Thursday, March 30th at 7 pm at El NIDO
KARNEJ: gestura2
Experimental sound, poetry, and movement
Thursday, March 30th, 2023, at 7 pm | doors open at 6:30 pm
El NIDO, 1028 N. Western Avenue, Los Angeles, CA 90029
This series seeks to make visible the importance of gesture in play; gestura is a scenario contrived by KARNEJ with the help of movement interpreter Stevie Kincheloe.
Alfred Korzybski, the originator of the phrase “the map is not the territory”, believed that human nature could be changed by altering our verbal use of language, specifically through his discipline of general semantics and judicious use of the auxiliary verb to be. In the autumn of 1939, William Burroughs was among 38 students who paid $40 to attend one of Kozybski’s workshops.
Phonemes, devoid of context, can transmit meaning through a process more akin to body language than that written signs or symbols. Once more, we mine the expressive nature of breathing for gestura2. This time the source has been culled from proximity and, some might say organically, in the form of El Nido gallerist/curator Victoria Chapman’s 1990 book “The Engaged”.
Another attendee was Wendell Johnson, the founder of the Monster Study, which in 1938 purposely inducted stuttering in a group of Iowa orphans to study the environmental causes of said speech disorder. The study was kept hidden for fear Johnson’s reputation would be tarnished in the wake of human experiments conducted by the Nazis during WWII.
With gestura2, we attempt an unfaithful transcription of the written word back into speech. The focus is all the different shapes or angles of interpretation we humans can devise through shifting positioning and intent.
The "Talking Books Program" (Books for the Blind), was intended to provide reading material for veterans injured during World War I and other visually impaired adults. The arrival of cassette players inside automobiles expanded the target audience to the visually able commuter. Those that, without irony, receive and interpret this speech as an aural transcription of written symbols. And not vice versa.
At gestura2, readers selected by a rudimentary lottery system will have their speech translated into a visual sign language devised by Stevie Kincheloe. Their actual words will be sampled and processed through stochastic applications controlled by her interpretative movements and the results recorded into an archive. In this case, an audiobook of sorts.
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KARNEJ is the origin point of a variety of media instigations. In the past, these have taken the form and appearance of visual art, poetry, and sound/music in galleries and performance spaces in the US (MX Gallery, Filosofi Arts, Interstate Projects, P.S. 1 and WFMU, Montez Press Radio in NY) and abroad (performances in Centro de Cultura Digital, Centro Cultural de España in Mexico City and in Berlin, Madrid, Barcelona and Vigo, Spain).
KARNEJ is a dwelling. A something and somewhere resisting authorship through a faith in personal and collective codes. It prioritizes communion between different modes through chance encounters where the experience of rupture can emerge. For the purposes of the gestura series, KARNEJ is the third Thursday of every month in EL NIDO.
An interdisciplinary artist, Stevie Kincheloe, understands movement as a conversation between the physical and metaphysical planes. What began as a path to opening that notoriously elusive portal of inspiration, her movement meditations are becoming their own medium. A dismantling of the masks and false faces we show to the world, the intuitive moment is channeling the raw expression of the truth, moment to moment.
Since its opening in 2021, (EN) has been a place for individualism, sharing unique exhibitions and music performances that amplify human existence. The mission has been to create a platform for exploratory thought and discovery. It informs a diverse community to explore noteworthy landscapes. It encourages the cultivation of new ways of portraying our humanistic need to create limitless dialogues within multiple mediums. We are excited to share the month-to-month output of gestura series. How it will evolve, and the conversations it will ensue.
If you are curious about this series, listen to the podcast below regarding last month’s event: gestura 1 and 1.2
In this episode, we meet in Los Angeles with KARNEJ and Stevie Kincheloe regarding the inauguration of Gestura1 (2/16/23) and 1.2 (2/18/2023) and to untangle the curious web of what and how the experience came about. Was it a performance? Maybe but not; instead, from my point of view, it was something between a birth and exorcism (without the evil spirits.) We unpack the mystery of both events and share our experiences which touch on elements of intention, improvisation, actuality, sacred space, object-hood, primal states, realms of spirituality, and altered consciousness.
However, during the event, the outcome was uniquely different. Each held a certain amount of rehearsal time, but long-lead lines were left for interpretation at the designated date. Gestura is a series of monthly performances encompassing sound, words, objects, movement, and artificial intelligence components. The series seeks to make visible the importance of gesture in play, gestura1 is a scenario contrived by KARNEJ with the help of dancer/interpreter Stevie Kincheloe. During gestura 1 and 1.2, both collaborated with movement-tracking body sensors, modular electronics, and A.I. text transcribers to create a spoken word piece consisting of triggered vocalized words/phrases.
During this talk, we grapple with the facts, carefully examining each event's physical and psychological landscape. We listen carefully, honoring various perspectives and aspects of non-authorship. I tap into their flow, and what is revealed is an intriguing discussion exploring thing-hood, collective consciousness, and variables of existence and spirituality. I share the panic I felt within the space, as I didn't know where to go in my mind or what to perceive. I was glitching. I challenged them to understand my side of the experience as a spectator.
"The gestures of both participants and the curation/editing of the vocal recordings used are the sole content of the work while the flows of context ignited after that generate its form. The result is an oracular stream of implied meaningfulness, juxtapositions of narrative with flickering, glitching vocalizations. But what's important is not the result but the possibilities catalyzed by the process as a whole— gestura2 (03/30/23) will include the participation of those attending in its process and performance, making the series an interactive collaboration by way of the machine."
We are reminded KARNEJ is the origin point of various media instigations. In the past, these have taken the form and appearance of visual art, poetry, and sound/music in galleries and performance spaces in the U.S. (MX Gallery, Filosofi Arts, Interstate Projects, P.S. 1 and WFMU, Montez Press Radio in N.Y.) and abroad (performances in Centro de Cultura Digital, Centro Cultural de España in Mexico City and Berlin, Madrid, Barcelona and Vigo, Spain).
Also, KARNEJ is a dwelling. A something and somewhere resisting authorship through faith in personal and collective codes. It prioritizes communion between different modes through chance encounters where the experience of rupture can emerge. The gestura series continues on the third Thursday of every month in EL NIDO.
