ve had a lot of experience with all of these different approaches, and you’ve thought a lot about what works and why it can work.
Thanks. Well I have thought about it a lot myself, and I tend to be my own critic. And in every situation, I try to imagine all possible questions and scenarios, and try to have an answer for that. Maybe that’s something that I developed out of grad school, because it was very critical in the sort of sense that you always needed to be able to talk about what you’re doing, and really dig deep into what it is that you do, so you can understand what you’re doing better and express it to others. But nothing really ever stopped me if I don’t have an answer for something in the moment, because also my work truly is very intuitive, experimental and empirical in nature. Meaning that when I’m embedded in the moment of working with something, I let the work take me where it needs to go. If I do not understand what it is, I just trust the work and keep going. Answers usually emerge later on and those tend to be significant discoveries because I could have not gotten there otherwise. I guess the opposite would be with control, reasoning, or by preconception. That also participates intermittently I would say when I take breaks. And then later on, as the work evolves, I try to answer those questions for myself, and I guess that’s how I really came to understand the differences in my work in relationship to material, practice, process, context, and how people are going to experience the work. Additionally, when I go to see or listen to the work of other people out there, I present those same questions to myself about their work. Therefore, besides taking the work in that’s what I think about in those moments too.
I was interested to hear that word empirical too, because when I got into this experimental music thing or zone or whatever, it was by way of, oddly enough, William James, the philosopher, and radical empiricism. That’s a long story in itself, but it connects in interesting ways. And he talks about, the most I can say to someone is, go to this place, and certain things may occur. But that interest in, something’s open and something can happen. I have questions, but I’m going to go have an experience. So it’s an interesting question for me too.
Yeah. You said it beautifully and I totally relate to that description. Also let’s put it this way and that’s something I figured out long time ago. Not every day we have a great idea of what it is that we need to do or we need to accomplish. So I realized that for me, it was important to be embedded in the work, allowing the work to emerge from the process of dealing with the work itself. I like what you just said, and that explains it well. Occasionally, I have strong ideas too. But I never let the idea dominate what I’m doing. So I always let it go to wherever it needs to go, and I try to be an observant of that process with optimism. So if something really interesting pops up, I’m paying attention. Let’s say if one is really attached to an idea, that sort of thing could be completely ignored, right? If so I feel the will of the idea is going to dominate. So in my case now, I start from something with potential that I’m responsive to, and then it goes from there. If the initial approach creates a process, such a process will trigger new responsive ideas that subsequently would also redirect the process, and this goes on and on. It becomes a measured, weighted, and balancing approach too. But I always try to keep it real and natural, and I try not to force my hand on this cycle of events that is occurring. And that’s how I got to develop an organic methodology in my work that’s always at tension, risk, and it tries to bring everything together as a full unity experience, rather than a mind dominating everything. For me, it’s like an integration of all the layers of oneself and the external world working together.
So like the space, the audience— What are those things? It’s just whatever elements or creatures are in the space, and the sound?
Well no, I was referring mostly to my level of intention, or my connection or my involvement in the process of making anything. Because somebody could easily say, that an idea dominates everything, from beginning to end. And that’s fine and an accomplishment in itself. And it can be beautiful, and it can function very well. But like I said before, to me, that does not work, because in one end you can really get a headache trying to come up with a brilliant idea of what the work is going to be. Also I need to feel the surprise and the progress in the work taking me to a fruitful discovery. So for me, it was more functional and effective, to get involved in a process in which the final outcome is something that emerges from being in the process. And that’s what I mean by being fully integrated. Nonetheless, no matter what format the work might take I feel safe to say that this approach applies to all of it. There are nuances and subtleties that can be articulated to activate the work and the listener, and it will vary taking into consideration what the approach is, but the discoveries are what keep it all interesting. And that’s something that I’ve been developing and evolving over the years, and I try to learn from each single experience I encounter.
That sounds really productive. Just one simple logistical thing. Is the piece going to be done in the studio, in the Audiotheque, or is it in a different space?
The Subtropics festival? My understanding was that it was going to be presented there, in the small gallery, because we looked at the space and we talked about possible speaker configurations, and he told me how the audience usually sits and spreads, and how he arranges the environment. And that totally registered in, and I’ve been thinking about that ever since.
So we can get into the other questions if you like now, unless there’s anything else you wanted to say?
No, that’s it.
Yeah. And I guess one last thing. Will there be live processing, or will you let it run once you’ve set it up?
