CAA Artist Residency & Release: Kamau Amu Patton - The Past & Other Dreams

Kamau Amu Patton performing at Art Forms of Dimensions Tomorrow performance festival at Skidmore College 2017

As a 2020 ESS Archive Artist in Residence, the interdisciplinary artist and educator Kamau Amu Patton created "The Past & Other Dreams", a double cassette produced by the artist in collaboration with the Creative Audio Archive at ESS, in an edition of 200. "The Past and Other Dreams" is available as a gift for current, new, or renewing ESS members at the $25/month or $250/year Level, while supplies last.

Utilizing recordings from the Sun Ra / El Saturn Collection (items SR-R149, SR-R116, and SR-C211), Patton weaves the voices of Sun Ra, Alton Abraham (Sun Ra's business partner and El Saturn co-founder), and others into side-length immersive transmissions. Each piece resides on its own cassette, in a special double-tall norelco.

Kamau Patton is an interdisciplinary artist and an educator whose projects take form through engagement with archives, documents, stories, and sites. His work was shown in 2012 as part of Pacific Standard Time and in 2013 as part of the Machine Project Field guide to LA Architecture. As a member of the Lone Wolf Recital Corps, Patton has performed at the Tang Museum in 2012, at the Block Museum and at the Arts Incubator in Washington Park in 2013. In 2016 Patton performed in Stockholm, Sweden, at the Shape of Co- to- Come symposium and exhibition. In 2017, Patton co-organized recitals in conjunction with the exhibition Projects 107: Lone Wolf Recital Corps, curated by Akili Tommasino at the Museum of Modern Art. In September 2017, he installed an iteration of his ongoing project, Tel at the Tang Museum. In 2019, Patton’s public art commission with the Bowman Montessori School in Palo Alto, CA, was open to the public. Patton was a 2020 Creative Capital Grant Awardee.

On December 10th, 2020 - on a bill that featured bassist / composer Luke Stewart, saxophonist / composer Darius Jones, and the duo of Katherine Young & Sam Scranton - Archives Manager Matt Mehlan interviewed Kamau in advance of an early preview of "The Past", streamed in full and now archived on ESS' YouTube Channel: