ISSUE Project Room : an open and versatile environment in which established and emerging artists conduct, exhibit and perform new and site-specific work
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Andrew C. Smith on 11/20/2009 at 12:03PM
You Could Still Die Then
Malapert was a 17th-century astronomer who tried to refute Galileo. Malapert is a moon crater. Malapert is "impudently bold." Or, if you can imagine a freaked-out T-Pain collaborating with The Theatre of Eternal Music, you're not quite halfway to Ma La Pert. Jennifer Walshe, the New York-based Irish-born composer, and Tony Conrad, the New York-defining video artist/composer/performer, performed at ISSUE just last week, using "voice, violins, viola, bass, autoharps, autotune, keyboard, shells, broken plastic, words, parts of words, stories, chanting, jigs, screaming, shouting, broken drum skins, bells, green furry outfits,breastplates, wire, bird call, and old lady dresses."
I've uploaded the whole first set, mostly because excerpting it just doesn't seem right in this case. It's got all the trademarks of a Tony Conrad set, which can be defined as: Violin Drones + ? = Tony Conrad Set. But it wouldn't be quite so malapert without Walshe, whose crazed autotuned recitations and vocalizations really make the event what it is, which is either a moon crater or a misguided astronomer or maybe something else.