My piece for the solo night will be ready, but the live maneuvering will focus on making the work suitable for the space and the listening experience. That’s what I meant before about playing the room and that means really responding to the room as the work plays out. So I guess the live aspect will be articulating the space. Because I may go there and do a sound check and have everything in place, but when people arrive it will be a different space and sound will behave differently. I will do a live thing for the marathon. Gustavo asked me if I was going to be part of that. So there will be a 20-minute live intervention, but I still don’t know what it is. And I will try to keep it as fresh as possible. So yes, on the 20th of July, I will present my piece. It will be an hour long. And then a couple days later, I will participate in this marathon. I believe it consists of continuing hours of back-to-back presentations of different people. And I will be doing something under 20 minutes long that I still do not know what it is.
Right. But there won’t be that component in the first piece that we talked about, probably.
No, I think it will probably be more direct instead of something very refined and composed.
Great. And then just sort of preliminary to this next set of questions, I just want to be sure that— Some of the questions include this term, experimental music. And I’ve seen you use that term a few times in your interviews and things, so I guess it’s something you’re happy to use, but I don’t want to assume that completely.
Yeah.
If there’s another term that you relate to more as sort of this region of interest in sound and working with sound, I’m happy to use a different term.
No, no. I’m very comfortable with it, and I’m very aware of what it means. To me, at least, it means two things. One is, experimental music versus the avant-garde music, avant-garde European experimental music, American, all embedded in the history of music and the school of John Cage, right? That’s just one meaning. And the other meaning, which it could be personal to each individual, is that when I mean experimental, I mean an execution of exploratory processes that uncover the work. That’s basically it. So when I say experimental music I’m relating to the second part. However, I also find it all very connected to the post-Cage, American tradition.
That lineage, yeah.
Experimental music, I mean work that is heavy on process, and emerges from exploring materials and trying things, and not knowing from the get-go an outcome or the imposition of an idea or of something specific that is going to make the work. Because some people might allow some experimentation, or some people might just know exactly what it is that are they doing, and they might have a specific idea they need to realize, and that’s the work. But in my case, I embrace experimentation.
Yeah, so as the verb of experimenting, not necessarily as the lineage back to certain people.
Perhaps!
So along those lines, probably, can you talk about one or two of your earliest or most meaningful encounters with experimental music, or with this type of working?
That’s a great question, because you totally put me on the spot, and I need to think a little bit about it. Yeah, I would say, you mean throughout my whole practice from the beginning, what were the most—
Either earliest or most meaningful, so just kind of a light bulb moment for you, even if it was long after you got— It’s not so much a question of when, but of the impact that it had for you.
Okay, first of all, since I’m not from the United States, for me coming to New York in 1996 was quite huge and enlightening. I remember having the drive to make certain kind of works put me in the right path to discovering what was out there. Information traveled different in the 90s, back then the most advance thing I had was a beeper. So you had to dig deeper to access and discover anything. When I started I did not have as much information of the context or knowing other people doing it. Initially, what brought me to music were the interest in sound and the interest in having this intuitive necessity to listen to something, and trying to find it in my interaction with sound. So when first had the courage to try to make anything, I didn’t know how to play music, but I had a painted zebra electric guitar that was making all sorts of noise, and I was making tapes and cassettes, and recording from cassette to cassette, and making these tapes that were like these imaginative experiments, that to me, didn’t really have any relevance, because I thought, well, you need to learn how to play music. That was the inherited expectation. So then I learned how to play music, and I moved away from that around 1998. Over the years I heard of experimental music but not much made an impression. I guess something that I was trying to avoid by moving away from music was the sensed obligation of repeating the same work over and over. It felt that I needed to be doing something unique, instead of repeating the same all the time. I didn’t like it. And that was what took me to art school, because I was like, okay, I want to be in a place where you make one thing, and that’s it, and the next time you make something else, and that’s it, and I never want to repeating what I’m doing twice. That feels more like living and life in itself.
It sounds like that’s driven your practice really significantly since then.
Yes, completely, it seems like 30 years since that very first moment. And so when I started going to art school in visual arts, and I started making connections between visual arts and the development of the sonic field in the 20th century, I felt quite energized. Then learning about the experiments of Futurism and Dada, radio art, and then getting to know musique concrète and early experiments of computer music, was super exciting and inspiring. This was still way before the access of Google and YouTube and all these platforms that can give you anything today for free at few clicks. But the guy, and the works that I listened of his that totally blew my mind and freaked me out, was the electronic pieces of Iannis Xenakis, especially Persepolis and La Légende d’Eer. I wanted to know what the hell that was. I was like wow; this is what I want to do. How do I start? How do I begin to make things that start to sound just like it? And I didn’t know how. Anyhow, I can say now I know how to make works such as that, but I have no interest in making it. The love is the same though.
