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012125 / 030525
[ID: digital black & white images featuring various bodies in motion. Overlayed with a concept image of a zine titled “ROUGH CUT 01.” END ID.]
010125 / 2024-11
MONTHLY PLAYLIST + JOURNAL NOTES
listen to the playlist + references mentioned in the notes via mac.are.na
Images, left to right:
Front cover of the vinyl Tezeta by Hailu Mergia & The Walias.
Liner Notes by Tessema Tadele, and tracklist for the album (text version can be accessed via Bandcamp).
“Endegena” from the album Tezeta, by Hailu Mergia & The Walias is a warm, swirling Ethiopian jazz track from 1975, recently remastered in 2021. The accompanying liner notes by Tessema Tadele brought the following questions out of me: What music in your personal history, lineage, or ancestry, is marked by restriction, relocation, or passage? What music from television do you remember, miss, or wish you could find again? What was the first instrumental song/music you heard, or enjoyed?
Image: Cover art for “Eckhaus Latta” by Maddie Jay.
I appreciate imagining that the only thing that could free me from overwhelming dread is an outfit compliment (probably because I’m not getting enough of them these days). This is one reason why Maddie Jay’s existential pop bop “Eckhaus Latta” gripped my attention. Released in March 2024, this version of the artist’s “synths [and] occasional thoughts of the void” exuded the same name-dropping potential as it’s titular reference. This also made me think of a reverse scenario, where fashion brands name-drop themselves in the music used for their shows. No Sesso’s “Ghetto Gold” and Mowalola’s 2023 Autumn/Winter show came to mind as examples.
Image: Cover art for Memorial Waterslides by Memorials.
“False Landing” off of Memorial Waterslides, by the duo known as Memorials, stood out to me because of its instrumental quality and spacious vocals. This had a similar feel to a track I enjoyed the month prior: “First Class” by Khruangbin. Both have a sort of abstract nature to the song-writing, with production offering communication beyond what words alone can provide.
Image: Cover art for Worm by Ozoyo.
Another instrumental track from this month is “Wormlandia” from the project Worm by Ozoyo. The intention to “evoke both the familiar and the mysterious” was definitely present for me, and reading through the notes on the project was helpful in understanding how. It allowed me to consider that perhaps the part of me that is interested in world-building feels connected to both the track’s ability to be immersive and the fact that the sonic style feels representative of some thing, some space, some world, even though I couldn’t initially tell what it was.
Image: Cover art for “It’s a Fine Day” by Opus III.
At some point recently I began watching fashion shows as another way to connect to the outlet of performance. FKA Twigs’ presentation of Opus III’s It’s A Fine Day, during Vogue World: London 2023, was one such enjoyable performance. In it, Twigs transforms the narrative of her song “Sad Day” (from the 2019 album Magdalene) while referencing her rave influences with, what I learned was, quite an iconic 90s dance hit. Kirsty Hawkshaw of Opus III recently had an interview, released by DJ Mag, sharing about the creation and legacy of “It’s A Fine Day.”
Image: Album cover art for Silence is Loud by Nia Archives.
I was lured into the song “Nightmares” from Nia Archive’s debut album Silence is Loud, by way of the video’s thumbnail featuring a chroma-key blue background and a glitching, Nia Archives branded artifact. This object is suspended, much like the feeling from various drops in the song, shifting and edging the transition between sections: my favorite of which featuring a choral, “UH OH” punctuating the hook. Any Blender girlies will probably enjoy one of the BTS photos posted by the visualizer’s artist, Laiqa Mohid.
013125 / 021125 / 021825
video sketching + layering.
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072624 / 072224
moving in silence.
[ID: Black and white digital image of grainy, overlapping text. Contrast between layers of text and the black background make some words appear as if they are melting into one another. END ID.]
072324 / 072224
extending yesterday’s score with insights from today’s practice: “listen in circles. move in silence.”
072224
a score from today’s dance practice: “move in silence.”
071924
connected the writing Black Study as Practice to the A-V.J research page.
071724 / 062824 / 062624
Shared an early iteration of an audio index for A-V.J + questions for further reflection via this week’s newsletter.
071124
Dance practice focused on isolation into flow by moving through layers (breath, head, trunk + arms, base/legs). A featured track from the session: “Approach” by Rei Harakami.
