Artists Space

Abasement #78

Concert
June 16, 2025, 7pm

Performances by Gryphon Rue, Alex Waterman, and Edwin Torres; Morio Agata with Yujin Yama, Tsugumi Takashi, and Avery Brooks; Vorhees; Loren Connors; and Phantom Honeymoon. DJ Ryan Sawyer. Visuals by Jim Spring. Projections by Bradley Eros.

Magazine cut-outs and ink drawings are collaged together on a background of red and yellow paper. Pieces of beige 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 red and yellow paper. Pieces of beige 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.

Bradshaw, Erick. Abasement #78. The Wire. September 2025. Online & Print.

Color image of a performer on stage playing the electric guitar. They are leaning over a table, with one arm streched out. Their guitar and jacket are both white. Green and blue lights bathe the columns and walls of the room.
Abasement #78. Performance documentation, June 16th, 2025, Artists Space. Photo: Joshua Wildman. [Color image of a performer on stage playing the electric guitar. They are leaning over a table, with one arm streched out. Their guitar and jacket are both white. Green and blue lights bathe the columns and walls of the room.]
Color image of a performer on stage with a guitar. They are singing into a microphone, with another microphone facing the guitar. Japanese and English text are projected on the performer and the wall behind them. The performer is lit with orange-tinted lights, and white dots of light from a discoball decorate the wall.
Abasement #78. Performance documentation, June 16th, 2025, Artists Space. Photo: Joshua Wildman. [Color image of a performer on stage with a guitar. They are singing into a microphone, with another microphone facing the guitar. Japanese and English text are projected on the performer and the wall behind them. The performer is lit with orange-tinted lights, and white dots of light from a discoball decorate the wall.]
Color image of two performers on stage playing the guitar and drums. The performer on the left is wearing round sunglasses with a music stand in front of them. The back wall is lit with small white dots from a disco ball.
Abasement #78. Performance documentation, June 16th, 2025, Artists Space. Photo: Joshua Wildman. [Color image of two performers on stage playing the guitar and drums. The performer on the left is wearing round sunglasses with a music stand in front of them. The back wall is lit with small white dots from a disco ball.]
Color image of five performers on stage. They are playing bass, violin, guitars, and drums. A row of audience members are visible in the foreground, with their backs to the camera. A blue projection covers the performers and the back wall.
Abasement #78. Performance documentation, June 16th, 2025, Artists Space. Photo: Joshua Wildman. [Color image of five performers on stage. They are playing bass, violin, guitars, and drums. A row of audience members are visible in the foreground, with their backs to the camera. A blue projection covers the performers and the back wall.]
Color image of two performers, the performer on the left is standing over a 4-track tape teck on a table, the performer on the right is sitting playing the cello. A mic stand in the foreground splits the frame. A blue and yellow water-like image is projected on the wall.
Abasement #78. Performance documentation, June 16th, 2025, Artists Space. Photo: Joshua Wildman. [Color image of two performers, the performer on the left is standing over a 4-track tape teck on a table, the performer on the right is sitting playing the cello. A mic stand in the foreground splits the frame. A blue and yellow water-like image is projected on the wall.]
Color image of three performers on stage. The performer on the left is sitting at a table with a tape deck, the performer in the middle is playing cello with a bow, and the rightmost performer is standing with a microphone. One audience member is visible in the foreground. The musicians, as well as the wall behind them, are bathed in an abstract light projection.
Abasement #78. Performance documentation, June 16th, 2025, Artists Space. Photo: Joshua Wildman. [Color image of three performers on stage. The performer on the left is sitting at a table with a tape deck, the performer in the middle is playing cello with a bow, and the rightmost performer is standing with a microphone. One audience member is visible in the foreground. The musicians, as well as the wall behind them, are bathed in an abstract light projection.]

Gryphon Rue is a visual artist and electronic musician. Born in New York City, Rue’s work spans electro-acoustic music, visual art, and cross-media projects, earning him a reputation as “a conjuror in stereo” (Electronic Sound) who “plays with sonics in a way that a visual artist might manipulate light” (The Quietus). His 2025 album, I Keep My Diamond Necklace In A Pond Of Sparkling Water, has drawn widespread acclaim for its ambitious scope and ecological imagination. The album is noted for its use of field recordings and unconventional instrumentation, creating what critics describe as an “eco-fantasia” where the boundaries between human and non-human sound blur, “creaking and grumbling and humming with subterranean and oceanic immensity, singing in voices both animal and botanical” (The Quietus).

Alex Waterman is a cellist, sound artist, writer, and archivist exploring how social bodies can live and work together in more musical ways. He has created a diverse body of works including sound installations, film, and video works, exhibitions, amateur choral works, radio and film scores, and solo performances as a cellist, electronic musician, and storyteller. Waterman was an artist in the 2014 Whitney Biennial and has recorded over thirty records as a performer, arranger, and producer. He has produced five books on musical notation and poetics with the British typographer Will Holder. He has taught at the Bard College MFA program, Ramapo College, Wesleyan University, and the Banff Centre for the Arts. Alex was the archivist at The Kitchen in New York City from 2021 to 2025 and is an archive consultant for artists, foundations, and community archives.

