giovedì, febbraio 01, 2007

Nate Harrison


Nate Harrison ha 7 anni più di me e vive a Los Angeles. Si definisce videoartista, ma è un Piero Angela della musica che fa lunghe ricerche per compilare i suoi vinili/documentario e poi farci il filmato...assolutamente curato, ci mancherebbe...benchè essenziale, non c'è che dire. Scoprire però i vari utilizzi nella storia della musica contemporanea di questo frammento di breakbeat, il più suonato e campionato - dunque il più famoso - è però molto figo, e succede che stai lì ad ascoltare col mento fra le mani, proprio come il (non)soggetto di questa piccolissima autoproduzione datata 2004.

Can I Get An Amen?, 2004 recording on acetate, turntable, PA system, paper documents dimensions variable total run time 17 minutes, 46 seconds
Can I Get An Amen? is an audio installation that unfolds a critical perspective of perhaps the most sampled drum beat in the history of recorded music, the Amen Break. It begins with the pop track Amen Brother by 60's soul band The Winstons, and traces the transformation of their drum solo from its original context as part of a 'B' side vinyl single into its use as a key aural ingredient in contemporary cultural expression. The work attempts to bring into scrutiny the techno-utopian notion that 'information wants to be free'- it questions its effectiveness as a democratizing agent. This as well as other issues are foregrounded through a history of the Amen Break and its peculiar relationship to current copyright law.

Nate Harrison is an artist and writer working at the intersection of intellectual property, cultural production and the formation of creative processes in electronic media. He has produced projects and exhibited for The American Museum of Natural History, The Whitney Museum of American Art, The Los Angeles County Museum of Art, The Kunstverein in Hamburg and The Museum of Contemporary Art, Denver, among others. He has also lectured at the Whitney Museum of American Art, Experience Music Project, Seattle and the University of Glasgow, among others.

In 1997 Nate founded the New York electronic music microlabel töshöklabs, which has been featured in publications such as XLR8R, URB and CMJ. He has also recorded for the CO.AD and Record Camp labels. Currently Nate co-directs the project space ESTHETICS AS A SECOND LANGUAGE (www.eslprojects.org).
He earned a Bachelor of Fine Arts from the University of Michigan, a Master of Fine Arts from California Institute of the Arts and is a doctoral student, Art and Media History, Theory and Criticism in the Visual Arts Department at the University of California, San Diego.

link: NKH Studio, YouTube,
Object lessons

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posted by alex @ 05:36