Austin Sley Julian: Corrosiv is Complete with Andrya Ambro & Leila Bordreuil
For his third and final commissioned work as a 2021 ISSUE Artist-In-Residence, sound/visual artist, improviser, and performer Austin Sley Julian presents “Corrosiv is Complete,” a collaboration with percussionist, vocalist, and composer Andrya Ambro and cellist, composer, and 2016 ISSUE Artist-In-Residence Leila Bordreuil. Using built electro-acoustic instruments the three build a sparse, skeletal landscape built from and returning to rubble. This performance will take place at 17 Frost Gallery in Williamsburg, Brooklyn.
Notes from Austin Sley Julian on Corrosive is Complete:
Opaque/ Navy Blue/ Starved dogs and assassins.
The Synth/ Insight/ Deceit/ Forfeiting in the U.S.A. Dreamwood/ Pivoted hills/ A place to extinct
The Despot stands/ Cast iron/ Buried in sand. Tyranny in the plain dust.
Austin Sley Julian is a visual and sound artist, improviser, and performer born in Brooklyn, NY. Julian has worked in many visual and aural media, making countless pieces through the years, touring nationally with several music projects that he has founded, namely Sediment club, Sunk Heaven, and Signal Break. Using prepared guitar, handmade instruments, discarded artifacts and debris, Austin Sley Julian creates moving, physically jagged, harsh gestures that hurl at their audiences. Through these kinetic sounds and sculptures Julian strives to convey a physically unstable energy in his work that reflects the technological society in which it was created. In Julian’s work, structures are constructing and deconstructing in the same gesture. Sounds float and sink in the same note. Image is viscerally close and encompassing, all in the same moment. Julian’s work shows an attraction to the aesthetic that is created by this dichotomy between rhythm, structure, and total collapse. His work strives to keep the audience in a constant conflict between these polar extremes. Austin Sley Julian as an artist is aiming to evoke feelings of anguish, frustration, and inherent conflict to confront the ugly instability of this condition with realism and “pessimistic optimism.”
Andrya Ambro is a percussionist, vocalist and composer living in Queens, NY. Ambro has dedicated most of her life to music through various art rock bands and other noisy pursuits. Her work has been described as “gutsy, dense and fascinating.” Best known as one half of the noise-laden rock duo Talk Normal, Ambro currently leads and composes for the sometimes avant trio Gold Dime. Although a multi-instrumentalist, vocalist and composer, Ambro is most recognized as a percussionist. Having honed a decisive sit/stand style of drumming, she fuses driving West African influenced beats crossed with industrial throbbing; all very heavy on the toms and an array of metal objects. Her voice acts as her fifth limb; both informing and interacting with the drums. Live performances are often intense but galvanizing. Ambro has toured internationally with both Talk Normal and Gold Dime and opened for the likes of Sonic Youth, Wire, Yeah Yeah Yeahs, Zola Jesus, U.S. Girls, Xiu Xiu etc. Andrya is honored to have performed/collaborated with Viv Albertine, Brian Chase, Meshell Ndegeocello, Beth Gill, Jeffrey Gibson, Richard Hoffman, among other musicians, dancers and artists.
Leila Bordreuil is a Brooklyn-based cellist, composer, improviser and sound-artist. Her music was described by the New York Times as “steadily scathing music, favoring long and corrosive atonalities." Driven by a fierce interest in pure sound and inherent texture, Leila challenges conventional cello practice through highly original extended techniques and extreme amplification methods without effects pedals, to the extent she sometimes seems to be playing the P.A system rather than the cello. Bordreuil's recent collaborators include Bill Nace (Body/Head), Tamio Shiraishi (Fushitutsa), Zach Rowden, Susan Alcorn, Ingrid Laubrock, Lee Ranaldo (Sonic Youth), Kali Malone, Luke Stewart, Joanna Mattrey, Sean Ali and Julia Santoli. Her work has been showcased at The Whitney Museum, MoMA PS1, Lincoln Center, The Kitchen, The Stone, Café Oto (London), Le Guess Who (Utrecht), All Ears Festival (Oslo), Ausland (Berlin), Edition Festival (Stockholm), Control Club (Bucharest), KRAAK Festival (Belgium), Ftarri (Tokyo) and countless basements across the USA, Europe and Asia.
