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UNSEEN Benefit | Ashley Bellouin, Ben Bracken, Madison Brookshire & Arc

Gray Area’s UNSEEN Series presents site-specific, collaborative performances by Bay Area artists and explores current practices in immersive media, including expanded cinema, video and sound art, experimental music and technology. The UNSEEN series is curated by Oakland artist Matt Fisher, and presented in 8 channel surround sound with audio engineering and equipment by Recombinant Media Labs.

Tickets: $8 Presale / $13 Day of Show / $15 Door. Cash bar available to those 21 years and older.

Schedule:
8:00 Doors
9:00 Show

The Ghost Ship fire has deeply affected everyone involved with the December 15th Unseen. The artists and organizers have each lost friends to the fire and all are grieving. We've been discussing whether we're able to go ahead with the planned performance, and the consensus is to use this performance as a benefit fundraiser to Oakland Fire Relief efforts.

Clearly this will be not the original program that has been discussed and planned. Instead thoughts of friends will guide the evening.

Arc will be performing a work he used to perform with Joey Casio. Ashley, Ben and Madison are working through their plans now.

We hope you'll join us to share experience as friends in remembrance, in sadness and in celebration of those lost.

Original Event Description:

Local musicians Ashley Bellouin and Ben Bracken have been engaged in a long distance collaboration with artist and filmmaker Madison Brookshire. For their Unseen performance Ashley and Ben will live score live expanded cinema works by Madison.

Oakland's arc is the force behind Black Hole Cinematheque, the long running screening series of experimental gems. arc's performance marries found footage and meditations on the sublime.

Artists

Ben Bracken

For the past 15 years, Ben Bracken has slowly been creating a unique sonic language utilizing electronics, acoustic sound sources (guitar, cymbal, bells, found objects, etc), electric guitar, and field recordings. Primarily interested in the possibilities of echo-relocation in sound-based art, his work has oscillated from performance to installation, often blurring the lines between the two. In both, the location of the event becomes an active participant, intimately shaping the nature and direction of each work. Some previous or current musical groups include Crystal Village (With Gregg Kowalsky), Flashpapr, Tiny Lights, Remote Viewing Ensemble, Duo with Luis Maurette, Duo with Zach Wallace, and Bones (with Jacqueline Gordon). Ben has improvised with Le-Quan Ninh, Brent Guetzeit, Kevin Drumm, Peter Kowald, Chris Cutler, Phil Minton, Rhodri Davies, Werner Dafeldecker, Fred Van Hove, and Johannes Bauer, among others. In the spring of 2006, Ben received his MFA in Electronic Music from Mills College. From 2006-09 he curated the Totally Intense Fractal Mind Gaze Hut, a performance space in West Oakland, CA.   Ben has just completed his most recent installation, contributing sound, live generated 3D visuals and interactivity to the Illuminated Forest installation at The Lab in San Francisco, CA. He currently resides in Oakland, CA and works at Cycling ‘74, the developers of Max/MSP and Jitter.

arc

arc refers to a process rather than an author. a curvature within a void which makes something momentarily visible. a form through which something moves but within which it neither originates nor terminates, nor is contained. in this process, material elements are used to investigate immaterial states. framing the space of encounter as a site of unfixed ritual and sensory research—the cinema, gallery, studio, home, stairwell, street, etc. countless iterations of the the open field or the enclosure. a coded and symbolic language is used to trace lines between seemingly disparate paths of knowledge held in recurrent forms, manifesting in oscillating relationships between microcosm and macrocosm. arc is initiated by tooth.

Madison Brookshire

Madison Brookshire is an artist and filmmaker whose work crosses experimental film, music, painting, and performance. His work has shown at REDCAT, MOCA, the Toronto International Film Festival, DokuFest, Union Docs, the New York Film Festival, International Film Festival Rotterdam, Bradford International Film Festival, Migrating Forms, Exploratorium, Los Angeles Filmforum, Echo Park Film Center, the Hammer Museum, and Artists Television Access. He has had solo exhibitions at Parker Jones, Culver City; and Presents Gallery, Brooklyn; and has been in group shows at the Torrance Art Museum; Gallery 400, Chicago; and Heliopolis, Brooklyn. He frequently collaborates with musicians and composers, such as Tashi Wada, Mark So, and Laura Steenberge.

Ashley Bellouin

Ashley Bellouin’s work explores the merging of sound art, electro-acoustic composition, and instrument building. She focuses on the studies of sonology, psychoacoustics, and the interaction between sound and architecture. Her compositions emphasize and exploit the sonic potential contained within a single musical gesture, regularly using electronics to develop latent qualities. Spatialization, beat frequencies, auditory illusions, and microtonal tunings are frequent compositional tools. Ashley holds an MFA in Electronic Music from Mills College, where she was awarded the Frog Peak Collective Experimental Music Award. She has presented her work at the San Francisco Electronic Music Festival, Soundwave ((5)) Festival, the 26th Annual SEAMUS National Conference, the San Francisco Tape Music Festival, UC Santa Cruz, and Stanford University, among other venues. She has additionally been awarded a YBCAway grant from Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, and has held residencies at the Paul Dresher Ensemble Artist Residency Center, the UC Berkeley Center for New Media, the Djerassi Resident Artists Program, Sitka Center for Art and Ecology, and EMS in Stockholm, Sweden. Ashley resides in Oakland, CA.