6th Annual Transmodern Festival - Live.Art.Action

Adam Good is a writer and performance lecturer from Washington, DC. Through diagrams, lectures, and prototypes, he explores the Realm of All Relations (the ROAR), quantum semantics, object-oriented thought, and radical recombinance. He thinks about thinking, a lot. Some of his lectures are available here: http://www.errationality.com/?page_id=6. He has collaborated with Kate Porter on “I Know Where We Are: An Interface in Three Movements” (http://tinyurl.com/ahxsun). He posts his diagrams here: http://www.flickr.com/photos/asgood/. He is a member of the research collective WE ARE SCIENCE! with Jon Lee and other humans. He sends a shout out to post-it notes.

Ami Dang is a South-Asian American musician and multimedia artist born and raised in Glen Arm, Maryland. Her work shifts between electronic and acoustic music, installation, movement, video, and various intermedia forms.  Currently, she is focused on solo performance that combines experimental music notions with North Indian classical sentiments to create a unique one-woman show. Having studied North Indian classical vocals and sitar for over ten years in the United States and Delhi, India, she conjures a 21st century spell of sounds further influenced by ambient, noise, and minimal musics.  In 2005, she became a disciple (for sitar) of Dr. Anupam Mahajan of the Senia Ghurana.  A year later she graduated from Oberlin College Conservatory of Music with a bachelor’s degree in technology in music and related arts.

In 2005 and 2006, she completed two multimedia performance productions.  She directed, composed, and choreographed Unee Sau Churaasee, a one-act performance for video installation, music, and six dancers about the 1984 anti-Sikh riots of Delhi, India. She also created a performance about consumption in contemporary society entitled Reception, a show for viewer-interactive installation using MIDI sensors and five music video shorts.  Last year, shereleased a tour-only EP Because You Rained On Me, and she is currently working on a full-length album.

Ami is often thinking about Sikh spirituality and performance, how children become adults, the sounds of the body, hair, perceptions of the self and the other, translation of information, the public vs. the private, brown identities, beauty, otherness, and good beats.

Anna Catastrophe is a multimedia artist, promoter, and writer in the DC and Baltimore area. Formerly known as Anna B or Anna Bonanza, she has been known to be quite the stir with her uncontrollable shaking on dance floors and witty side comments.  Anna Catastrophe has done three official performances including collectively participating in a performance titled Slapdown! featured in Transmodern Age Festival 2007.  Also featured in this performance is Meg Mitchell, a Maryland based artist and Jeffry Cudlin’s Washington D.C. based band, The Objective Lesson.  Other interests include being lacquered by the sun during mid-afternoons, naming wild baby rabbits in early June, baking cakes, the act of untangling, daydreaming about distant places, shrine-like organization, palindromes, sushi, unexpected acts of mysticism, exploration as always being my muse, drawing with kids, disco revival, seances, lucid dreaming, and staring at a wall for hours.  Anna Catastrophe is all about the ruckus!

Autumn Breaud, also known as ‘Dirty Tex’ from her reign as Charm City’s mud wrestling champion, is grateful for any reason to use the right side of her brain. Versatile, with roles from Uppity Ladies Garden Gnome #8 to Theresa Columbus’ BCC’s Grandma, Autumn is an accomplished performer with a canyon-wide range of interests.

The AVWC is an A/V “lounge” curated by Baltimore-based group Snacks.  The The lounge will provide continuous sound and video enjoyment for the Transmodern festivalgoers.

The lounge will be located on the 3rd Floor/Whole Gallery and will be open on Friday and Saturday evenings. 

Participating artists include: (subject to change)

Kristen Anchor (Baltimore)
Mitchell Brown (Los Angeles)
Chris Cooper (Mass.)
Drew Daniel (Baltimore)
Deven Green (Los Angeles)
ID M THeftable (Maine)
Hans Grusel’s KrankenKabinet (San Francisco)
Leprechaun Catering (Baltimore)
Melissa Moore (Baltimore)
People like Us (UK)
Martin Schmidt (Baltimore)
Swinging Chandeliers (Los Angeles)
Tarantism (San Francisco)
Karen Yasinsky + Snacks (Baltimore)
C. Spencer Yeh (Cincinnati) 

Ball Movement 09, Baltimore Cup
A life size Foosball game 

created by:
Michael Benevento, and Andrew Liang

Project team:
Eamon Espey, Lisa Krause, John Bohl, Joana Kopczyk, Michael Carpenter, Krysten Watson, Miranda Pfeiffer, Matt Lohry, Jeff McGrath, Jeff Timlin, Emmanuel Nicolaidis, Stev Santillan, Adam Montegut, Erin Gleeson, and Madeline Poole, and Monique Crabb

Harnesses created by:
Risa Ono, Melanie Lester

Performers:
Harness Assistants:  Emmanuel Nicolaidis, Jeff Timlin, Krysten Watson, Risa Ono, Melanie Lester, Michael Carpenter, Miranda Pfeiffer, Joana Kopczyk

Ball Boys:  Matt Lohry, Mitchell Goodrich, John Bohl, Adam Montegut

MC: Jeff Mcgrath

Sound Effect/ DJ:  Stev Santillan, Martin Kasey.

