hey if yr in NYC this is happening just about right now - I just got an promo email about it a hour or so ago//
http://www.lisa-cooley.com
September 9 2008, 5:00 pm - September 10 2008, 12:00 am
34 Orchard St (gallery)
Please join us on Tuesday, September 9th, for the performance of "Untitled for 6 speakers and 7 hours", a sound work by Michael Bernstein. The performance will begin at 5 pm and end at midnight. Visitors are encouraged to attend or to leave at any point during the performance. Likewise, visitors are also encouraged to walk around the artist and his instruments, and to peruse the gallery at their leisure.
Time is as important a material to a sound performance as the actual tools being used to create the sound, and Bernstein will explore the extremes of duration, patience, and his own sanity during this 7 hour long piece for synthesizers, tapes, and the odd electro-acoustic device. Long form drones, ecstatic noisy loops, and the din of gallery goers are all essential aspects of sound creation for the piece, but it is the 7 hour length which defines it.
Michael Bernstein is a Brooklyn, New York based Musician, Sound Artist, Record Label Owner, and Curator. Bernstein spent his time in a small psuedo-suburban Long Island town as a teenager obsessing over hard to find jams and horrible sounds. Getting involved with Double Leopards, Bernstein performed over 100 shows with this improvising quartet, playing various Record Stores, Museums, Basements, Bedrooms, Real Venues, Fake Venues, and everything in between.
After spending this time honing his ability for Soundthinking, Bernstein has since gone on to perform more Rock Based music with Religious Knives, and focus on personal performances and conceptual compositions as both Workbench and under his own name. Forming a relationship with the inimitable Printed Matter in New York City, Bernstein has curated a show exploring the current Cassette Tape scene which took place in NYC and Oslo, and has participated with his record label Heavy Tapes in their Art Book Fair. Bernstein is currently deeply involved with recording various sounds produced by beer fermenting in his basement.
This event is the first in a series that will include film, music, poetry and performance. The series was designed to support and engage with tactical, shifting, or experimental approaches in these fields, and the communities in which they become possible.