That was a catalyst.
It was like I really get this and I needed more. So then, in a way, I realized that a sound based creative practice can exist outside of music and that I could make sound pieces with an approach to material, rather than constructing a composition based on tonality, melody, rhythm, and harmony. So from that moment on, I started working with sound and experimenting with different things, and one of the rules that I made for myself so that I would understand the materials better was to completely get rid of musical instruments, and then just use anything that I could find that would be made as a starting point, and then obviously, when the personal computer became more accessible and available for us, that sort of became in a way like a big canvas where I could grab sound and treat it like I learned to do it with painting. I was also fascinated by Varèse’s comments from the early 20th century where he said that he wanted a machine that could play noises. He anticipated so much! I mean, crazy, right? So by coming from visual arts, working with a canvas and trying to paint with a tactile experience, where one shapes matter and try to arrange everything relationally within space, and by building layers upon layers within a perimeter, that somehow gave me a notion of what I could do with sound as well. I felt that I rediscovered sound. Then things started to make sense. And I went on doing that.
But to me, in the beginning experimental music was something that I was doing on the side, on my own, without sharing with anybody, without knowing whom else was doing that sort of thing. And then at the same time, because I was in New York, I got to know more in depth about John Cage and those around him such as Lucier too. Knowing about Cage’s work felt like he gave me permission to go nuts in trying out things, because he was all about that, right? Exploring and experimenting, and trying to remove himself from taste, also by permitting sounds from the world to partake as music, and by imitating nature’s mode of operation. Cage made sense and became a strong voice that helped people to channel their own personal curiosities and experiments. And that’s like, okay, well if John Cage can do it, I felt encouraged to go further too. He certainly paved the way. And I just went for it. And that’s how things started to evolve. Though I took from Cage what was functional and useful to me. But of course I also had different models, because even so, I was not making music or writing music in a traditional sense, I was listening to much music, and then I was reshaping sonic matter in time. I was very interested too in the work of Morton Feldman and the whole New York School at the time, and then in Europeans too, obviously Xenakis, but also I was listening to Luigi Nono and then Ligeti, Satie, Giacinto Scelsi and many others. And to me what was interesting in these models was the relationship to sonority, timbre, texture, duration and everything that expanded and pushed the limits from traditional music and entretainment. And those were my initial aesthetics that I was sort of taking into consideration. Someone else that made a strong impression was Bernhard Günter. Wow, he had an amazing run of incredible listening records. I believe he was much influenced by the same guys I mentioned. I mean those were the models for so many, but Günter was a pioneer in his own right too. Eventually in my exploration of sound I was able to find a good balance between aesthetics and the relationship between material and the significance of its source. And that’s pretty much how I started.
I went all over the place with your question, but I would say that Iannis Xenakis and probably Morton Feldman and Cage were the very first most significant ones. They were the three primary models from which I received the biggest impact that I had as a listener and sound-maker. Then of course in grad school and within the interdisciplinary program of Bard MFA, I had the great opportunity of studying with people such as Maryanne Amacher, Richard Teitelbaum, David Behrman, Miya Masaoka, Laetitia Sonami, Peter Ablinger, Bob Bielecki. Also in small portions, because they were visiting faculty, Toni Conrad, Alvin Lucier, Pauline Oliveros and more. I witnessed very intimate presentations by artists such as Robert Ashley; he presented the full series of Perfect Lives and then spoke thoroughly about it. The 10 of us in the room, including Maryanne loved it very much. When the presentation started there were like 60 people there or more. That was something! Also Christian Marclay came while I was there and others too. Maryanne was without doubt a strong influence. We spent long hours just talking about ear tones, spatilization, the mysticism of speaker location, her tridimensional shapes, and her amazing stories of working with Cage and Stockhausen. She always blew my mind with her authentic love for sound and music and her responses took things to unforeseen territories of sound, space, and listening. Among us students, the ones that were devoted to her, we used to call her the oracle. She always helped see things in my work that I could not on my own. I have a work titled Electrochroma that I dedicated to her, and she gave me much feedback while I was working on it. I totally went with her suggestions and she was so right about it. The work was completed in 2009 I think and it is a single video channel and 5.1 audio.
