Micro-Cinematic Essays on the Life and Work of Marcel Duchamp dba Conceptual Parts, Ink is a collaborative “conceptual art” album featuring my own writing and vocals (much of it recorded using my iPhone Voice Memo app) and the sound design of electronic music composer Chad Mossholder. The work consists of nineteen experimental tracks that we refer to as “close readings” focusing on the work, language, and notes of Marcel Duchamp as well as his influence on contemporary forms of remix practice. Many of the tracks actually remix my own voice with the voice of Duchamp. An exploration into glitch, microtonality, and the spectral analysis of recorded voices over time, Chad and I surgically alter the aesthetic frequency of what is often referred to as “the artist’s voice” and, in the process, invite the listener to rethink the interrelationship between critical writing and critical listening.
The work is now available in limited edition either through our Bandcamp site or by contacting the artists directly.
On January 17, 2013, Micro-Cinematic Essays on the Life and Work of Marcel Duchamp dba Conceptual Parts, Ink opened as part of the Three Junctures of Remix exhibition at the @calit2 gallery at UCSD in San Diego. The exhibition runs through March 15, 2013 and is curated by Eduardo Navas.
According to Navas, “The exhibition THREE JUNCTURES OF REMIX features the art of Mark Amerika & Chad Mossholder, Arcángel Constantini, Giselle Beiguelman, and Elisa Kreisinger, a group of international artists who have explored and reflected on the implications of the creative act of remixing since the concept became popular beginning in the nineties. The art works crossover and explore three junctures (moments of production) of remix: the pre-digital/analog; the digital; and the post-digital which developed in chronological order, but after their initial manifestation, became intertwined and currently are often reintroduced in conjunction to inform the aesthetics of remix as a creative act in art practice. The exhibition is curated to reflect on how computing has enabled people to recombine pre-existing material with unprecedented efficiency that is relatively affordable just about everywhere information-based technology is widely used. This has affected how local and global communities view their cultural production, from politics to the arts.”
Micro-Cinematic Essays… is also part of the touring exhibition Postscript: Writing After Conceptual Art which opened at the Museum of Contemporary Art Denver (MCAD) in October 2012. The exhibition ran through February 3, 2013 and will travel to the Power Plant Contemporary Art Gallery in Toronto in June 2013 and the Eli and Edythe Broad Art Museum in 2014. The exhibition is co-curated by Nora Burnett Abrams and Andrea Andersson.
At the MCAD website, the curators write that “Postscript: Writing After Conceptual Art features the work of over fifty artists and writers exploring the artistic possibilities of language. Presenting works from the 1960s to the present, the exhibition includes paintings, sculpture, installation, video and works on paper that raise questions about how we read, look at, hear, and process language today. A major current underlying the exhibition argues that the field of literature known as “conceptual writing” can be seen as engaging in a provocative dialogue with the field of contemporary art, producing new insights into the meaning of both literature and art.”
Featured artists include Mark Amerika & Chad Mossholder, Carl Andre, Fiona Banner, Erica Baum, Derek Beaulieu, Caroline Bergvall, Jen Bervin, Jimbo Blachly & Lytle Shaw, Christian Bök, Marcel Broodthaers, Pavel Buchler, Luis Camnitzer, Ricardo Cuevas, Tim Davis & Robert Fitterman, Monica de la Torre, Craig Dworkin, Tim Etchells, Ryan Gander, Michelle Gay, Kenneth Goldsmith, Dan Graham, Alexandra Grant, James Hoff, Seth Kim-Cohen, Sol LeWitt, Glenn Ligon, Tan Lin, Gareth Long, Michael Maranda, Helen Mirra, Jonathan Monk, Simon Morris, João Onofre, Michalis Pichler, Paolo Piscitelli, Vanessa Place, Kristina Lee Podesva, Seth Price, Kay Rosen, Joe Scanlan, Dexter Sinister, Frances Stark, Joel Swanson, Nick Thurston, Triple Canopy, Andy Warhol, Darren Wershler, and Eric Zboya.
It should also be noted that Micro-Cinematic Essays… was made possible thanks to a visiting and virtual artist residency for both Chad and I at the Centre for Creative Arts at La Trobe University in Melbourne, Australia.
List of Tracks:
In the Infinitive (Introduction) 1:51
From the Labyrinth Beyond Time and Space 4:07
Ecstasy 2:53
Cloud Stream 2:26
A Mystery 3:08
Asensual Icicle 6:03
Measure for Measure 2:41
Another Medium 4:02
Pure Data 1:49
Myself, Revised 1:47
Shuffle Bag 5:37
gHst 2:41
New Messages 2:31
Hornets 1:36
Another Medium (Spectral Remix) 2:44
Metamorph 2:14
Interludic 0:49
Remix Aesthetic 3:05
Tuning Up 4:25