Videographer/Photographer: Andy Shenker and Monique Crabb

The art made by Baltimore artist Dan Deacon is about community and how to organize and inspire it. From founding a now well-known art collective (Wham City), to organizing and running an annually sold-out DIY music festival (Whartscape), to conceiving, planning and curating a massive 60 person/30 band tour (Baltimore Round Robin Tour), it’s clear to see that community and bringing people together is the major theme of his work.

Bromst, Deacon’s ground-breaking new album, is the embodiment of that way of thinking. Dan will be performing Bromst with the Dan Deacon Ensemble at the 2009 Annual Transmodern Festival.  This event will act as a record release for his exciting new work, as well as a celebration of his Baltimore base & home and his commitment to on-going ecstatic, collective creative action.

For the last three years Dan Deacon has been working on Bromst. Fusing together the growing intensity of his live performances with his background in electro-acoustic composition, the outcome is a collection of pieces that are intense and epic and at the same time down to earth and welcoming.

Bromst embodies the same energy and excitement as Spiderman of the Rings, however the craftsmanship and composition on Bromst have a wider scope and richer palette.  Unlike the completely electronic Spiderman of the Rings, the instrumentation on Bromst is a mixture of acoustic instruments, mechanical instruments, samples and electronics. The player piano, marimba, glockenspiel, vibraphone, live drums, winds and brass give Bromst a much richer tone than his previous work.  The intricate and complex parts, skillfully executed by the performers, are woven together into a rich, dense, noisy dance pop that has become Dan Deacon’s signature sound.

Edward Knapp creates works in fiber, flame, glass, bone, paper, and pigment, together with harvested and found materials. His pieces are grounded in traditional forms and techniques, manifesting Vision in co-creation with Spirit. He has over 15 years of experience in the divinatory arts.

Erin Markey is a Brooklyn-based writer/performer who creates musically theatrical events. Her solo musical, Puppy Love: A Stripper’s Tail, toured nationally with the 2008 Sex Worker’s Art Show and her blues opera, Looking for Limbo, co-written with Joseph Keckler, was included in the 2007 Lincoln Center Director’s Laboratory. Her work has appeared at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, Joe’s Pub, Performance Studies International, Leslie/Lohman Gallery, Here Arts Space, Galapagos Art Space, Club Wötever (London), and frequently at Dixon Place. She is currently developing a new telemusical, Dardy Family Home Movies by Stephen Sondheim, and is in the process of making Puppy Love: A Stripper’s Tail into a screenplay.

Press:

“Performance artist Erin Markey started out with comedy, talking about trying to support herself after college by becoming a stripper. Markey had a cloud of puckish hair and dark-painted eyes, and she explained that the strip club had asked her to pick a stripper name. What she chose, she explained, was Bridget, her sister’s confirmation name and the patron saint of childbirth. At first this seemed a little sacrilegious. But then Markey started to sing. ¶ She was topless, in gold panties and leather boots, arching her body around the golden pole. It was incredibly sexy, but it was more than that. She was singing about Bridget, the saint of childhood, and how she spread her legs, as Markey, too, slid up the pole and spread her legs wide. She kept climbing higher, looking at the audience with that sultry exhibitionist gaze but also reaching up, aiming for something more. ¶ It was thrilling and thought-provoking and beautiful, and it was pushing beyond all these into something else, a kind of constant striving. ¶That didn’t just count as art, I realized, spellbound; it embodied it.”  –The Harvard Crimson

“Erin Markey gets guffaws on virtually every line…” –Backstage.com

“Every single one of [Markey's] lines received a huge laugh from the audience. Silly voices are a dime a dozen, but this was a real performance worthy of the warm response.” –NY Theatre

“wickedly funny” –The NY Blade

“There are probably no envelopes Ms. Markey hasn’t pushed to the tearing point, but the effort always seems to come out funny and strangely beautiful.” –Grand Street News

“But perhaps the very strongest and most truly Brechtian moment comes at the hand of Erin Markey… fiercely eccentric, almost androgynous roughness…indulges in some very low comedy indeed.” –KDHX

“The standout performance is by Erin Markey…” –TheatreMania.

