Artists Space

Abasement #73

Concert
November 4, 2024, 7pm

Free, no RSVP required

Performances by Growing, Kwami Winfield & C. Spencer Yeh, Mick Barr & Marc Edwards, Testu Collective. DJ Sugarlife. Visuals by Scott Kiernan.

Magazine cut-outs and ink drawings are collaged together on a background of yellow, pink, and orange paper. Pieces of paper with typewritten text listing the performers and event details are scattered around the flyer.
Flyer by Joe Frivaldi. [Magazine cut-outs and ink drawings are collaged together on a background of yellow, pink, and orange paper. Pieces of paper with typewritten text listing the performers and event details are scattered around the flyer.]

Abasement is a 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.

A crowd faces a stage where a musician is sitting over various electronic instruments and audio equipment. The audience members are bathed in red light. The wall behind the musician is projected with monochromatic gradients.
Abasement #73. Performance documentation, November 4th, 2024, Artists Space. Photo: Joshua Wildman. [A crowd faces a stage where a musician is sitting over various electronic instruments and audio equipment. The audience members are bathed in red light. The wall behind the musician is projected with monochromatic gradients.]
A performer with long blonde hair and a black baseball cap sits on stage at a table covered in electronic instruments. Their face is lit with red light. The background is dark, but a few audience members are visible.
Abasement #73. Performance documentation, November 4th, 2024, Artists Space. Photo: Joshua Wildman. [A performer with long blonde hair and a black baseball cap sits on stage at a table covered in electronic instruments. Their face is lit with red light. The background is dark, but a few audience members are visible.]
Image of a performer on stage in a yellow shirt and baseball cap playing the drums. They are facing an audience. To their right is another performer playing the guitar. The room is dark with red and blue-tinted light.
Abasement #73. Performance documentation, November 4th, 2024, Artists Space. Photo: Joshua Wildman. [Image of a performer on stage in a yellow shirt and baseball cap playing the drums. They are facing an audience. To their right is another performer playing the guitar. The room is dark with red and blue-tinted light.]
Two performers on stage, the one on the right is playing the drums and using electronic audio equipment, and the performer on the left is leaning over a large case on top of a table. The room is bathed in yellow, pink, red, and purple light. The wall behind them is projected with abstract patterns.
Abasement #73. Performance documentation, November 4th, 2024, Artists Space. Photo: Joshua Wildman. [Two performers on stage, the one on the right is playing the drums and using electronic audio equipment, and the performer on the left is leaning over a large case on top of a table. The room is bathed in yellow, pink, red, and purple light. The wall behind them is projected with abstract patterns.]
Two performers on stage in front of a seated audience. The musician on the left is holding a violin in the air as they use audio equipment on the table in front of them. The musician on the right is sitting playing the drums. The room is red-tinted, and white dots reflected from a disco ball cover the walls.
Abasement #73. Performance documentation, November 4th, 2024, Artists Space. Photo: Joshua Wildman. [Two performers on stage in front of a seated audience. The musician on the left is holding a violin in the air as they use audio equipment on the table in front of them. The musician on the right is sitting playing the drums. The room is red-tinted, and white dots reflected from a disco ball cover the walls.]
Two performers on stage in front of a seated audience. The musician on the left is playing the violin, and the musician on the right is playing the drums. The room is bathed in red and blue light. The wall behind the performers is projected with blue and purple graphics.
Abasement #73. Performance documentation, November 4th, 2024, Artists Space. Photo: Joshua Wildman. [Two performers on stage in front of a seated audience. The musician on the left is playing the violin, and the musician on the right is playing the drums. The room is bathed in red and blue light. The wall behind the performers is projected with blue and purple graphics.]
Two musicians sit on stage. The musician on the left is leaning over a table and using electronic instruments. The musician on the right is looking down and playing the guitar. The stage is lit with red and white lights and projected with a patchworks of patterns.
Abasement #73. Performance documentation, November 4th, 2024, Artists Space. Photo: Joshua Wildman. [Two musicians sit on stage. The musician on the left is leaning over a table and using electronic instruments. The musician on the right is looking down and playing the guitar. The stage is lit with red and white lights and projected with a patchworks of patterns.]
Two performers sitting on stage. The musician in the foreground is lit with blue and purple light. They are leaning forward and playing the guitar. The musician in the back is out of focus. They are bathed in red light and they also are playing guitar.
Abasement #73. Performance documentation, November 4th, 2024, Artists Space. Photo: Joshua Wildman. [Two performers sitting on stage. The musician in the foreground is lit with blue and purple light. They are leaning forward and playing the guitar. The musician in the back is out of focus. They are bathed in red light and they also are playing guitar.]

It’s not easy to summarize any band whose career has stretched over two decades. In the case of Growing, though, it’s all in the name: since 2001, the core duo of Kevin Doria and Joe DeNardo have been making vibrating, explorative experimental music that is in a forever state of evolution. In that time, Growing have amassed a hard-to-define and influential body of work.