It’s interesting. I spoke to someone else who had a similar experience of playing with tapes early on, and didn’t know anybody else who was doing it, but then sort of found out this was a fruitful thing. But it sounds like really quite a journey in finding the things that mattered to you.
Yeah, well I’m 45 now in 2017, and back when I was a kid, before I had these experiences, some people were very connected to radio. Some other persons were connected to vinyl records. For me, it was the cassette. It was the cassette, the walkman, and the boom box. It became my first vehicle for expression. That’s how I experienced music. And also the audiocassette was the place to record, chop, put together, overlap, splice, and do all of those things. I got my hands on digital media and the computer in early 2000s, so I went on with just the computer for quite a while, and it took a good amount of years to go back and realize that cassettes are very interesting, and magnetic tape is very interesting. And then I started to mesh it all up. I guess also because as technologies become more outmoded and disjointed with the sensibility of the moment, then analogue means became more and more enchanting. Perhaps I’m too romantic about the cassette, but it’s a very noble material that contains a unique quality of sound, with significant amount of ephemeral conditions and possibilities for transformation. I never became disenchanted with mediums from the past. On the contrary, I’ve found richness in combining the past and the present, and in creating a space were both are coexisting. Imagine starting from the void, and how one could build walls and created space. And the wider the walls are in relationship to each other, the bigger the space gets. So I think on one opposite wall, I have old media, and on the other, opposite, I have new media. And the more I expand within these parameters, the bigger the spectrum gets, and the more interesting and rich it becomes. Because as a listener, I also understood that there’s a very obvious set of aesthetics that are associated with any media. It’s something that’s very obvious for both digital and analog. But when you start working on meshing and transforming or collecting materials that do not discriminate, I found that I could find richness and a signature that is more unique to my work and to what I’m doing than to allowing the tool to become the primary voice and protagonist in the work. Also I do not like to reveal how I make my work. And I like when people cannot figure out how I make the work.
So then I feel like I’ve gotten some good glimpses of this already in what you’ve shared with me, but I’ll ask it directly, because you never know what will happen. What is it that is compelling to you about experimental music, and how does it connect with your experience more broadly? How does it connect with your life?
What is it about experimental music that—
Well it’s kind of like, why do you think you as a person care about it, or relate to it, in the way that you do?
To be honest, I think it’s beyond notion. It’s something that has become so personal that I cannot escape from. It’s almost like it’s not my fault. But I can understand what happens when I put the TV on the wrong channel and I hear the difference to then the next channel also is playing noise. I understand the difference between those two because I can hear each individually and when in sequence or combined their relationships. Also I have tried to do different things and I have failed, because it did not feel right. But this is something, that when I embrace what’s personal, what’s unique, what’s truly coming from a special place inside, this is what I encounter. And at this point in life, after so long of doing this, there’s no turning around. This is what I do. The hope is always that it progresses.
You can’t really decouple it from yourself.
Yeah. And something that I embrace more than anything is for the work to become personal. You know? Let all the weird stuff out, and don’t let that scare you. So that has become my rule, or my general rule, I guess, in what I do, is just really constantly digging into my practice to try to get that very thing that is more distinctive and more personal, more unique, and more surprising, and at the same time, progressive, because I’m constantly listening to what’s out there and I want to feel that the work is relevant. And I get turned off if I’m exploring something and I go to a show and somebody else is doing it similarly, it’s not like, oh, great. I’m going to go back to my studio and keep trying to do that. No, it’s like, oh, crap. I should be moving in a different direction or try something else. But this is more related to a tangible process or concept that relates to a specific element that may have the potential to enter the vocabulary and it gives you a distinctive result.
I imagine New York is a place where that would happen more than some other places.
Yeah. So obviously and not always but sometimes it’s really hard to escape from certain aesthetics and experiments per se. Because pretty much everything is generic and it belongs to anyone until you make it your own. But I guess what is personal to me and what’s significant to me is when you grab that thing and bring it to a place that it becomes truly yours and you establish a signature. It’s something that you do that has a unique touch that belongs to you. I cannot avoid if what I do is similar to the work of an artist that maybe I don’t know personally or his/her work. I also think that people may also arrive to similar places from complete different routes. That’s something that no one can avoid if it happens organically. And that’s okay. I can live with that. But in my approaches I try to keep my direction towards a very personal way. I guess the objective would be to create work that is equal to one’s shape, voice, etc. I don’t know if that answers your question.
It does, and in a very different way than anybody else has answered it, too. But it definitely does.