“Lovely” –Gay City News

“Vampy” – SPIN

“Brave” –Artforum

“Art Sexpot” –HX

photo: Kristyn O’Reilly

San Francisco duo FREDDY MCGUIRE is Anne McGuire, accompanied by electronic musician Wobbly (Jon Leidecker). Together they perform as The Freddy McGuire Show, in twisted lounge mode. myspace.com/freddymcguire

Anne is widely regarded for her video work, and has screenings this winter at the Berlin Film Festival and The Stan Brakhage Symposium in Boulder, CO.

Wobbly began as an improvised live mix radio program in Santa Barbara In 1990 and since 1994 has become the unintentional psuedonym of Jon Leidecker.  Live performances are still laptop free and aim for extended narratives spun from spontaneous yet coherent multi-sample polyphony.  It tries to sound like everything that’s ever happened.  Selected recent albums  are freely available online.  Previous and ongoing collaborators include  Thomas Dimuzio, People Like Us, Matmos, Anne McGuire (as ‘The Freddy McGuire Show’), Negativland, Tim Perkis, Xopher Davidson, Blevin Blectum, Lesser,  Otomo Yoshihide, Zeena Parkins & MaryClare Brzytwa (as ‘The Amen Seat’).

FUTURE ISLANDS are a new-wave dance band from North Carolina, now residing in the fertile “music capital of awesome”, Baltimore. Future Islands play a terse yet passionate music wrought from a stripped back palette. Gerrit Welmers’ cartwheeling synthesizer melodies tumble across the austere wilderness of William Cashion’s post-punk bass pulse, driven ever forward by ecstatic electronic rhythms.

Samuel, William and Gerrit had been writing songs together since 2003 in the guise of absurdist party project Art Lord & The Self Portraits, however it was with the arrival of Eric Murillo on drums that the band rid themselves of the mythology and masks, taking on a new motive and the name Future Islands. With the change their sound became exponentially faster and surprisingly powerful. They quickly wrote and recorded an EP entitled ‘Little Advances’ in time for their first tour late 2006 and haven’t looked back since.

Photo by Jenn.

Hermonie is an Epistemological Liberal (sometimes things just happen. sometimes things just don’t happen). She is an Aries, born on the cusp of Pisces, in the year of the Ox. Her work is replete with the Specific, “I want to be here,” and she thrives on the Obvious, “I want you to be here with me.”

J. Gavin Heck is a raconteur. A founding member of NYC’s Madagascar Institute/Dark Passage, Heck played roles as diverse as Nympho #1, Hades, Dancing streetsweeper #3 and was Pozzo in 08 at Theater Project in Godot. Heck won “Best dead for 100 years elephant” from the Village Voice in 2003 and is working on a cycle of noh inspired plays titled “Wanted Norman”. Looking forward, www.2goats.com is rarely updated as that would involve the past. He would like to thank kate (kaosunshine) for the key labeled “the apartment I grew up in”.

[coming soon]

“Lurch and Holler” is E. Liz Downing and Michael Willis.

Trying to save the world every weekend morning, they conjure healing vibrations by harmonizing with household appliances. They accompany these vibrations with banjo, guitar, and neighborhood sounds like trash trucks, birds, helicopters and such. Finally, “Lurch and Holler” sing, coo and growl words into the poultice which have lately been inspired by the Odyssey, Flannery O’Connor and Gertrude Stein. The resulting medicine is Appalachian Techno Psychedelia and not so far from “Lurch and Holler’s” origin, the Mystic Hillbillie Opera of the late trio, “Lambs Eat Ivy”.

Mark Brown is a Video & New Media Artist presently living and working in Baltimore. He attended the Maryland Institute College of Art; majoring in Interactive Media with a concentration in Video.

Mark Brown currently works with local art collective Wham City and the presently forming and mutating Baltimore Humans group; with whom he recently toured exhibiting video works and performing experimental electro-acoustic improvised audio/visual compositions with Baltimore Artists Shaun Flynn and David Zimmerman. He also regularly collaborates with Baltimore artist Kari Altmann; with whom he helped form the experimental curatorial project Netmares Netdreams (http://www.netmaresnetdreams.net).

please visit http://www.mcbrown.info for more information and selected works.

Melissa Webb is saturated colors and intricate textures and light and movement and wind and gravity today!

Her favorite color is green.

She enjoys long walks in dense forests, real fake things, ruffles, and fluttering tendrils.

Turn-ons and turn-offs: She tends to fancy open spaces and unassuming places, and wants to find ways to break free from the limitations of white gallery walls, pedestals, and stages.

In her spare time she likes to collaborate with good friends, creating eye-catching public spectacles, alternate realities, and thought-provoking, interactive experiences for human beings.

http://www.bakerartistawards.org/nomination/view/Missy

Paige Shuttleworth is a MICA alumni and multiple arts practitioner extraordinaire.

