Friday, January 18th, 2019
Timucua Arts Foundation and The Civic Minded 5 present
Mark Hosler of Negativland
Timucua Arts
2000 S. Summerlin Ave, Orlando, Fl 32806
7:00 pm doors, 7:30 pm concert
All ages welcome
The late Don Joyce- Negativland member and longtime radio host of Over The Edge on KPFA Berkeley- is giving credit for coining the term “culture jamming.” Frame an idea with a logo and/or slogan, then repeat until the impressions are inescapable. That’s the culture. Feed repurposed elements back into the much-repeated idea, all the while upsetting the pulse – that’s the jamming.
Unintentional Situationists such as our current Chief Executive- himself a heterodox, two thumbs take on Leni Riefenstahl- is now a culture jammer (in reverse?), too. For better or worse, Negativland co-founder Mark Hosler weaponized a generation of music listeners and media hawks in these subversive arts of jamming. Any form of media loses its idealism and altruism tout suite when there is power and income to be collated. Jam that and you enter the Negativland – the usage of collage for cognitive dissonance spurring didactic outcomes.
Forty plus years after Negativland’s first salvos, Mark Hosler’s solo work still uses the unlike and in the case of his concert at Timucua, it’s disjunct electronic devices roughly creating the signal path of late 1960’s synthesis. Like assembling a composite software image in layers, the electronics collage was always a Back Layer to the battleground Fair Use sample and collage pugilism in their 1970’s/1980’s/1990’s audio and video works. It’s the Front Layer here. In the parlance of Negativlandia, two of David “The Weatherman” Wills’ Booper boxes – Hendrix-ist feedback oscillators nerdily hacked from unsexy consumer circuitry- are coming along.
“What interests me in my solo performances is that these are improvised shows, where every night is a different performance. It’s very much about what’s happening in the moment, it’s very much about “you gotta be there.” I’m not trying to replicate anything off the record. And I spent the past year, year and a half, building a whole new performance setup. I counted, and I think I have about seventy knobs. It’s kind of Frankensteined-together– it’s almost in a way like a modular synthesizer, but it’s not. It’s all these different sound-making devices, and processors, and effects boxes, and some homemade electronics made by other members of Negativland, and some boutique-type weird stuff made by small companies, and then it’s all very weirdly patched together so that I can hopefully do a good job of creating this ever-evolving electronic soundscape over the course of doing my set.
… I should also add that all of the devices that I use are unstable. I cannot control them precisely at all. None of them. That’s very intentional. It means that I’m in a collaboration with my gear, almost like it’s a duet. And part of my job is to listen to what the gear’s doing…”
Mark Hosler – Boston Hassle interview
The night starts out with some of those Negativland videos, followed by Hosler’s table of electronics tipped slightly outward for the audience’s edification. Find a seat in the center if you can – Timucua goes Quadraphonic for this affair.
Take part in the Timucua instant arts community created at each event by appearing willing – described by composer Anthony Braxton as the “friendly experiencer.” Timucua encourages a small plate dish and a bottle of wine for community distribution. We’ll see you there.
TheCM5. Creative Music concerts. Orlando. 