ARTISTS: BURNING BOOKS

SEE YOU IN HELL: an installation by BURNING BOOKS
November 3 - December 1, 2006

As we pass miles of electric toys, questionable food, and fluorescent boxes of cleaning agents, our growing feelings of suffocation and panic are soothed by the carefully programmed and inescapable music and announcements coming through the loudspeakers. The viewer is situated in front of two large side-by-side video wall projections that meet in the corner of the gallery. The videos are perpetual loops of different lengths that constantly provide new juxtapositions offering ludicrous and disturbing connections between Lil' Bratz, Clorox, Cheez-Its, and Tokyo Catz. The images continuously pan from right to left as the camera rolls along in a shopping cart passing dazed shoppers and jam-packed shelves. There are four looping soundtracks: Two consist of ambient sounds recorded in camera, with two additional loops of different lengths-one is of cryptic enigmatic texts written by Sumner Carnahan read by Elizabeth Wiseman, the other is a collection of "sound nuggets with teeth" created by Dino J.A. Deane out of the original ambient din from the video. The varied lengths of the loops insures that any momentary combination of images and sounds will never recur.

ARTISTS:

Michael Sumner's artwork ranges from prints, drawings, and books, to films, video, and installations. Exhibitions and screenings include the Ann Arbor Film Festival, the San Francisco Art Institute Film Festival, the San Francisco Cinematheque, a Smithsonian Institution Traveling Exhibition, and the World Print Competition. New prints are being shown at Salon Mar Graff in Tesuque, New Mexico. Sumner has also worked as a graphic artist and book designer, producing books for publishers and museums including Thames & Hudson, Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in New York City, and the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art. In 1979 he cofounded Burning Books with writer Melody Sumner Carnahan in Oakland, California, which has published nineteen books of, and about, avant-garde music, art, and literature.

Writer Melody Sumner Carnahan has six books in print and numerous works published in magazines and anthologies including the City Lights Review, the Leonardo Music Journal, and At A Distance (MIT Press). She has worked with composers and performers for two decades to present her writing off-the-page, including "performance novels," soundtracks for film and video, on recordings and in intermedia installations, including Morton Subotnick's Gestures (DVD/CD-rom, Mode Records). Her latest book, One Inch Equals 25 Miles, was interpreted live by the Out of Context ensemble (High Mayhem). Carnahan was Creative Media Arts Fellow at ABC Radio/Univ. of Technology in Sydney, Australia where she produced the The X, Y, Z of It, broadcast internationally. Woody Vasulka commissioned "The Maiden" for his The Brotherhood installation at NTT/ICC, Tokyo, and other acknowledgements have come from New American Radio, Experimental Intermedia Foundation, the Whitney Museum, and the Art Institute of Chicago.

Dino J.A. Deane (sound design) has appeared on a diverse range of recordings from Ike and Tina Turner, Brian Eno, Jon Hassell, and John Zorn. He has enjoyed a twenty-year association with Butch Morris, the originator of conduction, a revolutionary method of conducted real-time composition. He has also produced an equally diverse range of his own recorded music, from works for various small groups to his conduction-based large ensemble, Out of Context. Deane has created sound designs for numerous theatrical productions, working with noted writer/directors Sam Shepard, Joseph Chaikin, and John Flax & Elizabeth Wiseman of Theater Grottesco, which have won critical acclaim internationally. He has composed music/designs for fifty dance works during a 25-year collaboration with choreographer Colleen Mulvihill. As a musician, Mr. Deane has been performing internationally for most of his life.

Elizabeth Wiseman (voice) is a principal creator and performer with Theater Grottesco and was last seen on stage as Venice in Swimming with the Gases of Jupiter. Elizabeth She studied theater, opera, and cultural anthropology at Whitworth College in Spokane; theater with Philip Gaulier in Paris; and is a graduate of the Ecole Jacques Lecoq in Paris. She taught voice at Arriane Mnouchkine's Theatre de Soleil in Paris, and acting and the creation of original works at theaters and universities throughout the U.S. As an ensemble member with the Sundance Playwriting Laboratory, she has developed six children's librettos through the Santa Fe Opera's Outreach Program, and was an NEA Artist-in-the-Schools for 8 years. She has performed in numerous regional theater productions, as well as films, and is currently working on her first full-length opera.

Contact MOV-iN at 505.473.6400
or email at io@csf.edu.