Edwin Torres is a NYC native and author of 15 poetry collections including; Quanundrum: i will be your many angled thing (Roof Books, awarded an American Book Award), Xoeteox: the infinite word object (Wave Books), Ameriscopia (U of Arizona), and editor of The Body In Language: An Anthology (Counterpath Press). Fellowships include; NYSCA, Foundation for Contemporary Arts, and Arts MidHudson. His performances and collaborations with cultural nomads over the years have contributed to the development of his bodylingo poetics. Anthologies include; The Difference Is Spreading: 50 Contemporary Poets on Fifty Poems, Poets In The 21st Century: Poetics of Social Engagement, and Aloud: Voices from The Nuyorican Poets Cafe.

Morio Agata is a folk-rock singer/songwriter, actor, director and essayist, originating from Hokkaido. Since releasing his debut single Sekishoku Erejī (translated as Red Elegy) in 1972 Agata has issued a lengthy string of idiosyncratic, experimental pop albums and directed four films. Today, he remains a beloved cult figure, actively touring and recording. At Abasement Agata will be joined by Yujin Yama (Guitar), Tsugumi Takashi (Bass), and Avery Brooks (Drums).

Vorhees is Dana Wachs, a Brooklyn based composer and audio engineer. Dana studied cello and electric bass from an early age. At nineteen, she joined the DC hardcore group Holy Rollers (Dischord Records) and dove deep into a world of touring and live sound. Audio engineering would define the following twenty years of her life while working at Greene Street Recording NYC, and then touring the world mixing artists such as Jon Hopkins, Tim Hecker, and Deerhunter, among many others. In 2009, she debuted her solo compositions, releasing 2017’s Black Horse Pike and 2019’s Tracks for Movement on Brooklyn based Styles Upon Styles. The past decade has seen her busy composing for commissioned performances and recordings for fashion designer Rachel Comey, as well as dance performances by Guggenheim Prize winning choreographer Morgan Thurson, and Bessie Award winning choreographer Heather Kravas. She composed and performed in parts II and III of a performance art piece titled Rural Violence, directed by Brandon Stousy (The Creative Independent), both presented by artist Matthew Barney. In conjunction, she collaborated with George Clarke of Deafheaven, forming the new duo Wachs & Clarke, for the 20 minute accompanying music piece “RVIII: Invocation”. Her first short film score Sugar (dir. Kim Howl Lee) debuted at Cannes in 2017, and her first two feature film scores premiered in 2022, including the BAFTA nominated Blue Bag Life, her first documentary, winner of the Audience Award at BFI London Film Fest 2022, The Golden Coconut for Best Documentary Feature at the Hainan International Film Festival, and the Golden Alexander at the Thessaloniki International Documentary Film Festival. Currently, Dana is focusing on a new feature film score and recording a new solo full length.

Loren Connors has improvised and composed original guitar music for over four decades. His music embraces the underlying aesthetics of blues, Irish airs, blues-based rock and other genres while letting go of rigid forms. He names abstract expressionist painter Mark Rothko as his most important influence. Connors has performed solo and with many veterans of independent music such as Kim Gordon, Alan Licht, Daniel Carter, David Grubbs, Samara Lubelski, Jandek and Keiji Haino. Connors has collaborated over the years with vocalist Suzanne Langille, including in an avant blues band called Haunted House with guitarist Andrew Burnes and percussionist Neel Murgai. His recordings have been released by Family Vineyard, Recital, Northern Spy, Drag City, and other labels.

Alexandra Beneski, theremin & effects; Steve Holtje, electric keyboard & trombone. Phantom Honeymoon arose in the fertile and prolific Noise scene in Bushwick, Brooklyn and Ridgewood, Queens. It debuted in October 2023 at the Freak World festival and has since played at New York City venues including MoMA PS1, Hart Bar, Grassy Noll, and Skinny Apartment. Last year they played at the Avant Garde a Clue festival in Rochester. Phantom Honeymoon’s first release was Current Events, a download of their Freak World set. Now they have released a studio EP, Interstellar Underpass, which will also have a limited-edition vinyl release on 45-rpm 12".

Ryan Sawyer has been DJing all the songs you've ever wanted to hear. Ryan loves you and wants you to know thru the tunes he will spin for you.

Video provocateur/sound terrorist Jim Spring, returns to Abasement, after a long hiatus, to lend his subversive brand of visuals to the proceedings. Spring first erupted on the scene in the mid 80s as a member of the leading-edge experimental sound collective The Supreme Dicks, whose divine/disturbing peripatetic musical output is not recommended for the faint of heart. Around the same time, Spring joined forces with fellow filmmaking compulsive Jens Jurgenson to create groundbreaking music videos for the likes of Dinosaur Junior, Pussy Galore and The Flaming Lips, that combined ominous imagery with their signature obsessive scratch animation; propelling the art form into a new realm where no man has gone before. Spring was also the producer of the recently acclaimed documentary Fire Music, that chronicles the evolution of the Free Jazz movement. A longtime habitué of Downtown culture, Spring currently resides in Peter Cooper Village and disdains mushrooms (unless psychedelic.)

Bradley Eros, as always, (since the very beginning of Abasement (.001), 78+ months, or sessions, ago) will project their "hand-made" analog slides, and/or film ~ all night long! *** "eau de cinema", 'musique plastique', "philosophical jaywalker", "Eros C'est L'amour!"

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

Artists Space Venue is generously supported by Stephen Cheng, Allan Schwartzman, and David Zwirner.