Artists Space

Abasement #70

Concert
July 1, 2024, 7pm

Free, no RSVP required

Performances by S. Glass, Nate Wooley's Mutual Aid Music, Lea Bertucci / Ben Vida / Ric Royer, and Sailor Beware. DJ Rafael Sánchez. Visuals by Valeria Divinorum.

Magazine cut-outs and ink drawings are collaged together on a colorful background, with blue, pink, yellow and beige paper. Cut up pieces of beige paper are scattered throughout the image, and feature typewritten text listing the performers and event details.
Flyer by Joe Frivaldi. [Magazine cut-outs and ink drawings are collaged together on a colorful background, with blue, pink, yellow and beige paper. Cut up pieces of beige paper are scattered throughout the image, and feature typewritten text listing the performers and event details.]

Abasement is a monthly music series featuring performances, a guest DJ, and a projectionist. Beginning in 2015 at Max Fish bar in New York's Lower East Side, the evening brings together artists and bands working in free improvisation, jazz, noise, minimalism, and experimental composition. When Max Fish permanently closed due to Covid, one of the few experimental music venues in Manhattan temporarily ceased to exist. Artists Space is pleased to continue hosting Abasement.

Solo performer on stage next to a small table with a silver metal box on top. The walls are bathed in soft pink and purple light, to the right of the performer an image of a man in the style of a lithograph is projected. The performer has a green eyeball attached to their head amidst long flowing blonde hair.
Abasement #70. Performance documentation, July 1st, 2024, Artists Space. Photo: Joshua Wildman. [Solo performer on stage next to a small table with a silver metal box on top. The walls are bathed in soft pink and purple light, to the right of the performer an image of a man in the style of a lithograph is projected. The performer has a green eyeball attached to their head amidst long flowing blonde hair.]
Portrait view of solo performer, next to a small suitcase opening to show light bulbs and several small wires. The wall behind performer shows the lights from and the shadow of a disco ball. The performer has thick red lipstick and an eyeball on top of their head amidst long blonde hair.
Abasement #70. Performance documentation, July 1st, 2024, Artists Space. Photo: Joshua Wildman. [Portrait view of solo performer, next to a small suitcase opening to show light bulbs and several small wires. The wall behind performer shows the lights from and the shadow of a disco ball. The performer has thick red lipstick and an eyeball on top of their head amidst long blonde hair.]
Two performers pictured in front of soft pink, blue, and white light projected onto the wall behind them. Performer on left is smiling and pointing at the performer on right, who is seated in front of a mixing board and microphone.
Abasement #70. Performance documentation, July 1st, 2024, Artists Space. Photo: Joshua Wildman. [Two performers pictured in front of soft pink, blue, and white light projected onto the wall behind them. Performer on left is smiling and pointing at the performer on right, who is seated in front of a mixing board and microphone.]
View of 3 performers on stage from center left. Performers pictured in front of soft pink, blue, and white light against a wall. Leftmost performers is seated, speaking into a microphone and manipulating a tape machine with hands. Performer in center is drinking from a blue water bottle. Rightmost performer is making sound through cupped hands into microphone. Sharply defined shadows against back wall.
Abasement #70. Performance documentation, July 1st, 2024, Artists Space. Photo: Joshua Wildman. [View of 3 performers on stage from center left. Performers pictured in front of soft pink, blue, and white light against a wall. Leftmost performers is seated, speaking into a microphone and manipulating a tape machine with hands. Performer in center is drinking from a blue water bottle. Rightmost performer is making sound through cupped hands into microphone. Sharply defined shadows against back wall.]
Color image of 5 musicians performing in front of blue, pink and yellow projected swirling visuals. From left to right instruments shown are clarinet, vibraphone, trumpet, cello and violin. A small group of audience members are shown in front of the stage.
Abasement #70. Performance documentation, July 1st, 2024, Artists Space. Photo: Joshua Wildman. [Color image of 5 musicians performing in front of blue, pink and yellow projected swirling visuals. From left to right instruments shown are clarinet, vibraphone, trumpet, cello and violin. A small group of audience members are shown in front of the stage.]
View from right of 5 musicians, with lights from a disco ball visible along the walls behind them. From left, musician playing a clarinet, behind which is a musician playing a vibraphone. In the center a musician playing a trumpet into a microphone. In the foreground are pictured musicians playing a cello and a violin.
Abasement #70. Performance documentation, July 1st, 2024, Artists Space. Photo: Joshua Wildman. [View from right of 5 musicians, with lights from a disco ball visible along the walls behind them. From left, musician playing a clarinet, behind which is a musician playing a vibraphone. In the center a musician playing a trumpet into a microphone. In the foreground are pictured musicians playing a cello and a violin.]
In the foreground a musician is playing a clarinet, slightly bent forward. Behind them are two other performers on stage at rest. The wall behind is lit with soft green light and the lights from a disco ball.
Abasement #70. Performance documentation, July 1st, 2024, Artists Space. Photo: Joshua Wildman. [In the foreground a musician is playing a clarinet, slightly bent forward. Behind them are two other performers on stage at rest. The wall behind is lit with soft green light and the lights from a disco ball.]
A seated musician wearing a white t-shirt with the name Xenakis printed above an image manipulates electronics on top of a small table. The wall behind features swirling white, purple, and orange light.
From below, a musician is seen manipulating electronics housed inside of a lunchbox that pictures a schoolbus painted with different colored rectangles that have sharp black borders. Above the schoolbus is text that reads "The Partridge Family". The walls behind the musician are bathed in soft green light.
Audience members in a crowded room, seated, with a bright green light flaring from the center of the room. Around the back walls the lights from a disco ball can be seen.
Abasement #70. Performance documentation, July 1st, 2024, Artists Space. Photo: Joshua Wildman. [Audience members in a crowded room, seated, with a bright green light flaring from the center of the room. Around the back walls the lights from a disco ball can be seen.]