Among other disciplines she is a DJ, painter, illustrator, clothing and costume maker, performance artist, hoola-hooper, guitar player, and freaky dancer.

http://www.ciat-lonbarde.net/

Rahne Alexander is a writer, musician and multimedia artist from Baltimore. She is the guitarist and songwriter for the art garage trio The Degenerettes and a senior organizer of the Charm City Kitty Club. Her video art has screened in galleries and film festivals across the country, and she is a frequent contributor to City Paper and Smile Hon You’re In Baltimore. www.rahne.com

Photo: Defekto

Reina was born Tatiana M. Williams on Sept 17th 1982. The name Reina, by the way, means “Queen” in Spanish. And her royal prowess shines, in Spanish. And her royal prowess shines, as a singer, songwriter, rapper, producer, engineer, and performer of her own, original compositions as well as bringing a new flavor to familiar cover tunes.

So you see, its not just hype, because this woman is the Queen of her musical domain.

Born and raised in a musical family in Baltimore, Maryland, this 26 year old began her music career as an extra on stage, with the Baltimore Opera Company when she was barely 17 months old. Formal musical training began at the age of five, with private piano lessons. She has been writing music and lyrics since age 11, and also plays guitar, bass, and percussion instruments.

Trained at The Omega Studios for Recorded Arts and Sciences in Rockville, Maryland; a State-accredited higher education institution, Reina acquired proficiency on the intricacies of recorded music there, while developing a keen understanding of both the technical and artistic components of recorded music.

She was hired as an apprentice engineer at Reel Tyme Studios in NY, run by Grammy award winner, Ernie Lake, and has also worked with DJ Eddie Baez. She also worked as an engineer at Oz Recording Studio, in Baltimore for two years, where she worked with sensational artists such as Alicia Keys, and Usher.

She is currently involved in developing various East Coast based artists, and is also breaking in to film and television. Her music can be heard throughout various network and cable TV shows.

Reina is an out and proud Lesbian, with a little Dominican blood coursing through veins, which gives her music that extra flava, energy and style, like no other.

Sarada Conaway is an artist and independent curator working in Baltimore MD. Her work focuses on removing boundaries between everyday life and art. Her current body of work is a large-scale collaboration with residents of standard apartment buildings. Ms. Conaway received her BFA from the Tyler College of Art and is recent graduate of the University of Maryland MFA program.

Jackie Milad is an artist who works with drawing, performance art and installation, and often creates projects that brings these disciplines together. Her projects explore the awkward moments shared between people. She has exhibited internationally and nationally in such places such as The Contemporary Museum in Baltimore, Gallery 32 as part of the London Biennale, Delaware Center of Contemporary Art in Wilmington, Museum of Fine Arts in Mazatlan, Mexico and Galeria de Jovenes in Culiacan, Mexico. In 2005 she earned her MFA from Towson University, and in 2000 she received her BFA from Tufts University and the School of Museum of Fine Arts. In 1998, Ms. Milad studied painting at the Studio Arts Center International in Florence Italy. She is currently Program Coordinator for the Union Gallery at University of Maryland, College Park.

Make-Over
Sarada Conaway and Jackie Milad will offer free makeovers to self selected volunteers. Participants will receive a before, in-between and after photograph. Milad’s in-between makeovers will resemble her current series of portrait drawings; awkward, empathetic and humorous. Conaway’s makeovers create an altered appearance, and an unusual social interaction.

Teeth Mountain is a collective of musicians, artists, and philosophers seeking to subdue the fabric of time by exploring the hypnotic and transformative effects of sound, volume, spirit, rhythm, environment, and other means. Founded by Andrew Burt and Kate Levitt in Baltimore in the Spring of 2007, the group has worked tirelessly to realize its ideas through numerous tours and hundreds of shows, collaborations with a diverse group of musicians, an acclaimed LP, and hosting events at the Comfort Dome, their headquarters in downtown Baltimore.

April will see the release of a new LP on Not Not Fun Records. Comprised of live recordings from the latter half of 2008, the album is a different take on the live album format, seeking to represent the experience of a live band not through a faithful reproduction of a given performance but rather as a dream of a long journey, with the source material manipulated and edited to form a wholly new composition.

The band also is setting out on a full-U.S. tour with the Dan Deacon Ensemble and Future Islands beginning in April. Members Kate Levitt, Greg Fox, Andrew Burt, Justin Frye, and Andrew Bernstein will also be performing in the Ensemble. Following this tour, the band will head to Europe for a week of festivals with Dan and Future Islands and then a two week tour of the UK and the Continent on their own.