Iterations | Call & Response

Echoes

Echoes is a compilation of other artists’ aural responses to an exhibition of my work titled Call and Response. I exhibited these works during the  spring of  2018 at Honfleur Gallery, Anacostia Art Center, in Washington, D.C.  As part of the show I invited other artists to collaborate by responding to the sculptures  and their themes of gestural and sensorial representation, repetition, and distortion.

NASS ASALI:

www.breadsly.com
The two recorded pieces echo the vibrations of human desperation in our futile investigation for permanent, mutual glorification

KYLE BUTLER

Kyle Butler is an artist and teacher from Michigan who currently lives in Buffalo, NY.
kylebutlerart.com

The sound piece uses a set of irregularly percussive, chattering sounds with liberal panning to parallel the role of conversational connections between people in Lessner’s work. It has a simple build-plateau-release structural arc, but the build is sparse and the plateau sudden as if to reflect a coming-to-understanding or a moment of physical affection dispelling argument. Despite being irregular, the chatter noises respond to each other, echoing phrases from one ear to the next and slowly instituting more consistent tonal features. It’s not a particularly warm sounding piece, so I suppose the interaction between people imagined is one with as much complication as affection. When reached, the plateau churns but is backed by a more welcoming tonal drone that lingers a bit after things dissipate.

RAINA MARTENS

Raina makes speculative ceramics, plays in the band Ultra Beauty, and lives in Washington, DC.

www.rainamartens.com  |  ultrabeauty.bandcamp.com

This experiment transposes the premise of Rainbox. It dwells on the difficulty of recreating a sensation, in this case, the feeling of watching the sky. Using YouTube as an informal archive, the track compiles audio from diaristic videos about the sun and clouds. Sentimental and awkward, the videos, shared originally with an anonymous public, are gestures of intimacy in and across virtual space. Relaying the affective structure of A Block and Tackle of Lures, Reels, and Rods, this piece invites listeners to consider the ambivalent space of mediated interaction.