Numerous practices make up the electro-acoustic sound collages created by S*Glass. He combines tape music, electronic processing, voice, found sound, and chance operations. Every show uses a different batch of curated audio, mixed live, while the self-produced studio albums are more refined assemblages. The playing of non-musical objects is sometimes incorporated (dental floss, aluminum foil, wind-up toys, metal lunch box, cabbage). Self-shot video is screened during sets, which is mostly textures made with multiple layers that slowly wobble out of sync, jump cuts, and a smattering of primitive animation. The overall effect is one of surreal disorientation.

S*Glass is a founder of Bren’t Lewiis Ensemble (a large non-musical music group begun in the early 1980s), and Glands of External Secretion (a duo with rock musician Barbara Manning since the early ’90s). From the late ’80s until 2004, he was the main driver behind Bananafish. Since 2017, he’s performed as a solo artist and completed U.S. tours of the West Coast, New England, part of the South and Midwest, England and Scotland, a handful of places in Canada. This past October he toured Australia and New Zealand for three weeks; coming up in April is 10 days in the Southwest.

He’s released music and sound on his label Butte County Free Music Society, and has also collaborated with an international array of others such as Dylan Nyoukis (Scotland) Anla Courtis of Reynols (Argentina), Noel Meek (New Zealand), Bryan Day (US), Andrew Zukerman (Canada), Cody Brant (US), and Orchid Spangiafora (US). Other labels include Chocolate Monk (UK), Siltbreeze (Philadelphia), Spleencoffin (Baltimore), Blue Spectrum (UK), l’Esprit de l’Escalier (US), Krim Kram (Ireland), Independent Woman (New Zealand), Beartown (UK), Ikuisuus (Finland), Tanzprocesz (France), I Dischi Del Barone (Sweden), Coherent States (Greece), Feeding Tube (Massachusetts), VHF (Virginia), Opax (Italy), Ultra Eczema (Belgium), Dinzu Artefacts (Los Angeles), and Starlight Furniture Co. (San Francisco).


For the last ten years, Nate Wooley has been working on the concept of mutual aid in improvisation. Borrowing the term from Peter Kropotkin’s seminal book, Wooley has had multiple groups that attempt to bridge the gap between the reproducibility and hierarchy of composition and the spontaneity and humanity of pure improvisation. Groups such as Battle Pieces and knknighgh were early version of this idea, but it came to full fruition with an ensemble named after the ideal of each giving what they can and taking what they need musically. This group, Mutual Aid Music, consists of a large international crew of musicians working in different areas of creative music, but who come together when possible to work on this specific compositional conceit, in hopes of developing a musical language that is unique to the group while expanding each of its member’s vocabulary and syntax. Musicians performing at Abasement include: Nate Wooley, Laura Cocks, Madison Greenstone, Matt Moran, Lester St. Louis, Luke Stewart, and Gabby Fluke-Mogul.

Nate Wooley (b.1974) was born in Clatskanie, Oregon and began playing trumpet professionally with his father, a big band saxophonist, at the age of thirteen. He made his debut as soloist with the New York Philharmonic at the opening series of their 2019 season. Considered one of the leading lights of the American movement to redefine the physical boundaries of the horn, Wooley has been gathering international acclaim for his idiosyncratic trumpet language.

Wooley moved to New York in 2001 and has since become one of the most in-demand trumpet players in the burgeoning Brooklyn jazz, improv, noise, and new music scenes. He has performed regularly with John Zorn, Anthony Braxton, Eliane Radigue, Annea Lockwood, Ken Vandermark, Evan Parker, and Yoshi Wada. He has premiered works for trumpet by Christian Wolff, Michael Pisaro, Annea Lockwood, Ash Fure, Wadada Leo Smith, Sarah Hennies, Martin Arnold, and Eva-Maria Houben.

For ten years, he was the editor-in-chief of their online quarterly journal Sound American, which was dedicated to broadening the definition of American music via print and online publications. His essays have appeared in The Baffler and The New York Review of Books, and Contemporary Music Review.


Using the structure and language of an artist talk, Lea Bertucci, Ben Vida and Ric Royer form a panel of nonsense in text and texture, abstracting the conventions of artists' discourse to create something like a conversation, something like music and something completely absurd


Lara Allen’s solo work under the name Sailor Beware combines sound collage, spoken word, and vaudeville in a kaleidoscopic portrayal of her experiences in Cincinnati public schools, a troubled teen industry cult, and children’s mental hospital.

She was in Caroliner for a while, way back when, and also fronted Heavenly Ten Stems, who specialized in covers of Asian pop and rock tunes (the sort later popularized by labels such as Sublime Frequencies, et al.), has appeared on an album by Secret Chiefs 3, and was the off-the-hook screeching front-person of legendary Ohio psycho-rock juggernaut Manwich. Her artwork was on the cover of Bananafish #12 and she was interviewed in #17. More recently, she was a guest on Will York's Who Cares Anyway podcast.


Rafael Sánchez is a Cuban born artist living and working in New York City.


Valeria Divinorum is a NY-based visual artist & architect working with glass-metal sculptures, art installations and video art. With formal training in the School of Architecture in Buenos Aires, her work specializes in stained-glass sculptural objects which she uses as a lens to experiment with the intangible properties of light. She has a deep interest in exploring the optical perception of space through traditional and new media techniques, creating dispersion of light into spectral components.


Abasement has been curated by Joseph Frivaldi and Robert Mayson since 2015.