Yeah, because you know what? I think this is very important, too. I relate to my work in a very biological way, and I listen to my gut more than I listen to my mind. If we’re going to think in biological terms, when your bladder’s full and tells you to go to the bathroom, you have to listen to your body. It’s a real thing. It’s something very, very tangible. So when it comes to making anything creatively, I think your gut is also telling you things. It’s also telling you something that sometimes is more strong than what your mind might tell you, and your mind, in the way it works, is going to try to take over and it can be deceiving. For me thinking is intermittently involved and it happens after too. Thinking is what happens when you look at things from the outside in a way. So I try to avoid that when I’m right in it, and I try to be more connected with what’s happening in the moment. And hopefully if I’m having a good working day I can move faster than my mind does.
Yeah, plenty of things sound good and could sound good, but really connecting it with yourself and your circumstance. This next question is more general about what you’re doing in the field otherwise. Most people I know in this field tend to have more than one type of role within it. I could list some of those, but I think you probably kind of know. What are the main roles you’ve taken on, and do you find that they complement each other? I know there’s your label, for one thing.
What are the main roles that I take on in the production of my work?
Yeah, or within your artistic work. So the things I’ve listed off, because I’m talking to a lot of different people, like composer, performer, improviser, teacher, writer, critic, organizer, curator, supporter, producer. People are doing a lot of things. What are the main things you’re doing?
I do this full time, and I’ve been fortunate to have a full time practice as an artist in a city like NY. I used to teach art few years back. I did organize a live series from 2004-2013 and I do also run and direct (very slowly) the Contour Editions label. Artistically I do different things too, because I create multimedia work and have exhibitions in gallery spaces that are commercial galleries, alternative gallery spaces, and in institutions such as museums and private institutions too. In addition I have also done public projects and site-specific projects for dedicated places such as the one I did for the Midnight Moment in Times Square. All of this as a multimedia artist, right? Some of these pieces are with sound at its core. At the same time, I feel that as an artist, I have participated in two parallel worlds that occasionally overlap. The other one is my experimental work with sound, performing, creating compositions and sound based projects such as immaterial ones per se. I find it to be something that operates outside of the art world pretty much too. So to my experience living in NY alternative venues, artist-run series, and so forth is where it all happens when it comes to experimental music and performing live with sound and incorporating sound art approaches that are not necessarily object based. There is something unique about being an experimentalist and explorer of the confines of sound and listening, which to me, right now is one place where I can feel absolutely free without any kind of compromise. Such freedom to me feels like the last frontier.
That’s the best.
In contrast to such freedom of experimenting with sound, participating in the gallery art world can be more difficult. I feel things get complicated there, because there is a serious economy behind it and other people are financially involved as well. One feels a different kind of pressure there.
I’ve thought about that sort of issue as well. I basically made the decision not to try to earn money through music, and just to do something else for that. I wanted to do what I wanted to do in music, and realized probably no one was going to pay me for it, and it would be a lot less political and a lot less frustrating if I wasn’t trying to earn a living that way.
It’s true. And like with speech, no one should tell you what to say. If you want to do something because you want to make money, maybe you should be in something else. So in that respect, also, money and the desire for making money with what I do, to me was never the objective as a creative person. Although do not take me wrong because I wish to make a living with my work, but what I do not want is to sacrifice my integrity and the integrity of the work. That being said, I always did my work; even so with the work that I bring to galleries and other spaces, the integrity is always intact. I think I have also been lucky because for so long I worked in an anonymous state and I had the chance to develop a voice in a way that I cannot find a word for it. How would you say it?
Oh, obscurity, maybe.
Yeah, I was in total obscurity for too long, to the point that I was capable of developing a voice that was not affected and influenced by any power dynamics in that way. So by the time I got there, I didn’t need to feel the pressure of changing to please anyone’s agenda. But I understood that when you are with a dealer, when your work is placed in a commercial environment, there are things that can become quite challenging. There are production costs, there is this, there is that, the dealer is also investing money and all combined involve many concerns because things can go either way. I never felt that was the case performing or making experimental sound work, because there is a completely different system of operation in place.
If anything, I think the only economy that I find within it is sort of an economy of attention. Who’s getting more attention sometimes becomes a point of bitterness or struggle or something.
Yeah, that happens.
You probably got some of it around the MOMA show, too.
