Shelley Hirsch & Aki Onda with Ursula Scherrer

Fri 06 Feb, 2009, 8pm
Old American Can Factory

Shelley Hirsch
"Going as far back as her childhood, Hirsch relentlessly mines her life experiences, concocting brilliant collage-like reminiscences that are alternately, and sometimes simultaneously, disquieting and euphoric. Embracing archetypal personas —, she weaves their reinvented essences into the maze of associations conjured by her alchemical compositions. Investigating immediate consciousness, memory consciousness, and image-making consciousness, she becomes a producer of sonic images, recycling the discarded and the strange. Her remarkably unfettered access to the motherlode of automatism enhances her gift of spontaneous ingenuity." - Anne LeBaron from Surrealism in Postmodern Music

Aki Onda is a self-taught electronic musician, composer, and photographer. Onda was born in Japan and currently resides in NewYork. He is particularly known for his Cassette Memories project – works compiled from a “sound diary” of field-recordings collected by Onda over a span of two decades. Onda’s musical instrument of choice is the cassette Walkman. Not only does he capture field recordings with the Walkman, he also physically manipulates multiple Walkmans with electronics in his performances. In another of his projects, Cinemage, Onda produces slide projections of still photo images set to live guitar improvisation. Onda has collaborated with artists such as Michael Snow, Ken Jacobs, Alan Licht, Loren Connors, Oren Ambarchi, Noël Akchoté, Jac Berrocal, Linda Sharrock, and Shelley Hirsch.
www.akionda.net

The poetic quality of Ursula Scherrer’s work reminds one of moving paintings, drawing the viewer into the images, leaving the viewer with their own stories. She transforms landscapes into serene, abstract portraits of rhythm, color and light, where the images have less to do with what we see then the feeling they leave behind.

Scherrer is a Swiss video artist living in New York City. Her work has been shown in festivals, galleries and museums internationally. Scherrer has worked with the composers/musicians Shelley Hirsch, Michelle Nagai, Kato Hideki, Flo Kaufmann, Domenico Sciajno, Michael J. Schumacher, Monya Pletsch, among others, in the creation of video and sound installations, live performances and single-channel videos. Together with Katherine Liberovskaya, Scherrer organizes OptoSonic Tea, a series dedicated to the convergence of live visuals with live sounds.
http://www.ursulascherrer.com