About this Event
Doors at 7, event starts at 7:30
Admission $18
Join us at e-flux on Wednesday, March 26, at 7pm for a workshop and talk with the experimental turntablism trio Maria Chávez, Evicshen (aka Victoria Shen), and Mariam Rezaei, followed by a solo-performance by Rezaei. The turntabalism trio blends elements of musique concrète, free improvisation, noise, techno, and hip-hop with custom instrument creation and modification. Each artist brings a unique approach to turntablism, employing techniques such as scratching, beat-juggling, sampling, and looping. Their tools include double-needle-head shells and acrylic needle nails. The trio’s compositional style merges sound sculpture, maximalism, minimalism, and sonic destruction. Together, they demonstrate that New Turntablism transcends technique, genre, and compositional theory; it’s about exploring the unknown.
Maria Chávez, born in Lima, Peru and based in NYC, is best known as an abstract turntablist, sound artist and DJ. Coincidence, chance, and failures are themes that unite her work across mediums, including improvised performance, sound and marble sculpture, visual art, book objects, and an extensive history with multi-channel installation. Her approach is rooted in Deep Listening, a form of embodied listening developed by her late mentor Pauline Oliveros. Maria’s practice is profoundly expansive, responsive and curious. Her work has been featured and supported by a myriad of institutions over the past decades including Rewire Festival, Counterflows Festival, Donau Festival, MoMA PS1, The Getty, The Wire Magazine (Cover, April 2023), DOCUMENTA 14, the JUDD Foundation, Cambridge University Press and many, many more. Chávez’s 2012 book, Of Technique: Chance Procedures on Turntable has garnered a reputation as both an academic resource on turntablism and a foundational text for a new generation of turntablists.
Evicshen is the nom de guerre of San Francisco-based sound artist, experimental music performer, and inventor Victoria Shen (she/her). Shen’s sound practice is concerned with the materiality/physicality of sound and its relationship to the human body. Her music features analogue modular synthesizers, vinyl/resin records, and self-built electronics. Shen’s music eschews conventions in harmony and rhythm in favour of extreme textures and gestural tones. Notable for her Needle Nails, Shen uses modified acrylic fingernails with embedded turntable needles, allowing her to play up to five grooves of a record at once. Her DIY approach extends to hand-made resin records embedded with found materials. Each piece functions not only as playable music media but a unique art object.
Mariam Rezaei is a multi-award winning composer, turntablist, and performer. She previously led experimental arts project TOPH, TUSK FRINGE and TUSK NORTH, and in November 2022, she received the Paul Hamlyn Foundation #AwardsForArtists, in recognition of her contribution to music composition. Her music has recently been described as ‘genuinely ground-breaking’ (London Jazz News 2022) and ‘high-velocity sonic surrealism’ (4* The Guardian 2022). Recent release BOWN (Heat Crimes) charted no.6 in The Wire and no.10 in The Quietus’ best albums of 2023 and was The Quietus Album of the week. Boomkat described it as ‘harnessing extreme technical prowess—phenomenal stuff’.
Roulette is an internationally recognized non-profit performing arts venue and presenter of experimental music, movement, and media in Downtown Brooklyn. Originally founded in 1978 by a group of artists in a Tribeca loft in NYC, Roulette’s mission is to support artists and present performances of innovative material, build audiences interested in experiencing new work, and trace the evolution of experimental performance in a freely accessible public archive. Learn more at roulette.org
The workshop and performance will be accompanied by a conversation with Sanna Almajedi, curator of sound performances at e-flux. This event is organized in collaboration with Roulette.
For more information, please contact [email protected].
Accessibility
– Two flights of stairs lead up to the building’s front entrance at 172 Classon Avenue.
– For elevator access, please RSVP to [email protected]. The building has a freight elevator which leads into the e-flux office space. Entrance to the elevator is nearest to 180 Classon Ave (a garage door). We have a ramp for the steps within the space.
– e-flux has an ADA-compliant bathroom. There are no steps between the event space and this bathroom.
Event Venue & Nearby Stays
e-flux, 172 Classon Avenue, Brooklyn, United States
USD 18.00