Oh yeah, yeah. Funny you mention that. When they told me, you’re going to be in the show, I was amazed and I could not believe it. So I said to myself I wouldn’t tell anybody until I see it happening, until the press release comes out. But they say, in the art world, you really know who your friends are. And when the press release came out, I found out. And then some people were like, you know, genuinely competitive, but also, they congratulated me and said, oh, this is great, man. Congratulations. And some people had this really weird, indifferent attitude, and mysterious all of a sudden. So you got a lot of weirdness and a lot of different emotions. For me, I remembered thinking that, wow, I mean, this is the most significant event happening in the field since a very long time, and it was very significant to me to be part of it. And I understand that other people who have been doing this for many years, felt hurt and left out. But I don’t know what to say about that. I mean, there’s nothing you can do about it. And it was all about curatorial vision.
I’d like to think that a show like that is a service to the field. Whoever is showcased in it, that’s great, and other people can benefit from that too, even if it’s indirectly. But I’m sure it’s all very complicated.
Yes, totally. Barbara London had a very unique idea, which was not to do a survey of sound art, but instead bring together the people of the moment that were more active or— What’s the way in which she said it? Innovative, I think! And that’s what she wanted to do. And also, she wanted to bring together different aspects of the practice. And after understanding that in an exhibition space, you cannot put together a group of artists where everyone is creating a sonic environment, because it’s not possible to put together a large group of sound pieces at the same time. So there were a lot of ideas behind what could be possible, and also a lot of limitations. It was a very small show for MOMA, even, with a limited budget, I think. So there was so much criticism behind that exhibition, and some sound people were so unhappy with it. You know how it goes. But of course a lot of people also liked it, and others maybe didn’t like the whole thing, but they understood what was going on, and they appreciated it for what it was. I like to think and leave it as a fantastic “service to the field”, as you said it. Thousands of people visited the exhibition weekly.
I know your label is something else that you do that’s another role within sound practice, or that world, anyway.
Yeah. So that started as a way of channeling works I like that I felt needed to be out there in the world. I wanted to present characteristics that I appreciate in the work of others, and that I consider are necessary to put out there in the world. I even went further eventually and I focused on material that was not necessarily my cup of tea but I felt it was important to present as well. I felt it was necessary to cover different approaches and aesthetics too, because it represented a different angle on things. And so it was more about channeling and creating a community, and allowing for people to put work out there, than anything else. Contour Editions was made out of love for the art and as a project in itself in a way. It was very active in the beginning, and as I became very busy myself with my own work and with my family, my capacities to keep things happening consistently started to decrease.
It’s totally understandable, and I think it’s fine if things slow down. I know for me, with my website too, I can’t post on it all the time. Other stuff comes up, and if I don’t feel guilty about it, then I can let it still exist and post when I have something to post.
Yeah, totally. Also, everything out there has changed so much, from physical releases to online systems in which work can be presented. Even having a website has become such a weird thing with little traffic, because other kinds of platforms get much more attention, and those allow to present work, sell it, and more. However, I have avoided doing that. I’ve been comfortable, and actually sympathetic with the idea of this becoming more rare and obscure, and a specific destination, to go to and explore the content of what I’m presenting. And now I’m even doing a more limited number of publications.
It’s still a lot.
Yeah. In the beginning I was doing 300 physical copies per release, and then I moved down to 150, and now 75 physical copies. In the future perhaps I will do even a smaller number I think and perhaps even doing both online and physical. In general I try to keep an open mind aiming to have a strong catalog of works. So yeah, that’s basically it. And I wish I could do more, and even tie that online presence with a physical space, where something else could happen. For a while, I did that with two other artists that are also in New York. We came together in a way where Contour Editions was like a portable gallery for sound based projects. And then we would find an empty space somewhere in New York, and we would do a multi-channel sound based presentation that was specifically related to space. And that was called Contour Editions installations. The focus was sound in space.
Was that with Wolfgang Gil?
Yeah, with Wolfgang Gil and Daniel Neumann. We created a great team. We did a small number of projects and then everyone’s life got quite busy. Recently, actually, I started talking with Wolfgang about the possibility of doing this again. So we might come up with some projects here and there. But it was very interesting.
I could imagine getting some decent funding for that if you found the right sort of match. It just sounds really practical, too.
It was great. It was a lot of work too, and we never went on looking for funding because of our busy schedules. That can be a full-time job in itself. Doing these installation projects required also a lot of work and effort. But every time we did it, it was very rewarding, and it had a great amount of attention. But at the same time, anything we did with Contour Editions, there was never any finances or income involved. Everything came and it comes out of love pretty much. And when people released their work physically, they received their share of physical copies, and if it’s online, there it is. So my label, in this sense, functions more as a space for the community of people alike finding an outlet to channel their work. My mission statement of what I’m trying to do is very clear I believe. And I found that putting work online, in some sense, overcomes the obstacle of being in a geographical place reaching an audience just in there, per se. For example shipping a record to Europe now costs more than the record itself. Ridiculous! What I like about online releases is that the work has the capacity to reach people really far away, and they can get to know the work.
