Tom Leeser Curates Los Angeles Experimental Music in Tellus #28

Promotional material for ‘Tellus #28.’

From July 7-13, Harvestworks in New York presents Tellus #28: Heard in LA, a speculative audiocassette showcasing the vibrant and active experimental soundscape of Los Angeles, curated by Tom Leeser, director of the Center for Integrated Media and the Program of Art and Technology in the CalArts School of Art.

From the program notes:

Envisaged back in 1981 as an audiocassette publication, The Tellus Project, produced and curated by Carol Parkinson, Joseph Nechvatal and Claudia Gould, is now considered a historic and significant archive of New York’s leading “downtown” experimental sound, noise, performance and spoken word artists. The tapes included works by Sonic Youth, Louise Lawler, Elliot Sharp, Glenn Branca, Tom Cora, Fred Frith and Spalding Gray, among others. Assembled as a series of 27 audiotapes, each tape was titled with a number and a theme that reflected their sequential release and the curator’s research and intention. The tapes were compiled and distributed to their subscribers, bimonthly through the mail.

Decades later, Leeser expands on the project’s mission geographically, curating music by emerging and mid-career LA artists “exploring new forms of digitally produced sound works extracted from interdisciplinary practices that fuse poetry, electronic composition, improvised music and performance into an assemblage of beautiful antagonisms.” The new works will not be published as a cassette, but will be archived at Harvestworks and will be available for streaming online.

Tellus #28: Heard in LA features work by CalArtians Matt Barbier (Music MFA 10), Scott Benzel (Art BFA 88, MFA 01), K. Bradford (Art, Critical Studies MFA 14), Dan Bustillo (Art MFA 14), Tyler Calkin (faculty), Scott Cazan (Music MFA 09), Carmina Escobar (Music MFA 10) with the Banda Filarmonica Maqueos Music, the Maqueos Music School, and Yulissa Maqueos, Sarah Fylak (Music MFA 17), Ulrich Krieger (faculty), faculty Jen Hofer and Rob Ray as Free Radicals, Sara Roberts (faculty) and the Readers Chorus, Stephanie Smith (Music MFA 11) and Ebony Williams (Critical Studies MFA 12), along with artists Neela Banerjee, Provisional Collective, Louis Coy, E.E.L., Jacob Goldman, Gregory Lenczycki, Parches + Tim Tsang, Jason Richards, Robin Sukhadia and Ameet Mehta as sadubas, Christina Santa Cruz, Thomas Sturm, Jack Taylor and Daniel Watkins.

An opening reception will be held on Friday (July 7), with a special performance by Barbier and Leeser of a new project for video, euphonium and electronics.