gabie strong

Lavender, off Wilding Sun on Dragon’s Eye Recordings.

ABOUT THE VIDEO

Lavender was created using over 2600 still photographs animated to create a moving image.

I made this album as an assemblage, as if it was a physical object. For the video, I wanted to reflect on the underlying concept of transmutation and death, through visual imagery that would show concepts of memory and time in a subdued way. I also work in photography, photo collage, and printmaking, so again non-narrative and non-linear modes of representation as with my sound work.

While in San Francisco for Pam’s opening, we went to see the Joan Mitchell survey show at SFMoMA. I had a provisional understanding of Mitchell’s work as being one of the few women who were part of American Abstract Expressionism, but never dove deeply into her work until the exhibition. I soon learned from the survey exhibition that she was actually making very abstract paintings about gardens and landscapes, which was so uncool for the time! While she was making references to Monet, she was also making paintings about paint. Much of her work was a critical response to the art world while also being a kind of autobiography.

One of Mitchell’s Untitled paintings from 1961 has these gorgeous purples and mauves in it with contrasting yellows and ochres, densely sketched out against the open space of the canvas. It may be a painting of a tree, or an idea about a tree, an aggressive emotional gesture, or just a painting about paint. It made me think about how painting and improvisation are connected; how they can be aesthetic, critical, and political all at once. 

I wanted to create a video that referenced Mitchell and Jorden’s work, but also that was connected to my father, and carried my grief. October is both the end of summer and autumn here in Los Angeles when many flowers are peaking in bloom while leaves are turning on trees; it folds into autumn slowly and deliberately here over the course of the month. Autumn is when the landscape is very brown, dried, and seemingly dead; but roses are in full bloom. I wanted to visually capture that odd conjunction of flowers in autumn, and place it up against the noise and feedback of Lavender.

I experimented with these ideas and so set my camera on a very fast shutter speed so that I could continuously shoot while moving the camera in and out of focus on various flowers, mostly roses. I did this very quickly, lightly monitoring the shots as I worked to make sure they were coming out the way I wanted. I was intentionally treating the camera like my guitar, improvising with available light and source material, and kind of hoping for the best. Improvising is very much about having faith in material applications, and not being afraid of the unknown.

Gabie Strong, The Refrain is a Prism, 2016. Performance at the Hammer Museum, Los Angeles. From "In Real-Life: Performance" series at the Hammer Museum, Los Angeles. October 1, 2016. Footage courtesy Hammer Museum.

Brainchild Part 3 - Kathleen Johnson with Composer Mark So.

Mars Desert Research Station, Utah, October 11 and LAXART, Los Angeles, October 25, 2015. Dominique Cox as Brainchild, and Julie Brody, Kate Brown, Mari Garrett, and Gabie Strong as the chorus.

Begun in 2008, Brainchild is Johnson’s nine-part, multi-year fiction and sound project. For each successive part of the sci-fi story, she collaborates with a guest composer who creates a choral work for performance. Johnson’s narrative follows a girl, Brainchild, who discovers the abandoned structures of an ancient civilization, and slowly begins to understand her own strange connection to its builders. 

Finding musicality within the language of the Brainchild text itself, Mark So has created a score for Part 3 comprised solely of the words on the page, arranged in open fields, dense clusters, and single lines to produce what So calls a “native” reading. Image Bill Morrison. 

Ur Rituals was a performative invocation attempting to seek discursive spatial transformation in a time of war. The title references the Standard of Ur, a Sumerian artifact decorated with mosaics of war and peace that was excavated from the ancient city of Ur by British occupation forces in 1927. The word ur is used to describe something that is original or is used to limit things that have qualities outside of human time. When combined with rituals, the two terms signify the first recorded moment of spiritual practice in protest against war.

Ur Rituals was staged at the ruins of an early 20th century homesteader house in Wonder Valley, near Twentynine Palms, CA. The dilapidated jackrabbit homesteader cabins pepper the desert landscape in a crumbling Jeffersonian grid, symbolizing the remains of an early modernist vision of utopian futures. As ruins these small homes have come to signify untamable nature, an anomaly in otherwise logical landscapes. Through the exploration of synaesthesic dissonance and resonance, musicians projected into the wild an organic topographical landscape, bending the confines of Cartesian geometry.