That’s great. There are networks possible that wouldn’t have been possible without those kinds of platforms. I think you might have answered my next question in the last one, but you can add to it if you like. What are the groups or communities that you feel like you’re part of?
I’m definitely very much part of the New York City community of sound people and artists. That’s where I studied, developed a practice, emerged, and I still am very much part of and always active.
And then we talked about the Subtropics piece, but is there anything else you’re working on right now that you’d like to talk about?
Well, yes. I’m working on a lot of different things. Maybe the most tangible piece that I’m developing is this sound installation for the CIFO institution, the Cisneros Fontanals Art Foundation. They do a yearly grant award, where a curator in the field nominates an artist, and if the artist accepts the nomination, then there has to be a proposal, and a committee of judges decide if you are in or not. After the work is made and presented, the work is kept in their collection. The grant also pays the artist based on category. So it’s a great thing. And I got nominated as a mid-career sound artist, and I proposed to make a sound piece that exists inside of a wall. And in order to appreciate the sounds in the wall, you have to put your ear to the wall, and then the spectator interacts with the sound living inside of the wall space. And to me, the idea in this piece had to do with very mundane experiences, such as being in your home and then you hear noises. I got there intuitively over the years as a linking mechanism. When that happens sometimes you don’t know where they come from, and then you end up yourself putting your ears to the wall trying to identify what it is that you’re listening to. And I think we all in one way or another have sort of dealt with that kind of situation. So when it comes to actual pieces that are specific standalone artworks, like a sound sculpture, object based installation, something that goes beyond more than the listening approach to sound, let’s say, I think about ways in which I can objectify the ordinary. The process is long and intuitive too. But the thing one way or another consists of focusing on an isolated situation in which I can use that as a model and then make something new from it. So with this particular piece, I’m doing it as a generative work. There’s a custom made application that executes the work. It will be a Mac Mini, and four channels of audio, and a sound card outputting the sound. And then the sounds will come in a discrete or spatialized manner and move through the 4-channel arrangement. And inside of the wall, there will be four transducers distributed in a square configuration. The piece will play indefinitely and different everyday. And when visitors look at the wall from the inside of the gallery, they will see just a square drawn with pencil, and that’s it. That’s the only thing. And then placing the ear to the wall and start listening is what the work requires from visitors. The sweat of people’s faces, makeup, their grease, all the stuff that naturally we have on the skin, shall become part of the work, because as people start placing their faces to the wall to listen, they will leave an imprint of some kind. And that’s what I’m working on right now, and I have to have it ready by early July. So I’m really working with these sounds to have them ready, and basically making everything I need to have it ready by then.
That sounds really exciting. When is it supposed to be installed?
It’s going to be installed and exhibited this September. I think it will open on September 7th. So I will be down there in July for Gustavo’s festival, and then back in September to do this project. Yeah, and it’s very exciting. I appreciate that nobody’s getting involved or telling me how to do it. I’ve just been doing my thing. Sometimes people get too involved, and there are limitations or compromises like I was describing before. But in this case, it has been very free and supportive. Once it got approved, I got on it, and I’m getting it done.
That’s great. What work or topics are you most excited about these days?
Wow.
It’s wide open.
I would say time. Time is the topic that is more significant to me right now.
And are you thinking about that in terms of your work, and the type of canvas you’re working with?
I would say in general and as a notion that is above and beyond everything. I think that themes and interests change. It’s like asking someone what’s your favorite thing. I never had an answer that I felt comfortable giving in response to that. I don’t have favorite things. I connect to subjects and things that are functional in the moment within relational structures. Outside of that I live and think very neutral. But as we progress in life these interests change or things that we use to ignore become more significant. When you realize that taste, utilities, and pretty much everything we like or not, is strongly connected to the experiences within the timeline of life, you may start to feel skeptical of favoritisms. Though I feel time always remains; in fact as we move forward it becomes more profound and relevant to me. Therefore a timeless objective can be more relevant because it breaks apart the attention of the moment, and seeking for an objective that does not lose relevance over time feels quite important.
Yeah, it’s sort of what are you thinking about these days.
