Open Frame 2018 artists announced. Carriageworks today announced the program of artists who will perform as part of Open Frame 2018, to be presented at Carriageworks on 28 – 29 June by Room40, the label described by Pitchfork as ‘the foremost purveyor of experimental music in the Southern hemisphere’. The 2018 Open Frame Program includes the world premiere of an Occam composition by Éliane Radigue, commissioned by Carriageworks, and exclusive Australian performances from pioneers of electronic music.
Described by curator Lawrence English as a ‘meditation on states of sonic intensity’, Open Frame will explore each artist’s variety of intensity: ‘the beauty of William Basinski, the transcendence of Charlemagne Palestine, the performance approaches of Pan Daijing, the focus of Éliane Radigue’s compositions, and hallucinatory qualities within the music of Coil’s Drew McDowall. Open Frame celebrates an interest in music and sound that pushes at the very edges of practice and performance. This is music that reaches deeply inside us as activates a sense of being, which is beyond the moment of encounter. A chance for deep and lingering sonic affect.’
Carriageworks Director, Lisa Havilah said, ‘We are thrilled to welcome these great artists to Carriageworks, and honoured to have commissioned the world premiere of Occam XXIX, by renowned French composer Éliane Radigue.’
In 2018 Open Frame will celebrate a series of senior figures, all immeasurably influential artists who set the benchmark for electronic music.
Éliane Radigue, b. 1932, is arguably France’s most important female electronic music composer. Historically, one of only a few female composers working in the 20th century, and a dedicated Tibetan Buddhist, over the last decade Radigue has begun creating works for specific performers called Occam after the theory of philosopher William of Ockhamthat the simplest option is always the best. There are no scores, only verbal instructions. The first of these was for bass player Kaspar Toeplitz, and more recently the American cellist Charles Curtis and the 2017 recording of three of Radigue’s Occcams, Occam Ocean 1, was awarded 5 stars by The Guardian UK. Radigue’s twenty forth composition for a specific performer, Occam XXIV, is Open Frame’s first world premiere and a commission by Carriageworks that will and will be performed by leading Australian composer, musician and Head of Music at Monash University, Cat Hope, who travelled to Paris to be instructed by Éliane.
William Basinki is, at 60, amongst the most important ambient artists of this century. A composer of ambient music via tape music and process music, Basinski is also a clarinettist, saxophonist, sound artist, and video artist. His Disintegration Loops is a benchmark for affective music and now deeply tied to the events surrounding 9/11. The elegiac work has become emblematic of all that changed in the post 9/11 world, and is one of the very few electronic albums to be awarded a perfect score from Pitchfork. He will premiere a new piece for the festival.
Charlemagne Palestine one of the most important American composers of the past 50 years, presents his only Australian piano performance in 2018 for Open Frame at Carriageworks. An iconoclastic maestro he works across visual and audio mediums and beyond music, installation. He recently exhibited Ccornuuoorphanossccopiaee Aanorphansshhornoffplentyyy, an installation work of 18,000 stuffed animals in Paris, Los Angeles and New York. A leading contemporary artist, his work has been included in the Venice Biennale, the Whitney, MOMA (NYC), Documenta Kassel and many more. A contemporary of artists such as Steve Reich, Philip Glass and Terry Riley, Palestine’s music and sound compositions have garnered a devoted following since the 1960s. He has released more than twenty solo albums and has performed in festivals around the world. His Strumming Music is now considered one of the most important ‘maximal minimal’ works of the 20th century.
Electronic artist Drew McDowall is the last living member ofEnglish experimental music group Coil. He will perform music from Time Machines, the legendary electronic record with each pieced dedicated to a different hallucinatory chemical. It is only being performed this year and this may be the only chance for Australian audiences to experience a performance of Coil’s material by a member of the group.
One of the most uprising figures in the current avant-garde, Chinese born, Berlin-based Pan Daijing is influenced equally by 1980s industrial music, Chinese minority and Tibetan music, field recordings in temples and ritual practice. Rooted in noise music, her raw approach as a composer and performer takes many forms; primarily performance art, sonic installations for exhibitions, live scored art performances and dance shows. She has showcased her work and performed in museums such as Palais de Tokyo and Rockbound Shanghai, theatres such as Volksbühne and HAU, underground clubs like Berghain as well as festivals such as CTM, Sonar, Unsound and London Contemporary Music Festival. Daijing released an acclaimed album debut, Lack, on PAN, and is currently constructing a multidisciplinary New Opera, a series of collaborations with fashion designer Ximon Lee, as well as her next album.
Sydney-based artist Gail Priest uses field recordings, processed voice and noise in her live performance to explore the interaction of the figurative and the abstract, the machinic and the organic, the sensual and the brutal. She has performed and exhibited nationally and internationally and has several CD releases on her own label, Metal Bitch, as well as other labels including Flaming Pines.