This immersive site-specific performance featured artists Ted Byrnes (drums), Kelly Coats (flute), Helga Fassonaki (pedal steel, effects), Steve Kim (bass, effects, violin), Gregory Lenczycki (keyboards, electronics), Jorge Martin (turntable, trogotronics), Albert Ortega (resonant electronics), RJ Russell (bass, effects), Andrew Scott (guitar, stylophone), Jonathan Silberman (soprano saxophone) and Gabie Strong (bass, effects, films). Co-sponsored by UCIRA Desert Studies Program and the UCR Sweeney Art Gallery for the exhibition Mapping the Desert/Deserting the Map exhibition. March 2010. Sound by Jorge Martin. Produced by Gabie Strong. © 2010 Gabie Strong.

The Sun Has Turned to Black, a poem by Jared Stanley

Dawn Kasper and Lady Noise durational performance at the Whitney Biennial 2012
Lady Noise (Gabie Strong, Kelly Coats, Kathleen Kim, Helga Fassonaki) supporting artist Dawn Kasper for her project "This could be something if I let it," at the 2012 Whitney Biennial opening reception.

Dawn Kasper and Lady Noise durational performance at the Whitney Biennial 2012
Lady Noise (Gabie Strong, Kelly Coats, Kathleen Kim, Helga Fassonaki) supporting artist Dawn Kasper for her project "This could be something if I let it," at the 2012 Whitney Biennial opening reception.

Lady Noise and Friends, Untitled (Baldwin Hills Scenic Overlook, Oct. 16, 2011)

Washes of white noise, whistling, and breath. The drone of chatter through wind. A melody over takes us, the image/sound of site.

Collated histories of grasses, planes, pumping jacks, and dry lips mingle under a blanket of smog.

A melancholic psychic overload of the hot air indeterminate. Everybody knows this is nowhere.

Commissioned by SASSAS, Lady Noise created a site-specific score from field recordings made at the Baldwin Hills Scenic Overlook site in south Culver City. Working with concepts of wind, breath, and air in the post-industrial sublime of Los Angeles, Lady Noise invited multiple players to join us in an amplified open-air concert.

Untitled (Baldwin Hills Scenic Overlook, Oct. 16, 2011) featured Lady Noise (Kelly Coats, flute; Kathleen Kim, violin; Gabie Strong, electric bass; and Sandy Yang, electric guitar) with Jesse Appelhans, Aisling Cormack, James Hamblin, Julia Holter, Janet Kim, Stefan Scott Nelson, Ron Russell and Jonathan Silberman.

RED FLAT @ JANM
Omayumi, Steven M Irvin, Alan Nakagawa and LADY NOISE collaborated on a movement and sound work titled RED FLAT.

Drawing from inspiration from the flatness of Los Angeles's marine desert geography and the personal symbolism of the color red, this ensemble of artists generated a sound barrage in response to the question, "What if you could hear everything in LA in one moment?". Circuit bent keyboards and percussion were scattered throughout the perimeter of the staged area in the museum letting the audience improvise with the artists. Special thanks to Clement Hanami for his support. March 12, 2011 at the Japanese American National Museum in Los Angeles California.

88 BOADRUM
One of eighty-eight drummers performing with the Boredoms for eight-eight minutes on 08/08/08 at the La Brea Tar Pits, Los Angeles. 

88 BOADRUM Rehearsal. Feel the transcendence! 

space, climate, light, mood
David Patton, RJ Russell, Gabie Strong performing live sound in Cindy Bernard's installation "space, climate, light, mood" at the MAK Schindler House. Live audio mix by Joe Potts and Joseph Hammer.

sound. at Sacred Grounds, February 28, 1999
Live improvisation by Don Bolles, Joseph Hammer, Rick Potts, Joe Potts, and Gabie Strong.

angels gate dusk: installations+ trios pulled from a hat
Performance with Joe Potts, Francis Stark, Gabie Strong. August 16, 1998.

1st Annual Deedra Inc. Cocktail Party
On bass guitar supporting Jennifer Moon's project "Deedra & the Galaxies" in 1993.