Every Tuesday in March, Homeroom Residency presents SPECTRALINA: The audio-visual performance project of Dan Bitney and Selina Trepp.
Special guests will join Spectralina for four multidisciplinary performances at Elastic Arts. All shows are $15 at the door + BYOB. Doors open at 8 PM, performance at 8:30 PM.
March 12, 2024 at 8PM at Elastic Arts featuring Spectralina + Norman Long / Ayako Kato / Jason Roebke
Spectralina
SPECTRALINA is the audio-visual performance project of Dan Bitney and Selina Trepp: collaborators, lovers, and magicians.
Working in an improvised format, Spectralina creates an image-sound relationship that treats each medium equally, resulting in performances in which projection and sounds come together as visual music.
In Spectralina, Dan uses a computer, synthesizers, drums, voice, and analog processors to create sounds. Selina sings, animates, and plays the videolah, an instrument that creates real-time animated projections.
Norman Long
Norman W. Long's practice is informed by a diverse array of disciplines, including walking, listening, teaching, improvisation, performance, recording, and composition. This approach aims to engender dialogues with audiences on memory, place, ecology, race, culture, value, silence, and the imperceptible. Long's work is deeply influenced by the interdisciplinary practices and ideologies of 1970s artists, musicians, critics, and designers, particularly drawing from Rosalind Krauss' seminal article "Sculpture in the Expanded Field" and the theoretical framework of acoustic ecology developed by R. Murray Schafer.
The sonic landscapes in Long's oeuvre find inspiration in Black music genres such as house and techno, 'free jazz,' Great Black Music, Herbie Hancock's Mwandishi, Pauline Oliveros, King Tubby, Dub, as well as the experimental sounds of artists operating between and outside traditional genre boundaries. Long's strategies for improvisation and composition are informed by Samuel R. Delany's palimpsest text "Plague Journal" from the novel "Dhalgren" (Science Fiction) and "Atlantis: Three Tales" (Fiction), along with Mark Bradford's artistic process as observed in his 2011 survey at the Museum of Contemporary Art: Chicago, which emphasizes collecting, collaging, scraping, and pasting materials sourced from his community in Los Angeles.
Long earned an MFA from the San Francisco Art Institute in New Genres (2001) and a master's in Landscape Architecture from Cornell University (2008). His artistic practice has been showcased at various prestigious venues including Columbia College's Glass Curtain Gallery, Experimental Sound Studio, Kavi Gupta Gallery, Yale University's Center for Collaborative Arts & Media, The Renaissance Society, the 2022 High Zero Festival in Baltimore, MD, the Chicago Humanities Festival, the Chicago Cultural Center, and the 2021 Chicago Architecture Biennial. He has participated in residencies at EMS in Stockholm, Djerassi Foundation and Yucca Valley Material Lab in California, and AS220 in Providence, RI.
Long has been the recipient of a ThreeWalls RaDLab fellowship and commission for his works "Neighborhood Listening Garden" and "Re-Membering/Re-Presencing." He has performed and toured with Angel Bat Dawid and the Brothahood, and collaborated with a diverse range of artists including the Ali/Harris/Long/McKenna group, Spectralina, Todd Carter, John Daniel, Xris Espinoza, Carol Genetti, Damon Locks, Tatsuya Nakatani, Joe Namy, Cristal Sabbagh, and Sara Zalek. His compositions have been released on various labels, including Hausu Mountain, Reserve Matinee, LINE, Rural Situationism, and Room40, with his latest solo release, "Calumet in Dub," available on Blorpus Editions.
Ayako Kato
Called “moving everyday sculptures, artfully cast in naturalness” (Luzerner Zeitung, Switzerland), Ayako Kato is an award-winning contemporary experimental dancer/choreographer/improviser originally from Yokohama, Japan. Since 1998, Ayako Kato/Art Union Humanscape has been in deep collaboration with over 80 musicians and composers, and grounded on the principles of fūryū, Japanese for “wind flow,” cyclical transformation and human motion in nature. Most recently, Ayako received the Sybil Shearer Fellowship at Ragdale 2024 in preparation for ETHOS IV: Degrowth/Cycle Rebirth to be premiered at the Dance Center of Columbia College Chicago on April 19 and 20, 2024. In 2023, she received a 2023 United States Artist Fellowship and was also enshrined in the Hall of Fame in Dance by Newcity Stage Magazine’s Players: Who Really Performs for Chicago.
ayakokatodance.com
Jason Roebke
Jason Roebke is a versatile and acclaimed American musician known for his prowess as a double bassist and composer. Born in 1974, he has become a prominent figure in the Chicago jazz scene. Roebke's music is characterized by its innovative blend of jazz and experimental music. His latest recording, "Four Spheres", graphic compositions that push jazz forms into unexpected shapes. Roebke's ability to push boundaries while maintaining a deep connection to tradition has established him as a respected and influential presence in the contemporary jazz landscape.
About Homeroom Residency
Homeroom Residency is an ongoing initiative to provide reliable, paid performance work to Chicago artists. The residency gives artists space to develop existing collaborations and explore new ideas. Residency is directly supported by individual donors.