Times Square Alliance - About Us

Contemporary musicians Tony Conrad and Jennifer Walshe

play 1913 Futurist instruments with the

Max Neuhaus sound work in the center of Times Square.

Wednesday, November 11

2:00 PM

On subway grate at 46th and Broadway

Since 1977, visitors to Times Square have discovered the rich harmonic sound texture by artist Max Neuhaus that emerges from a large underground subway vault at 46th and Broadway. As part of Performa 09, two contemporary musicians, Tony Conrad and Jennifer Walshe, will hold a 20 minute concert by playing newly reconstructed 1913 Futurist instruments with the Neuhaus’ sounds above the subway grates. The performance was free and open to the public. For more images of this performance, go to Times Square Public Art.

“Times Square” by Max Neuhaus has produced its deep, long tones from 1977 to 1992 and then reinstated by the DIA Arts Foundation in 2002 with support from the Times Square Alliance and MTA Arts in Transit. Visitors may experience the sound work 24 hours a day, seven days a week. More information at http://www.diaart.org/sites/main/timessquare.

Max Neuhaus

Max Neuhaus worked in the fields of contemporary art and music for more than 40 years. He is credited with being the first to extend sound as a primary medium into the field of contemporary art. His work has been exhibited internationally in museums and galleries, including exhibitions at the Museum of Modern Art, New York; Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; Musée d'art moderne de la ville de Paris; and the Kunsthalle, Bern. It has also been included in Documenta VI (1977) and IX (1992), Kassel, and the Venice Biennale (1999). Several of Neuhaus's sound works are permanently installed in public venues in Europe. Times Square is Neuhaus's only public installation currently active in the United States. Neuhaus died on February 3rd this year. More information at http://www.max-neuhaus.info.

Musicians

Tony Conrad (b. Concord, MA, 1940) has worked in music composition, video, film, and performance since the early 1960s, and was involved in the early development of minimal music and underground cinema. He is best known for his violin playing with the Theatre of Eternal Music and for his 1966 film The Flicker, a key early work of the Structural Film movement. Conrad continues to show his video works and perform regularly in the U.S. and internationally.

Jennifer Walshe (b. Dublin, 1974) is a composer and vocalist whose works have been commissioned and performed all over the world. She is a creator of installation, orchestral, chamber and music theater works including the chamber opera for Barbie dolls XXX_LIVE_NUDE_GIRLS!!!, commissioned by Wien Modern.

Intonarumori

In 1913, the Italian Futurist and sound artist Luigi Russolo constructed a family of special hand-cranked instruments to realize an expanded field of orchestral sound. Called intonarumori (noise intoners), and built out of wooden boxes housing intricate mechanical moving parts with large metal horns attached to the sides, these spectacular machines could produce and modulate complex noises—including explosions, howls, buzzes, and hisses— that celebrated the new urban, industrial sounds that the Futurists so loved. As the first instruments capable of creating and manipulating noises through entirely mechanical processes, the intonarumori can be considered to be the original analog synthesizers, and the ancestors to the latest electronic synthesizers used today.

Although all the original intonarumori were destroyed by bombing during WWII, their noises and features have been widely discussed and speculated upon by members of the experimental music community for decades, which is why bringing these historic emblems of modernity back to life is so exciting to countless contemporary musicians. As Elliott Sharp, a central figure in the New York City avant-garde music world and one of the project participants, says, “The reconstruction of the intonarumori is like bringing mythical creatures to life using synthetic DNA.”

As part of its celebration of the 100th anniversary of Italian Futurism, the Performa 09 biennial, in collaboration with the Experimental Media and Performing Arts Center (EMPAC) and SFMOMA, has invited Luciano Chessa to direct a reconstruction project to produce accurate replicas of Russolo's legendary instruments. This project offers the first-ever replica of the set of 16 original intonarumori (8 noise families of 1-3 instruments each, in various registers) that Russolo built in Milan in the summer of 1913. These intonarumori are being physically built by luthier Keith Cary in Winters, California, under Chessa's direction and scientific supervision. See videos of the instruments at

