[Moshe]

TEXT OF LIGHT WITH LáSZLó MOHOLY-NAGY

Arts
Museum Events
Jan 12
7:30pm
Official Site

Text of Light explores . . . spaces-the area between sound and picture, and between finished work and live improvisation-as well as the infinite ways those elements can interact. -Marc Masters, The Wire

The band Text of Light creates a soundscape to images by László Moholy-Nagy, including his color slides and the abstract film Light Play: Black-White-Gray (1930), a gripping example of the artist's subtle and forward-thinking style. Led by Sonic Youth founding member Lee Ranaldo and guitarist/composer Alan Licht, Text of Light improvises music to the films of avant-garde filmmakers including Stan Brakhage, whose film The Text of Light was both the group's namesake and its premiere performance. Guest artist Leah Singer will project selections of her filmwork specifically chosen to complement Moholy-Nagy's visual vocabulary. Percussionist Tim Barnes joins Ranaldo and Licht for this performance. Text of Light performs in conjunction with the exhibition Albers and Moholy-Nagy: From the Bauhaus to the New World.

Albers and Moholy-Nagy: From the Bauhaus to the New World will remain on view through January 21, 2007. The exhibition was organized by Tate Modern, London, in association with the Whitney Museum of American Art.
Author: Whitney Museum

Whitney Museum of American Art
Museums
East 70s
945 Madison Avenue (at 75th St)
New York, NY 10021
(800) WHITNEY
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[sonicl]

Why do these things never say "Text of Light will play a seven night residency at the church down the road from where sonicl lives"? They really need to haul there asses over to Europe again.

[toxic johnny]

Light Play: Black-White-Gray (1930) is one of my fave abstract movies... I was totally enthralled and spellbound when I first saw it at college...

 

The event was co-organised by the Tate Modern so hopefully it will hit London.

I think we deserve it...

[tesla69]

Umm, was this the gig from 2007?

remember when I posted all those Stone dates, a year later? :-)

[Moshe]

It says it is at the Whitney Museum of American Art...

[tesla69]

Its possible they're doing it again, exactly a year later, but here's a review from Artforum of the 1-12-2007 performance - I hope I'm wrong here!I'd like to see them again!

Less momentous, although just as crowded, was the following evening's performance at the Whitney, where Text of Light --on Friday, a trio of Sonic Youth's Lee Ranaldo, New York-based musician and writer Alan Licht, and percussionist Tim Barnes, with Leah Singer as guest projectionist--performed alongside slides and film by László Moholy-Nagy. The around-the-block free-Friday-night queue had crashed what was clearly meant to have been an intimate occasion, and had ushers reassuring those to whom the fire code denied entry: "I've attended enough of these to know there'll be newcomers, and they don't usually stick around long."
Indeed, the contents of the second-floor gallery bordered on the ridiculous: elderly women plugging their ears, grown men in suits sitting cross-legged on the carpet, a wheelchair-bound couple in front of me eyeing the exits in vain for enough space to escape.
The performance began with Moholy-Nagy's Light Play: Black-White-Grey, 1930, a film inspired by his kinetic sculpture Light Prop for an Electric Stage , 1928-30, present and on hand to rotate and spin variegated shadows. Out from a corner, drenched in echo, Text of Light's improv was not quite: The band's sound was composed, measured, emotionally coordinated with Singer's minimal slide manipulation. Licht, using a guitar and a chain of effects pedals, found patterns--then layered them or let them go as diffuse as blurry light. Ranaldo and Barnes bowed their instruments until Barnes's cymbals hummed alongside Ranaldo's trademark low-grade feedback.
In the tight space, bass rebounded off the walls. Text of Light's hypersensitive microphones brought the most incidental noise to bear, so that those streaming for the exits began to play their part, too, slamming doors that reverberated after they were gone. An hour after the band began it was over, leaving afterimages as vivid as the Josef Albers squares that hung down the hall.
-- Zach Baron

[Georgekrz]

this already happened. Look here: http://www.sonicyouth.com/gossip/showthread.php?t=9631&highlight=text+light+whitney +museum

[toxic johnny]

...damn

[Moshe]

sorry

[sonicl]

Any news on that Sub Pop 7" yet, Moshe?

[Moshe]

I have an extra copy. Send me 100$ and I'll mail it to you.

[tesla69]

no need to be sorry. you've got the cred, bro!