070324
watched Sessão Bruta directed by Talavistas & ela.ltda.
070224
kept track of songs that caught my attention during the month.
070124
Watched and briefly reflected on my perception of circles/cycles/returning in Yoji, What’s Wrong With You? directed by Mako Idemitsu.
062824 / 062624
Returned to completing a basic iteration of A-V.J’s spreadsheet.
062624
Attempted to start gathering information from this website into a spreadsheet, using a tutorial from Chia Amisola.
062524
listening practice, companioned by Teebs’ Cecelia Tapes Collection.
062124 / 061224
Playing around with layering & text in the editing process. The captions describe an attempt to record the creation of the on-screen visual.
[ID: Video clip of a visual made of obscured, black and white, grainy text layered against one another. The layers bulge over center screen while sliding from right to left. Captions are in the same font as the text in the visual. END ID.]
061924
Learned that I can take screenshots directly from the windows in Resolume.
[ID: black & white digital image of overlapping letters connected by blending and graininess. END ID.]
061824
Returning to inspiration from JJJJJerome Ellis on embracing blocks as opportunities.
061124 / 052724
Set up my Numark DJ2Go with Resolume and played around with coordinating clips to tracks from [lust].
060424
kept track of songs that held my attention during the month.
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053024
Grounding into this guidance shared by Jenn Nkiru as I return to the writing process:
“...process and discovery are most important - the eventual work simply serves as reportage of the process and discovery. Focus on this and everything else will naturally find its place among it.”
052924
listened to this Conversation on Blackness & Liquidity; highlighting the mention of freestyling/improv in the process of black study.
052824
added ‘discogs.com’ to my resources page.
052724
this entire album ([lust] by rei harakami) has been a companion thru recent dance & research sessions.
051724
Today’s dance practice explored an idea from a Deep Listening exercise called “Extreme Slow Walk:”
“the challenge...is that no matter how slow you are walking, you can always go much slower.”
052224
Interested in this question while currently doing the research phase for a project: What happens in (the space) between call and response?
051424 / 032724 / 073123
In the process of re-homing the writing for my previous music video program “We Got The Backwards Thing.”
051324 / 040924
Sharing how some questions generated during a dance session become a prompt:
[ID: Screenshot from a small section of a word processor document. The first line of text is edited with a strikethrough: “what can you hear when you do this movement?” The second line reads: “What can this body part hear?” (‘part’ is italicized). “What can this movement hear?” (‘movement’ is italicized). The third line reads, “What do different move variations allow you to hear?” The final line reads, “Prompt: What can these movements hear? Commit to a movement and listen to how it listens.” END ID.]
050724 / 042324
Keeping (digital) notes on my first read through of Experiencing Music Video. Currently on page 15.
050624
Returning to this discussion on Tracing Palestinian Representation On Screen: From Orientatlism Towards A Militant Counter-Image. I’m personally highlighting, and feeling a spark of curiosity toward, how collective production/authorship and archiving/documentation is mentioned.
050124
kept track of songs that caught my attention during the month.
042924
Publicly sharing one of the formatting prototypes for audio-visual.journal’s newsletter component. This one is focused on being simple and text-based.
042624 / 042324
Reviewing my responses to these preliminary questions for critical analysis, applied to the introduction of Experiencing Music Video.
Who wrote it?
For what audience?
For what purpose?
What’s missing?
[Additionally: When was it written/published?]
042424
Connecting this lecture I watched about captioning in the history and aesthetics of video art to Erika Balsom’s After Uniqueness: A History of Film and Video Art in Circulation, which is currently in the reading log.
[ID: A book cover with a blue background and a uniform pattern of black dots which are smaller in the center and become slightly larger toward the edges. All text is in white. It includes the title of the book in bold: “After Uniqueness” followed underneath by the subtitle, less bolded: “A history of Film and Video Art in Circulation,” and followed underneath with the author’s name: “Erika Balsom.” This set of text is repeated vertically more than 2 times, with some of the text being cut off at the top and bottom of the cover. END ID.]
042324
Checking out previous texts by Carol Vernallis; read the introduction of Experiencing Music Video: Aesthetics and Cultural Context.
