Curatorial Letter

During your waking or sleeping life, bring yourself to attention with the thought “remembering and remembering to remember”. You might find yourself listening backward in time to a sound that you didn’t know that you heard!

- Pauline Oliveros, Deep Listening: A Composer’s Sound Practice (2005)

Remembering to Remember: Experiments in Sound takes many forms. Exhibition. Performances. Workshops. Residencies. Screenings. Flickers. Silence. Noise.

It is the hollow echo of an empty room. The spaciousness of a spare one. The energy after it empties out. It is the airy anticipation and the sticky residue. It is all, and some, and none of these things at once.

Remembering to Remember is a collection and collision of impressions and inquiries. We were curious what would happen if these artists and their work shared spaces–speakers, stages, surfaces; sequenced, adjacent, gathered; alone, together, with others. So we invited them to make new pieces, or revive old ones, or do something different, or do what they do.

What emerged is a multifaceted program of 15+ international, national, and local artists spanning six live performances; five newly commissioned multichannel compositions; four film/video works at the intersection of sound and moving image; and one month of community workshops and public engagements.

Just as we each experience the same sound subjectively, Remembering to Remember holds infinite possibilities for interpretation. It was an invitation to artists–and now to you–for individual, collective, and deep listening. To feel something. To pay attention. To re-remember.

Thank you for being here.

Roya Amirsoleymani and Felisha Ledesma

Curators, Remembering to Remember: Experiments in Sound

bone lattice

Kite + Robbie Wing

Reese Bowes

Saint Abdullah Nivhek

FILM & VIDEO

Saint Abdullah

Breathe (video)

2023

9min

This video accompanies Saint Abdullah’s multichannel composition.

Tomoko Sauvage

Barrissando

2020

7min

“Barrissando” is a fabricated musical term from the French verb, barrir, that signifies the cries of an elephant. Originally commissioned by Japan House Sao Paulo, curated by Chico Dub.

Material: Digital Video / Editing: Anne Laure Viaud / Color Correction: Nicolas Perret

Alison O’Daniel

The Tuba Thieves: The Plants are Protected.

2013

12min

Written, Directed, Edited by Alison O’Daniel based on a musical score by Christine Sun Kim. Cinematography by Meena Singh.

Gender Neutral Restrooms

Takashi Makino

Anti-Cosmos

2022

16min

Anti-Cosmos is a physical film for cinema. The soundtrack, which was primarily produced in the range of frequencies below 1000Khz, physically vibrates the viewer’s body. Anti-cosmos is similar to Noise, the power that breaks through the cosmos/order. Inspired by “Cosmos and Anti-Cosmos” by Japanese philosopher Toshihiko Izutsu.

Aspect: 2.35:1 / Format: 4KDCP, 4K mov / Sound: 5.1ch

Director/Producer: Takashi Makino / Sound Material: Lasse Marhaug, Lawrence English / Sound Edit, Composition: Takashi Makino Sound Mix: Takashi Makino, Iwao Yamazaki / Technical support: Bart Lab Supported By: Creators’ Workation, Ise City 2020, Project to Support Emerging Media Arts Creators Japan, 2022

Adee Roberson

offerings

2019

7min offerings is a performance / video that asks, “what does it mean to be a stolen body on stolen land?”. Adee Roberson and keyon gaskin at Noah Purifoy Desert Art Museum in Joshua Tree, California.

Artists In Residence

Synth Library Portland

Workshops and Drop-In Hours

While in residence during Remembering to Remember, Synth Library Portland will host multiple workshops open to everyone, offering both introductory hands-on teaching for beginners and instruction on how to create multi-channel sound compositions. In addition to workshops, Synth Library Portland will also provide informal open hours during which all are welcome to play with modular synthesizers and other electronic music equipment, and to meet our facilitators.