GOTTESRAUSCHEN (GOD'S WHITE NOISE)

Gallery: Baer Ridgway Exhibitions
Date: Saturday, February 6, 2010 7-11 PM
Address: 172 Minna Street

This post continues my interest in Fluxus and John Cage. Props to Baer Ridgeway for hosting this performance.



from the press release
Inspired by Fluxus performance, serial music, free jazz, and rock, Christain Jendreiko's music has been described by his peers as "spiritual anarchy." Counting Anthony Braxton and Phillip Schulze as his peers, Jendreiko has approached composition and performance for over a decade via a set of interests rooted in feedback and repetition, concepts linking him to a tradition of postwar composition by John Cage, Alvin Lucier, and Tony Conrad.

Jendreiko specifically seeks to reconsider the mechanical or physical aspects of how the body is constructed as a site for acoustics, where sound is, in the artist's words, "the shadows of motions, to be captured with a motion capture system." This acoustico-mechanical conception of sound has led the artist to explore a practice rooted in dynamics, and emphasize the necessity to listen, move, and react to sounds while using an instrument in a distinctive way:

"When you take your instrument and start to play you bring your body into the action. You can listen to your body, to your motions and you can listen to the way you move."

If attention to frequency and feedback motivates the theoretical foundation for Jendreiko's compositions, a wholly democratic and decentralized approach to the political (possibly informed by Cornelius Cardew) characterizes the artist's philosophy toward performance, which last anywhere from two to seven hours, and are frequently executed by large ensembles consisting of classically trained musicians performing alongside untrained performers in improvisatory fashion.