Ambient and new age music have become part of the larger indie vocabulary. Things were different over 20 years ago in the Olympia, Washington punk community where Doria and DeNardo got their start. Both veterans of aggressive music by the time the band began, Growing emerged like a rainbow at the other end of the heavy music tunnel: loud as ever, but with a sonic and aesthetic position that ran counter to punk rock norms.
Though their amp stacks signified sludge, what actually came out of Growing's speakers was more blissed out – something akin to a hesher using their denim jacket as a meditation mat at La Monte Young’s Dream House. From their start, Growing blazed a path through the underground, leaving a trail of blown minds and ruptured eardrums in every basement they hit, and likely inspiring more than a few kids to break up their hardcore band and start experimenting with psychedelics.
In the subsequent decade, the band moved to Brooklyn, toured the world, landed on magazine covers and made records for everyone from experimental powerhouse Kranky to Vice. Their sound continued to shift — the band very gradually started to incorporate more electronic-driven, rhythmic elements — and at one point the artist and musician Sadie Laska joined as a member. Through it all, their focus on experimentation never waned.

Kwami Winfield is a multi-discipline music artist, composer / improviser raised in Jersey City and based in Brooklyn. Cornet, drums, electronics, garbage, other and etc. She has been playing music in the area for over a decade and has toured extensively in diy circuitry around the states.
Former artistinresidence at chaos computer, pioneer works.
Current artistinresidence at the living gallery, issue project room.
In 2021 Winfield began a key duo with C. Spencer Yeh at the insistence of Jessica Hallock of nycnoise.com <3
Kwami performs solo under her name as well as the alias soless dialtone. Ongoing and numerous collaborations within several bands including Many Many Girls, Camp Rock, Mom+Anon, Divide and Dissolve.
Kwami has collaborated with choreographers and performers Kyle Marshall, Arien Wilkerson, Malcolm-x Betts, Nile Harris. Contributing prerecorded and live scores to dances and plays.
An amount of self released music is available online as well as cassette tapes via diy labels Stolen Time Audio and Call Waitn (streaming via hot line at 917-426-0260).

C. Spencer Yeh is recognized for interdisciplinary activities as an artist, improviser, and composer, and for his music project Burning Star Core. Since 2020, Yeh has performed for The Kitchen NYC, The Renaissance Society with ESS Chicago, Casa del Lago UNAM MX with Jacob Wick and Bonnie Jones, Jazz em Agosto Lisbon PT with Nate Wooley's Seven Storey Mountain, Blank Forms with Raven Chacon and Che Chen, and both solo and with Luke Stewart/Leila Bordreuil’s Feedback Ensemble for Roulette NYC. He presented new video works and performances for both ISSUE Project Room NYC, and the Bemis Center Omaha NE. Yeh also exhibited with Anthology Film Archives, Loong Mah NYC, Bánh Mì Verlag online, 5th Floor/Centre d'Art Contemporain Genève, and participated in Nick Klein’s “Bring the Flowers to the Theatre” at Sara’s NYC. In 2021 he organized a karaoke event for Creative Time and Rashid Johnson's "Red Stage” NYC project, and started a key music duo with Kwami Winfield. In 2019, Yeh received the Foundation for Contemporary Arts Grants to Artists award.
In 2023 Yeh's work was part of exhibitions including "Constellating Histories" with Asia Film Archives Singapore, "Impossible Music" at the Miller Institute for Contemporary Art Pittsburgh, and the Taipei Biennial “Small World” at the Taipei Fine Arts Museum, Taiwan. His video works are distributed by Electronic Arts Intermix. Yeh is on the advisory board for Montez Press Radio, is a contributing editor for BOMB magazine and Triple Canopy, and was a former programmer/trailer editor for Spectacle Theater, a microcinema in Brooklyn NY.

Mick Barr is a guitarist, composer and artist currently living in New Jersey. His prolific musical output contains over 100 releases of his singular fast and agile guitar playing. He is primarily active in the metal and experimental music worlds. Projects include Krallice, Orthrelm and his long running solo project Ocrilim.

Testu Collective is an NYC-based intermedia art group founded by Dan Tesene and Serena Stucke. Testu creates intermedia performances, experimental videos, concept soundtracks, audiovisual experiences, sound art, and performance art installations. Tesene and Stucke are interested in creating environments that challenge the traditional audience experience. Testu has produced site-specific installations and curated works for CTM Festival(online), Ars Electronica(NYC), Ace Hotel(NYC), The Shed(NYC), Pleamar Festival(Buenos Aires), Theaterlab(NYC), Public Visuals(Tokyo). Most recently, they created a sound installation for Dan Flavin’s light sculptures at Mana Contemporary in New Jersey.

Sugarlife from US/ France comes from a strong tradition of posers, wanabees and knobs.. their pronouns are “ it”. It has been an amateur hack for 35 years and counting… good luck!…
That’s it. Thanks

Scott Kiernan is an artist living and working in New York City. In his video, photo and installation works, electronically synthesized and photographic elements interact to address their own materiality and means of distribution. He is particularly interested in how meaning shifts through stages of translation via technology, speech and syntax.
He was founder and co-director of Louis V E.S.P., an artist-run gallery and performance space in Brooklyn, NY (2010- 2012) and now of E.S.P. TV (2011-present), a nomadic TV studio that explores the televisual as a medium for broadcast collaborations. This project also formed UNIT 11, a transmission-based residency program operating from a former ENG van turned mobile electronic studio. Kiernan also directs Various/Artists, a project space in New York City and imprint producing audio/visual releases by artists working across diverse media.
He has exhibited and performed internationally in venues such as Museum of Modern Art, New Museum, Museum of Arts and Design, Swiss Institute/Contemporary Art, Storefront for Art and Architecture, Whitney Museum of American Art, PERFORMA, Harvard Art Museums, P.S. 1, Anthology Film Archives, Mixed Greens, Ballroom Marfa, Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, and the Center for International Contemporary Art in Rome.

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