I think that if I can grab something substantial, consistent, highly significant, and beyond everything, in my work that would be time. It’s a very basic existential notion that surpasses everything. It’s also a human notion and not fully understood. However, I would say definitely that time is the common denominator in all my work, in all my media that I deal with, because my work is durational and even when it’s static time is present. And also, I always think in abstract terms when it comes to structure and narrative. I found that in my work, there is always a time element to it, and it’s consistent.
I’m going to skip ahead to one of the last questions, because you sort of brought it up, and maybe you answered it, too. Have you been thinking about your work in relation to this current political situation?
Well, I think the work can be political, but for different reasons, political in its own way, because everything’s political, right? But I don’t think it’s connected politically to the political arena or social issues in terms of direct content. And I think that politically connects to what I was talking about before in terms of commodity and consumption. But I think it’s political in the politics of listening, or the politics associated to the materiality in my work, because something that I think about is that nothing just is because that’s it. I think when it comes to materiality and choices, everything is always connected to a source, and that particular source carries out its own history, and political weight; besides there is a sense of responsibility in one’s own work. Living in New York, and thinking about the noise, the sounds in the world in form of debris, yeah, I’m very interested in environmental noise and ecology. I always think, when we listen to the noise that is all around us, all that exists because each person within society contributes to it. In a loaded city like New York City that is so populated, so loaded with consumption and fragments from the actions in our lives, and I think that all of that is politically charged. And I connect sound with those sorts of things. The thing is that we’re not truly in touch with it, and that’s somehow encrypted. It’s also encrypted in my work, but it’s present. And that’s why I find environmental noise so interesting, because it’s rich, not only in its material potential, but also in the way it can be traced, uncovered, and articulated.
That really connects it. Do you have ideas about what could be done to improve or enrich or support this field?
What can be done to make it richer?
Yeah, or to support it better somehow.
Well, I think anyone doing it should become like an ambassador of it, and I think— That’s a good question. Let me see how can I put it. Well I think the moment people get more exposed to it, they can grow with it, or learn to appreciate it more. So that being said, I think the best way to expand or to make it to come up more to the surface is to increase the projects and the capacities of bringing this sort of work out there. But as we know, it’s very challenging, because there’s no economy behind it and we live in a capitalistic society. Perhaps it’s wrong to generalize because different cultures have different experiences, correct? So yes, I don’t know. I think it’s a very difficult thing, and it’s very challenging. And most of the things, even in a city like New York, where it’s one of the top cultural centers of the world, still, we don’t have a sound art gallery. We don’t have a dedicated room for multichannel sound pieces. We don’t have a lot of things that we should have. The cultural enrichment should be more valued than the financial one I believe. And that, to me, is just amazing. But I think it’s because of that, because it’s something so obscure culturally that it’s for the very few, and there is no one that takes on the mission to say, okay, I’m going to do this. The persons that have taken on such mission, have struggle the same that artists do. And the struggle gets in the way, and people get tired and eventually give up. Maybe in different places of the world, it’s different because of different relationships that people have to culture and capital and community. But in my experience, that’s what I have observed in NY after 20 years.
That’s really interesting to think in those terms. From what I’ve see, people will try things, whether they have resources or not, but they’ll often fizzle out because they’re not necessarily getting the either financial or social encouragement that would keep it going. It takes a lot to have that incentive and keep something running.
Yeah. And also, I think as a society, or in the world at large, everything now is so dominated by entertainment and social media and devices that take the focus away from things that require spending time with them. And sound and music require durational active and receptive practice, in the sense that you sit down and pay attention for X amount of time. And now, we are more ADD than ever, because we’re constantly multitasking. We have so much information coming at us at once, and so little time to educate ourselves properly and contemplate properly. I feel that we are constantly rewiring in trying to keep up with the world and that plays against of it all. Or maybe it makes us different and subsequently who/how we are right now. The capacity to focus and partake is constantly being challenged by the competitive overload of attention demand. Then also if a person never heard experimental music or avant-garde music before, and then somebody plays something to them, most people would say as a consequence of their references, that is something that I heard in a sci-fi movie. It sounds like a broken sound system, or it sounds like this or that.
Or the line, my cat could have played that on the piano. So maybe figuring out how to communicate something more substantive. Well, that’s a whole other project too, of education. Is there anything I haven’t asked about that you’d like to address?
I think we are good. Thank you very much Jennie for the consideration and the opportunity to exchange some thoughts about what we like to do. It has been a pleasure and a joy meeting you and talking with you.