041924
Noticed these questions coming up for me while watching a roundtable “On Censorship: Conversation on the Responsibility of Film & Cultural Institutions” presented during No Evil Eye Cinema’s Cinematic Interventions to Freeing Palestine & The Global South Symposium.
is this exhibition space appropriate for the conversation your work intends to facilitate?
how can safety amongst workers/artists be developed, so that there can be coordinated risk-taking? where does a film festival come from? what makes it possible? through what means did it get here?
041824
trying out movement puzzles as part of my dance practice + considering the relationships between pathways and pictures.
041624
Easing back into writing about video work in a non-evaluative way & to re-establish a baseline before further analysis. I’m practicing by creating Screening Reports (as per A Short Guide To Writing About Film) to draft a “first sketch” of writing.
041524
been keeping ‘heal yourself and move’ by theo parrish in rotation during recent dance sessions.
041024 / 040824
A studio session clip of video experimentation featuring dance performance footage, with recorded variations of song pairings.
tracks featured:
“i know i know i know” by Saikyo,
“oowee-ou-duh-duh-duh-duh-duh-duh” by J. Albert, and
“On God (feat. Earl Sweatshirt & Tony Shhnow)” by Mike & Tony Seltzer.
(Originally from a stream of WOODGRAIN W/ DENNIS CAVE on NTS Radio).
footage:
FKA twigs performance at Valentino L’Ecole
040924
generated musicality-based questions during a dance session set to ‘in my room’ by frank ocean.
040424
re-reading CinemaTexas Notes and refining my notes on their research and writing process.
[ID: A book cover, featuring a gradient that begins at the top of the cover as an aqua blue and descends into a warm toned image of a man walking through sparse foliage. The title appears in the the upper third of the cover, with one line reading “CinemaTexas” and underneath is “Notes.” Below that is the subtitle, “The Early Days of Austin Film Culture.” The middle third includes the text “Edited by Louis Black with Collins Swords.” In the lowest third is an overlaid image of a diagram which includes several arrows pointing across and between short text descriptions of events. The diagram is labled "figure 1. A summary of the oppositional and circular narrative structure of SUNRISE." END ID.]
040324
(re-)considering the role that witnessing plays in my artistic practice.
[ID: A screenshot from the online publication The Creative Independent. The image has a white background and black text. At the top is a search bar, which includes the query “the making of the day wants a witness.” Below the search bar is the title of an article, “Writer and translator Carina del Valle Schorske on the importance of having a strategy.” The words from the query that appear in the title have an outlined box around them. Below is the date the article was re-published, written as “Sep 28, 2023.” Below that is a large block of text from the article: “Sometimes I think of that Joan Riviere essay “Womanliness as a Masquerade” from 1929! Social media didn’t invent anything, but obviously it’s specifically designed to prey on the stresses produced by pre-existing social conditions. There’s so much toxicity there, so I try to take a lot of walks, to see my friends IRL. But I’m single and I live alone, so my moment-to-moment life is very quiet and interior—and sometimes the making of the day wants a witness. Not because I’m lonely, really, but because sometimes life asks to be shared. Or I admire something that I’ve made—and by that I mean a particularly custard-y scrambled egg—and the beauty seems to somehow exceed the capacity of the moment to carry it. That’s when I find myself turning to Instagram. There’s this passage from Toni Morrison’s Tar Baby, which is delivered in the voice of this old white candy magnate, a very flawed character: “At some point in life the world’s beauty becomes enough. You don’t need to photograph, paint, or even remember it. It is enough. No record of it needs to be kept and you don’t need someone to share it with or tell it to.” Those words seem wise to me. But I’m not there yet.” Words from the search query that appeared in the paragraph each have an outline of a box around them. END ID.]
040124 / 2024-03
kept track of songs that caught my attention during the month.
032724 / 073123
revisited a program of music videos that i shared online last year. i’m considering how to make the process of researching, writing, and presenting similar work more consistent in the near future.
music videos featured (in order):
“Drop” by The Pharcyde
“Sugar Water” by Cibo Mato
“Breezeblocks” by Alt-J
“Miami” by Caroline Rose
032524
testing out how images from the research page ‘the void’ look when embedded into the A-V.J site.
