A three-day event explores the radical oeuvre of British experimental composer Cornelius Cardew and the activities of the Scratch Orchestra (co-founded by him in 1969), and illuminates their significance today as artistic, pedagogical and political tools. Workshops, sound installations, a film screening, and an exhibition bring together historians, musicians, artists, and New School faculty and students, and are presented at The New School. Among the participants are contemporary music ensemble Either/Or, artists Luke Fowler and Robert Sember, and New School faculty members Danielle Goldman, Sarah Montague, Simonetta Moro, Evan Rapport and Ivan Raykoff and their students. Pianist and Cardew biographer John Tilbury is contributing a (pre-recorded) Call-to-Action.

Inspired by The Cardew Object at the ICA London (November 2009), these events are organized by the Vera List Center for Art and Politics as part of its 2009-2010 program theme “Speculating on Change.” Vera List Center Fellow Robert Sember, a member of the sound-art collective Ultra-red and the School of Echoes, leads the colloquium and workshops in collaboration with faculty members from Eugene Lang College The New School for Liberal Arts and The New School for Jazz and Contemporary Music.

DAY THREE PROGRAM

Exhibition
The Skybridge Art & Sound Space

Opening Reception: Thursday, April 15, 2010 – 4:00 to 6:00 p.m.
Exhibition Dates: Thursday, April 15 to Monday, May 10, 2010
Skybridge Gallery, Eugene Lang College, 65 West 11th Street, 3rd floor (enter at 66 West 12th Street)
Admission: Free

New School faculty Sarah Montague and Simonetta Moro and their students in the Skybridge Curatorial Project present an exhibition celebrating Cardew’s work and the events above. The Skybridge Art & Sound Space hosts multi-media exhibitions and curriculum-based projects in the arts, showcasing student projects that make the space a vibrant and exciting laboratory for visual, aural, and critical thinking.

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Cornelius Cardew (1936-1981) was a seminal figure of the British avant-garde of the 1960s and 1970s. A student of Karl-Heinz Stockhausen and a follower of John Cage, he formed the Scratch Orchestra with Michael Parsons and Howard Skempton in 1969 in London. Based on their experiments, Cardew published the book Scratch Music, now a classic resource for experimental musicians. In the late 1970s, Cardew became increasingly involved in a Marxist-Leninist discourse, eventually rejecting his own compositional work as elitist. Cardew died in an unresolved hit-and-run accident at the age of forty-five, estranged from most of his colleagues and challenged for his political convictions.

The Scratch Orchestra was a collaborative group of musically trained and untrained participants engaged in radical modes of improvisatory and cross-disciplinary art-making. In an effort to liberate performers from the constraints of traditional music notation as well, Cardew developed elaborate forms of graphic notation – all part of an explicit agenda of political consciousness and social action. These larger “ways of organizing,” including interpretations of two sections from Cardew’s The Great Learning (1968-71), are presented during The New School events in a structured environment that invites creative engagement and collaboration.

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A three-day event explores the radical oeuvre of British experimental composer Cornelius Cardew and the activities of the Scratch Orchestra (co-founded by him in 1969), and illuminates their significance today as artistic, pedagogical and political tools. Workshops, sound installations, a film screening, and an exhibition bring together historians, musicians, artists, and New School faculty and students, and are presented at The New School. Among the participants are contemporary music ensemble Either/Or, artists Luke Fowler and Robert Sember, and New School faculty members Danielle Goldman, Sarah Montague, Simonetta Moro, Evan Rapport and Ivan Raykoff and their students. Pianist and Cardew biographer John Tilbury is contributing a (pre-recorded) Call-to-Action.

Inspired by The Cardew Object at the ICA London (November 2009), these events are organized by the Vera List Center for Art and Politics as part of its 2009-2010 program theme “Speculating on Change.” Vera List Center Fellow Robert Sember, a member of the sound-art collective Ultra-red and the School of Echoes, leads the colloquium and workshops in collaboration with faculty members from Eugene Lang College The New School for Liberal Arts and The New School for Jazz and Contemporary Music.

DAY TWO PROGRAM

Workshop
How Can We Organize Collective Listening?

Saturday, April 10, 2010 – 12:00 to 6:00 p.m.
The New School, Theresa Lang Community and Student Center
55 West 13th Street, 2nd floor
Admission: Free, advance reservations recommended at vlc@newschool.edu

New School faculty members Evan Rapport and Ivan Raykoff host a public workshop developed in collaboration with Lang College classes New Ears for New Music (Raykoff), Punk & Noise (Rapport), Politics of Improvisation (Danielle Goldman), Image/Text (Simonetta Moro), and The New School for Jazz and Contemporary Music class Cross-Cultural Improvisation (Rapport). Workshop participants are asked to collect sounds in response to a specific question relating to local and current social or political concerns, then explore procedures for collective listening and organized action following some of Cardew’s models.

Public participation encouraged – sound tools provided.

__________________________________________________________________

Cornelius Cardew (1936-1981) was a seminal figure of the British avant-garde of the 1960s and 1970s. A student of Karl-Heinz Stockhausen and a follower of John Cage, he formed the Scratch Orchestra with Michael Parsons and Howard Skempton in 1969 in London. Based on their experiments, Cardew published the book Scratch Music, now a classic resource for experimental musicians. In the late 1970s, Cardew became increasingly involved in a Marxist-Leninist discourse, eventually rejecting his own compositional work as elitist. Cardew died in an unresolved hit-and-run accident at the age of forty-five, estranged from most of his colleagues and challenged for his political convictions.

