Public Programme: Deep Listening / Source Material

PERFORMANCE
SOUNDCHECK

Shoji Hano
Adam Art Gallery
3 October 2009
6pm

Born in 1955, based in Tokyo, Shoji Hano is one of free-jazz, noise and psychedelic rock’s most preeminent percussionists and brilliant all-round sages. Widely regarded on the same consecrated plane as celebrated jazz heavyweights, the late Rashied Ali, Milford Graves, and his own mentors Max Roach and Art Blakey, Shoji’s solo drumming is a mesmerizing feat to witness, and displays a bewildering dexterity that’s both physically and psychically difficult to attribute to the motions of one individual player.

Sketching and tracing moiré-like patterns with his limbs, Shoji’s flurrying percussive vernacular is disciplined and virtuosic, while remaining spirited and idiosyncratic. Intricate cross-patterns and superimposed timings bubble up and collide with furious detail, subsiding in cyclical and funky grace before erupting again with colourful exuberance.

His adroit Octopus-like beats and fizzy punk rhythms have been heard in a countless array of collaborative recordings with the esteemed likes of late pioneering guitarist, Derek Bailey, Acid Mothers Temple’s Kawabata Makoto, Fushitsusha’s Keiji Haino, Eugene Chadbourne, and cult Japanese psychers High Rise. His work has also appeared on renowned labels, P.S.F. and Improvised Music from Japan.

PERFORMANCE
SOUND CHECK

Chris Watson
Sound Recordist
Saturday 10 October 2009
Adam Art Gallery
8pm

Chris Watson’s work as a wildlife and environmental sound recordist is unparalleled. He has worked with the BBC recording and editing sound for many of David Attenborough’s great wildlife series such as The Life of Birds (1998), The Life of Mammals (2001), Life in the Undergrowth (2005) and Talking with Animals(2001) and has won numerous awards for these and other TV and radio documentaries. As well as his work as a documentary sound recordist, Chris Watson is an artist in his own right and has produced three solo albums and many collaborative sound works. He constructs collages of sounds, which evolve from a series of recordings made at the specific locations over varying periods of time.

Watson’s exploration of sound environments has taken him all over the world and has led to many bizarre and unconventional recording situations. He has recorded glacial shifts in Iceland, massive storms in the Baltic Sea, the voices and rhythms of the Humboldt current around the Galapagos Islands. Chris Watson’s performances take listeners to places hidden and inaccessible. It is cinema for the ears.

Chris Watson’s visit was made possible by alt.music and kindly supported by, Adam Art Gallery, New Zealand School of Music and Frederick Street Sound and Light Exploration Society.

FILM SCREENING
Hercules on screen

Adam Art Gallery
Thursday 12 November 2009
6-7pm
Presented by Arthur Pomeroy, Programme Director of Classics, Victoria University of Wellington

Professor Arthur Pomeroy delved into the history of Hercules (Herakles) on screen accompanying his presentation with movie excerpts, television clips and anecdotal stories from the history of film. This was an opportunity to explore how the character of Hercules has adapted and changed within the evolving context of the moving image.

PERFORMANCE
SOUND CHECK

John Wiese
Frederick Street Light and Sound Exploration Society
46 Frederick Street, Wellington
Wedneday December 9 2009
8pm
$10.00
with Our Love Will Destroy the World

John Wiese is a Californian artist and composer. Both a prolific collaborator and solo performer, Wiese has worked with the likes of Sunn O))), Merzbow, Wolf Eyes, Lasse Marhaug, and C. Spencer Yeh. Well known and highly respected in the ‘noise’ community, Wiese has performed across Europe, America, and Scandinavia at events such as Colour Out of Space (Brighton, UK), DEAF (Dublin Electronic Arts Festival) and the 52nd Venice Biennale.

Wiese’s tour of New Zealand and Australia at the end of 2009 came after the recent release of his solo album Circle Snare, described by one reviewer as ‘yet another stunning example of exacting noise construction’. Supported by Our Love Will Destroy the World, Wiese’s Wellington performance was an unique evening of disrupted musical forms.

www.john-wiese.com

John Wiese poster

FORUM
Source Material — Five Conversations with the Past


Lost and found?
Understanding history through art
Judy Deuling, Anna Jackson, David Maskill, Glyn Parry. Chaired by Ian Wedde
Adam Art Gallery
Wednesday 3 February 2010
5pm

As the first public programme for 2010 and in conjunction with the current exhibition Source Material: Five Conversations with the Past, the Adam Art Gallery invited four academics to introduce their disciplinary approach to the re-use and interpretation of historical material.

Academics from the fields of literature, religious studies, art history and classics discussed what is at stake in the interpretation of texts and images from the past. Departing from the exhibition Bible Studies (New Testament) by leading New Zealand artist Gavin Hipkins, each scholar reflected on their own methodologies and their relationship to the past, raising questions about the creative nature of historical (re)construction and the truth-value of academic discourse.

This forum was chaired by Ian Wedde, Wellington-based poet, writer, and Arts Foundation Laureate.