032224
checked out Nourished By Time’s latest EP, which ended up on repeat during today’s studio session.
031524 / 011924
transformed a clip from a previous video experiment into a .gif
[ID: looping gif of abstract streaks in red, orange, yellow, and white tones, growing and shrinking against a black background. END ID.]
031224
returning to this choreographed warm up as part of my dance/movement practice + considering choreography as an audiovisual technology.
030624 / 112323
studio session clip; an audiovisual experiment on the study of care.
2024-02
keeping track of music that held my attention during the month.
[ID: A music track cover with a warped, slightly pixeled and grainy black and white checkerboard background. In the center of the cover is a figure of a person that is mostly shadowed, with the right side of their face, their right arm, and the right side of each leg barely visible. In front of the person is the artist name “Takako Ikehata” which appears various times, overlapping in red, green, and semi-transparent text. Directly underneath that is the name of the track, “Beyond Time & Space” appearing in the same style. END ID.]
022224
updated the reading log to include a link to access “in the blink of an eye” by walter murch.
[ID: A book cover with two images splitting the top and bottom halves of the cover. The top image is a an extreme close up on a face with fair skin, dark lashes, and an open blue eye. The bottom image is the same, except the eye is captured as it is blinking closed. Across the left side of the cover is the book’s title “In The Blink Of An Eye” with each word taking up one line. Near the top of the cover, next to the title word “In” is a quote block written by Francis Coppola, which is barely legible. In the middle of the cover, next to the title word “Of” is the subtitle: “A perspective on film editing” in white, and below that is “2nd edition” written in yellow. At the bottom of the cover, next to the title word “Eye” is the author’s name, “Walter Murch.” END ID.]
022024
watched a post-screening conversation to follow up to last week’s recommendation of Black To Techno.
021624
Earlier today I tuned into this week’s screening on Le Cinema Club which is currently Africans With Mainframes (2023) directed by Kima Hibbert. Not too long into watching this film my brain made a direct connection to Jenn Nkiru’s Black To Techno (2019) which is also available to watch online. Below are some rough, initial thoughts on these shorts as a pair. Together, I find these films to be in conversation around Black sonic culture and the construction of counternarratives.
I noticed that Africans With Mainframes and it’s mockumentary style meant that aesthetic moves often communicating a sense of evidenced reality (such as lo-fi footage) felt like they undermined sincerity. Rather than making sincere contact with the main character’s understanding of the world (that Black Americans invented electronic music, but the U.S. government made it a White genre as a psyop), the audience maintains a distanced sense of observance of the way that she counternarrates reality. This, then, reveals itself as part of the film’s primary subject matter: the question of ‘what is counternarrating?’
[ID: A screenshot of the website LeCinemaClub.com. The website has a white background and black text. Along the top of the screen are menu options. The middle of the screen shows a preview of a film, where a black woman is wearing headphones and sits with her legs crossed on a bench outside. The text below the clip reads: “Africans With Mainframes a film by Kima Hibbert. 2023. USA. 15min. What if electronic music was created by Black sharecroppers in the American South and Kraftwerk was actually a psyop?” Below this, and to the bottom right, is the text “Read More.” END ID.]
Black To Techno goes beyond a sense of conventional documentary aesthetics to create immersive contact with the counternarrative that techno is a Black-originating sonic artform. It asserts this with a mixture of ethereal vignettes, sonic storytelling through music and oration, as well as rooting itself sincerely within its source materials. The film documents counternarration in a reflexive way by doing counternarration itself, in other words, the film offers the audience the ability to directly experience the world the film understands as real.
2024-02
“Soul Trash” by Toro Y Moi is inspiration in steady rotation during this month.
011924
using the concept of a visualizer to practice pairing music + visuals, and understanding repetition as a method of presence.
2024-01
keeping track of music that held my attention during the month.
2024-01
recently returned to ideas shared within tricia rose’s book “black noise” and shared a link to access it online.
[ID: A book cover with a black background and streaks of highly saturated purple and orange light revealing an open mouth that is emitting purple smoke. All text is written in white letters: above the face is the title “Black Noise,” below the face is the subtitle “Rap Music and Black Culture in Contemporary America.” Below the subtitle is the author’s name, “Tricia Rose.” END ID.]