The Scratch Orchestra was a collaborative group of musically trained and untrained participants engaged in radical modes of improvisatory and cross-disciplinary art-making. In an effort to liberate performers from the constraints of traditional music notation as well, Cardew developed elaborate forms of graphic notation – all part of an explicit agenda of political consciousness and social action. These larger “ways of organizing,” including interpretations of two sections from Cardew’s The Great Learning (1968-71), are presented during The New School events in a structured environment that invites creative engagement and collaboration.

__________________________________________________________________

A three-day event explores the radical oeuvre of British experimental composer Cornelius Cardew and the activities of the Scratch Orchestra (co-founded by him in 1969), and illuminates their significance today as artistic, pedagogical and political tools. Workshops, sound installations, a film screening, and an exhibition bring together historians, musicians, artists, and New School faculty and students, and are presented at The New School. Among the participants are contemporary music ensemble Either/Or, artists Luke Fowler and Robert Sember, and New School faculty members Danielle Goldman, Sarah Montague, Simonetta Moro, Evan Rapport and Ivan Raykoff and their students. Pianist and Cardew biographer John Tilbury is contributing a (pre-recorded) Call-to-Action.

Inspired by The Cardew Object at the ICA London (November 2009), these events are organized by the Vera List Center for Art and Politics as part of its 2009-2010 program theme “Speculating on Change.” Vera List Center Fellow Robert Sember, a member of the sound-art collective Ultra-red and the School of Echoes, leads the colloquium and workshops in collaboration with faculty members from Eugene Lang College The New School for Liberal Arts and The New School for Jazz and Contemporary Music.

DAY ONE PROGRAM

Colloquium with Sound Installation and Film Screening
An Introduction to Cardew

Friday, April 9, 2010
65 West 11th Street (enter at 66 West 12th Street)
Admission: $8, free for all students as well as New School faculty, staff and alumni with valid ID

Sound samples installation by New School students – 6:00 to 6:30 p.m.
Introduction by Robert Sember – 6:30 to 7:00 p.m.
Film screening, followed by discussion – 7:00 to 9:00 p.m.

Cornelius Cardew’s music and ideas – and their significance today as an artistic as well as pedagogical and political project – are introduced by Vera List Center Fellow Robert Sember. A screening follows of Glasgow-based artist Luke Fowler’s Pilgrimage from Scattered Points (2006, 45”), a film that explores the internal contradictions and struggles of Cardew’s Scratch Orchestra through first person interviews, recent and archival footage and original recordings.

“Filmmaker Luke Fowler depicts the Scratch Orchestra’s composer Cornelius Cardew in action, resonating in a brilliant, impressionistic visual landscape. Sound and image unite to form a hypnotic and freely associating current, which reaches far into the subjective sphere of experimental film.” (hotdocs.com)

Robert Sember and Luke Fowler are then joined by New School faculty members Ivan Raykoff and Evan Rapport in a closing discussion.

Sound samples culled from previous workshops are installed in the lecture hall and ring in the evening’s events; pianist John Tilbury (via recording), Cardew’s biographer and one of his closest associates, provides a call-to-action.

__________________________________________________________________

Cornelius Cardew (1936-1981) was a seminal figure of the British avant-garde of the 1960s and 1970s. A student of Karl-Heinz Stockhausen and a follower of John Cage, he formed the Scratch Orchestra with Michael Parsons and Howard Skempton in 1969 in London. Based on their experiments, Cardew published the book Scratch Music, now a classic resource for experimental musicians. In the late 1970s, Cardew became increasingly involved in a Marxist-Leninist discourse, eventually rejecting his own compositional work as elitist. Cardew died in an unresolved hit-and-run accident at the age of forty-five, estranged from most of his colleagues and challenged for his political convictions.

The Scratch Orchestra was a collaborative group of musically trained and untrained participants engaged in radical modes of improvisatory and cross-disciplinary art-making. In an effort to liberate performers from the constraints of traditional music notation as well, Cardew developed elaborate forms of graphic notation – all part of an explicit agenda of political consciousness and social action. These larger “ways of organizing,” including interpretations of two sections from Cardew’s The Great Learning (1968-71), are presented during The New School events in a structured environment that invites creative engagement and collaboration.

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For the next few months, Switchboard features an annotated bibliography in development, related to the center’s theme for 2009-1010, Speculating on Change. The project is initiated by 2009-2010 fellow Robert Sember, a member of the sound art collective Ultra-red, and is part of their multi-year initiative, School of Echoes, an examination of procedures of collective investigation and social change.

The bibliography assembles a selection of “classic” texts as well as lesser known works that address philosophical, theoretical and ideological conceptions of change, with particular emphasis given to political and social change and shifting approaches to art and cultural production. The bibliography aims to be generous and wide-ranging rather than comprehensive or canonical, and includes a series of brief annotations written by Sember.

Check back monthly for new annotations and other updates. Recommendations for additions are welcome and can be forwarded to the Vera List Center.

Launch School of Echoes.