Fugal Systems by Jordan Martins with Angel Bat Dawid and Norman Teague
Sunday, October 27th, 4-7PM
Experimental Station, 6100 S. Blackstone Ave.
FREE
Come experience Fugal Systems, an immersive multi-disciplinary performative collage in which live musicians are accompanied by dancers in a building-wide activation of Experimental Station (ES). As the audience, you get to choose how you experience the work, perhaps focusing in on one performance or positioning yourself to hear them all at once. Along the way, you have the unique opportunity to explore ES’s custom-built space and discover the many people, programs, and entities that make up this hub of creativity.
Fugal Systems is an ongoing project by artist Jordan Martins encompassing a variety of performance-based works, including music and sound performances employing various collage tactics in a live exploration of spatial simultaneity. The underlying principle across all iterations is to investigate signal-noise relationships via layers of overlapping sounds throughout an architectural space, drawing attention to the agency held by listeners to affect their experience according to how they choose to move through the environment.
The activation on October 27 represents the largest iteration of this project to date and is created in collaboration with musician Angel Bat Dawid and designer/builder Norman Teague, with project support from Experimental Sound Studio.
Musicians:
Isaiah Collier, saxophones and wind instruments
Jayden Berkman, saxophone
Olivia Harris, cello
Xristian Espinoza, saxophone and auxiliary percussion instruments (some self-built)
Dancers:
Dr. Charles Joseph Smith
Bryonna Young
Cristal Sabbagh
Jordan Martins is a Chicago based visual artist, curator, and educator. He received his MFA in visual arts from the Universidade Federal da Bahia in Salvador, Brazil in 2007, and is a lecturer at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and North Park University. He is the executive director of Comfort Station, a multi-disciplinary art space in Chicago. Martins’s visual work is based in collage processes, including painting, photography, video and installation, and he has exhibited nationally and internationally. His work has been featured in exhibitions at The Mission, Evanston Art Center, LVL3, The Franklin, The Museu de Arte da Bahia, Goldfinch, and Experimental Sound Studio. He was a resident in the Chicago Artists Coalition’s HATCH program in 2013. Martins is co-director of the Perto da Lá, a biennial multi-disciplinary art event with international artists in Salvador, Brazil.
Angel Bat Dawid descended on Chicago's jazz and improvised music scene just a few years ago, but her prowess and charisma have quickly made her a nearly ubiquitous performer in Chicago's avant-garde. On any given night, you can find her adding aura to ensembles led by Ben LaMar Gay, Damon Locks, Jaimie Branch, or Matthew Lux, or even, as on one summer night in 2018, onstage doing a woodwind duo with Roscoe Mitchell. She also curates a series of monthly multidisciplinary concerts, called Mothership9, at Elastic Arts.
Norman Teague is a Chicago based designer and educator who focuses on projects and pedagogy that address the complexity of urbanism and the culture of communities. Specializing in custom furniture that delivers a personal touch to a specific user and unique aesthetic detail, Teague's past projects have included consumer products, public sculpture, performances, and specially designed retail spaces. Working with common, locally-sourced building materials and local fabricators to create objects and spaces that explore simplicity, honesty and cleverness and relates to the culture of the client and/or community.
The Experimental Station is working to build independent cultural infrastructure on the South Side of Chicago. They do this by fostering a dynamic ecology of innovative educational and cultural programs, small business enterprises and community initiatives. Since 2006, they have both built our own programming to address a variety of identified local needs and have fostered, hosted, and sponsored numerous other initiatives.
Experimental Sound Studio is a Chicago-based nonprofit organization dedicated to artistic evolution and the creative exploration of sound. As an international hub for sonic experimentation, ESS nurtures artists, heralds new works, and builds a broad, supportive community of makers, enthusiasts, and creative partners through production, presentation, education, and preservation.