L@TE: Friday Nights @ BAM/PFA

Carl Stone
March 5, 7:30 p.m.

Composer Carl Stone, hailed in the Village Voice as “the King of Sampling” and “one of the best composers living in the U.S. today,” performs an evening of brand-new compositions. A resident of Tokyo, Stone has used computers in live performance since 1986. This rare Bay Area appearance will feature the U.S. premiere of Stone’s evening-length multi-channel composition DARDA, first heard in Tokyo in September 2009, and featuring the shomyo vocal chant of Makiko Sakurai. (Shomyo is an ancient form of chant associated with the Tendai sect of Buddhism, dating from the Heian period, 781-1192 CE). The evening may include an additional premiere. Listeners are invited to bring blankets and pillows and relax in the gallery space.

L@TE NOISE
March 12, 7:30 p.m.

L@TE NOISE features a fresh lineup of musical acts from the rich and diverse East Bay music scene. Over the last few decades, this thriving musical culture has pioneered new sounds, from bluegrass to punk to experimental noise, with an arsenal of groundbreaking bands as well as intrepid performance spaces that nurture a D.I.Y. ethic. The program will also feature a site-specific installation and numerous musical additions to the Zine Mart inventory.

Skank Bloc Bologna Number Four: Tosh Berman, Jennifer Locke, and the Voice of Lynton Kwesi Johnston
March 19

More of the unexpected from Skank Bloc Bologna Number Four! Tosh Berman presents Aleph, his father Wallace Berman’s hand-painted filmic meditation on life, death, mysticism, politics, and pop culture. Just as Wallace did, Tosh will accompany Aleph with music of his choice. Local artist Jennifer Locke’s career as a professional dominatrix and champion submission wrestler informs her physically challenging “actions,” which she performs hidden from the audience and reiterated in a live video feed. A recorded sonic tour by U.K.-based dub poet Lynton Kwesi Johnston explores his experiences as an African Caribbean living in Britain. Skanking encouraged!

Konrad Steiner’s Neo-Benshi and Jordan Biren’s All That Passes Before You, Already in Ruin
March 26, 7:30 p.m.

This is all about word of mouth. Words delivered with vocal abandon, echoing through the galleries as they skitter off fragile images in flight; delivered live and full-bodied by artists, poets, and mediamakers who have an allegiance to cinema, but enjoy the skirmish between the anxious utterance and the fleeting image. Los Angeles-based media artist Jordan Biren brings us All That Passes Before You, Already in Ruin, a spectral film that suggests “the illusory promise of narrative” but finds it manifest not in his projected ghostly landscapes but in his recitation of “bodily words.” Local curator and artist Konrad Steiner has repurposed the Japanese tradition of benshi performance—oral narration for silent cinema—as “a cabaret of poetry, satire, and homage.” Poets and other provocateurs render mute sequences from extant cinema while firing a fusillade of verbal mash-ups and hacked critiques. For this performance, Steiner has enlisted Jaime Cortez, Jennifer Nellis, Erika Staiti, Anuj Vaidya, and the tag team of Robin Rajen Sukhadia and Neelanjana Banerjee.

Preceded at 6 p.m. by one of our favorite KALX DJs spinning in the lobby, where wine and beer are available for purchase.

General admission to the BAM galleries is just $5 after 5 p.m. Show your ticket for a same-day PFA screening or gallery visit and get in free. Admission is always free for BAM/PFA members and UC Berkeley students, faculty, and staff.