Friday, February 14th, ISSUE presents artist and musician Marcia Bassett’s Out-SIDe PATtern RE-configuration, a new sound and light performance featuring Bassett’s video projections sourced from digitized super 8mm film, liquid light experiments, and video feedback with color gel slide projections by Barry Weisblat. Kyle Eyre Clyd, the longtime moniker of Alabama-based, interdisciplinary artist Kyle Kessler, also presents new work. In late 2019, Bassett released Kyle Eyre Clyd’s Eggshell on her Yew Recordings imprint.
Kyle Eyre Clyd presents new work exploring the figure of the medieval artisan as a figure who is not mad but is becoming-mad and in this half-state of identity, addresses the cosmos. The performance features archaic texts of visionaries accompanied by a de-healing drone whose timbres and transitions induce feelings of nausea and simulate auditory hallucinations. Abstracted close-ups, drag, and vocal pitch shifting in video presentation accompany live manipulation of sound.
Throughout her artistic practice, Marcia Bassett has sought to induce trance-like-states of mind through her multifaceted audiovisual work. For Out-SIDe PATtern RE-configuration, Bassett explores the interaction of sound and light and their resulting forms, using analog and digital tools and real-time composition to manipulate and abstract sound into seemingly chaotic and fragmented parts. Interrelations between sound and visual projections unfold in timed sequences organized into areas of duration to further emphasize random relationships, abstractions, and conflict. Her visual presentation expands upon an experimental super 8mm film that she shot, edited and composed a soundtrack for in July 2019 titled “Morning Reflections,” plus slide projections from artist Barry Weisblat.
Artist/musician Marcia Bassett works in areas of sound, improvisation, live composition and visual creations. Bassett's work is equal parts trance and critique. Her sound pieces thread the needle between the conceptual and the sensual, between ritual invocation and cold semiotic gaze. Using handmade electronic instruments, prepared guitar, synthesizer, field recordings and tape explorations, Bassett deftly wields philosophical systems to produce heady, experiential clouds; pushing through drones into provocative soundscapes – the intangible narratives of dreams. Bassett frequently performs and tours under her solo moniker Zaïmph. As an improviser and sound artist she also frequently joins others in collaborative installations and multimedia projects. Recent collaborative presentations include work with Ursula Scherrer, OptoSonic Tea a site-specific group improvisation and OptoSonic Echoes an 8-channel continuous sound installation and at The Parrish Museum, Water Mill, NY; "The Eternal Now" Buchla Music Easel improvisation with Ted Gordon and colorslide stroboscopic light experiments by Jeffrey Perkins at The Diffusion Festival, Baltimore. D.C.; “Survival Of Laments” a live improvisation with Margarida Garcia and Manuel Mota at Festival Oude Muziek 2018, Utrecht, and guitar and violin improvisations with Samara Lubelski. Marcia Bassett's and Samara Lubelski’s LP ’Morning Flare Symmetries’ will be available in 2020 on Feeding Tube Records. Past collaborations and solo projects include work with Andrew Lafkas’ large ensemble Alternate Models; "Transitory Freezing of Perpetual Motion" improvised sound performance with Jenny Graf and dancers at Here-10 Evenings Festival, Sweden; “Field Recording with Zaïmph,” BOMB magazine, and "Out of Line: Narcissister" live improvised sound interaction with the performance, High Line, NYC. Additionally, she created an original soundtrack for the 2013, Single Channel Video, "Ten Ways of Doing Time", written and directed by James Fotopoulos and Laura Parnes.
Kyle Eyre Clyd is the longtime moniker of artist Kyle Kessler, an interdisciplinary artist living and working in Birmingham, AL. She has exhibited and performed at the Contemporary Art Center New Orleans, Sculpture Center (NY), Artist Space (NY), ISSUE Project Room (NY), The Stone (NY), PPOW Gallery (NY) and at numerous experimental music festivals. Her music has been played live on WFMU and on small radio stations worldwide. She holds an MFA in Sound from Bard College and a BFA from the Cooper Union. Her sound work is often the result of collaborations with other musicians and thinkers. She has worked with Keith Connolly, Samara Lubelski, Lea Bertucci, Patrick Cole, Dylan Hay, Anthony Saunders, Peter Bowling, and many more. Her new work is a textual and memorial digression from her time spent performing hundreds of shows in the noise underground and its tangential queer communities. It approaches sound from a contemplative, impressionistic perspective and the plastic arts from a conceptual one. Themes may shift on a project-by-project basis but consistently one feels the influence of semiotic interpretations of art punctuated by a haunted delivery and mystic poeticism.