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BtTBVKGy__4

and

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-N9Sh5v1YgA&feature=related

Music For 16 Futurist Noise Intoners

November 12, 2009 8:00pm - 11:00pm

Town Hall, 123 West 43rd Street, New York, NY

Performa presents Music For 16 Futurist Noise Intoners, an evening-length concert of original scores and newly commissioned compositions for the intonarumori, or “noise-intoners.” An incredible group of musicians and composers from the experimental music world—including Einstuerzende Neubauten frontman and Nick Cave collaborator Blixa Bargeld, avant-garde saxophonist John Butcher, Deep Listening pioneer Pauline Oliveros, Faith No More and Mr. Bungle vocalist Mike Patton, sound and text-based performer Anat Pick, avant-garde musician Elliott Sharp, and composer and vocalist Jennifer Walsche collaborating with composer and film/video artist Tony Conrad, among others—have been commissioned by Performa to create and perform brand new compositions for the instruments. Recreations of historic Futurist scores will also be performed by leading intonarumori expert and scholar Luciano Chessa, who is co-curating the project with Performa’s Esa Nickle as well as overseeing the physical reconstruction of these remarkable machines. More details at http://performa-arts.org/blog/music-for-16-futurist-noise-intoners/

ABOUT PERFORMA 09

Performa 09, the third edition of the internationally acclaimed biennial of new visual art performance, will be held in New York City from November 1–22, 2009. The three-week festival will showcase new work by more than 80 of the most exciting artists working today, in an innovative program breaking down the boundaries between visual art, music, dance, poetry, fashion, architecture, graphic design, and the culinary arts. Presented in collaboration with a consortium of more than 60 arts institutions and 25 curators, as well as a network of public spaces and private venues across the city, Performa 09 will ignite New York City with energy and ideas, acting as a vital “think tank” linking minds across the five boroughs and bringing audiences together for brilliant new performances in all disciplines.

Performa, a non-profit multidisciplinary arts organization established by RoseLee Goldberg in 2004, is dedicated to exploring the critical role of live performance in the history of twentieth century art and to encouraging new directions in performance for the twenty-first century. Performa launched New York’s first performance biennial, Performa 05, in 2005, followed by Performa 07 in 2007. Both biennials were greeted with tremendous critical and popular acclaim.

More information is available at www.performa-arts.org

PREVIOUS PERFORMA EVENTS IN TIMES SQUARE

PERFORMA 09 ARRIVES AT THE CROSSROADS OF THE WORLD WITH A PROCESSION OF DANCERS AND AN EXPERIMENTAL FILM

AMERICAN AND ISRAELI ARTISTS COMMISSIONED BY PERFORMA

CREATE WORKS TO BE VIEWED AT THE RED STEPS OF TIMES SQUARE

On November 1st, the Times Square Alliance hosted TWO INTERNATIONALLY RENOWNED ARTISTS as part of the New York visual art performance biennial Performa 09.

On the ClearChannel Spectacolor HD screen, Israeli artist Guy Ben-Ner presented an unusual “live film” that captures an ongoing phone conversation between the artist and himself as he flies between Berlin and Tel Aviv, the respective locations of his home and that of his girlfriend and child.

On the Red Steps in Duffy Square, acclaimed musician and artist Arto Lindsay begins a procession, SOMEWHERE I READ, featuring 50 dancers in large white trench coats. Serving as Performa 09’s opening event, Lindsay’s procession of dancers will swerve and jive from block to block down the Broadway pedestrian plazas to 42nd Street. A central element of the piece will be the use of cell phones as musical instruments in a sort of pared-down marching band. Arto Lindsay’s Performa Commission was developed in collaboration with choreographer Lily Baldwin and architects Bureau V. and is presented in partnership with the Times Square Alliance Public Art Program.

Please check out a video of SOMEWHERE I READ at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UZRYVEfif_Q

Guy Ben Nur:

Autobiographical Video

Sponsor: Performa

Schedule: 7:45 PM, November 1

Location: CNN Screen at 47th and

Broadway

Produced by Performa with the support of ArtIs Contemporary Israeli Art Fund. Filmed and edited over the course of twelve months, Israeli artist Guy Ben-Ner will present an unusual “live film,” commissioned by Performa, that captures an ongoing phone conversation between the artist and himself as he flies to and fro between Berlin and Tel Aviv, the respective locations of his girlfriend and his family. Unlike a regular film, which is edited externally after all of the shooting is complete, Ben-Ner’s film never leaves the camera during a twelve-month period. Shot in Hebrew, and subtitled in English, the film presents a conversation in rhyme, which discusses how art can be at the service of life and the repercussions of such a unified relationship.

For more information,

go to Times Square Public Art.

http://www.timessquarenyc.org/about_us/art_ts.html