The work of Jacob Kirkegaard explores ways to reflect on complex, unnoticed or unapproachable conditions and environments. His works have treated themes such as radioactivity in Chernobyl, melting ice in the Arctic, border walls in global and metaphorical contexts, immersive acoustic explorations into global waste management, and processes related to when a human being dies. Using his recordings of firearms, grenades and tanks his recent work explores the sound of warfare orchestrated for the Royal Lifeguard's Music Corps. Another work unfolds the mechanical elements of agriculture and food production. Since 2006 Kirkegaard has also been extensively researching, recording and creating works using otoacoustic emissions; tones generated from the actual human ear. The core element and method of Jacob Kirkegaard's work derive from the use of sound recordings of the tangible aspects from its intangible themes.
Patrick A Derivaz composes, produces, performs, records and mixes a wide range of innovative and cross-cultural styles of music. Featured composer on WNYC “Soundcheck”. His strings arrangement and performance with Tom Verlaine and Ethel at Lincoln Center Out of Door Festival was reviewed in the NY Times. Selected Artists: Laurie Anderson - Jeff Buckley - John Cale - De La Soul - Elysian Fields - Fine Young Cannibals - Phillip Glass - Alvin Lucier - Barry Manilow - Mes’hell NdegeOcello - Marc Ribot - John Scofield - Television - Tribe Called Quest - Tom Verlaine - Will.I.Am - Joe Zawinul. Selected Films, TV & Jingles: Arte - Bored to Death - Burger King - Dexter - The Gilded Age - Hedwig & The Angry Inch - I Shot Andy Warhol - McDonald - Miller - Nurse Jackie - Patchinko - Pepsi - Rent - Rocko’s Modern Life - Secret Agent - Travel Channel - Your Friends & Neighbors
Alan Licht is a musician, writer, and curator based in New York. Appearing on nearly one hundred recordings, he is known for his guitar work in the underground rock bands Run On and Love Child, a long-standing duo with Loren Connors, the improv project Text of Light with Lee Ranaldo, and stints with such legendary figures as Yoko Ono, Tom Verlaine, and Arthur Lee. His most recent solo guitar album is Havens (VDSQ, 2024). Licht is the author of Common Tones: Selected Interviews with Artists and Musicians 1995–2020 (Blank Forms, 2021); Sound Art Revisited (Bloomsbury, 2019), and the editor of Will Oldham on Bonnie “Prince” Billy (2012, Faber & Faber/W. W. Norton).
Frenemas is a Brooklyn-based "Crust Ambient" duo consisting of musicians Chip Kolpen and Brad Truax. Their music is inspired by themes like the haunted squats of New York's Lower East Side.
Jessica Romoff is a DJ and the Music Director at the freeform radio station WFMU. In her free time she enjoys playing “Hot Cross Buns” on her recorder in the pale moonlight.
Carolyn Funk is a New York City based artist and writer. Her interviews, photographs and film criticism have been featured in the Washington Post, Filmmaker Magazine and Mubi Notebook, among other publications. She is an archival film projection specialist and digital projection engineer by trade, currently employed in the Audio Visual Design and Production Department at the Museum of Modern Art.
Bradley Eros, as always, (since the very beginning of Abasement (.001)) 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.
