[PAST EVENT] The Language of Chance with Sound Artist and Turntablist Maria Chavez

March 27, 2014
5pm - 5:45pm
Location
Tucker Hall, 127A
350 James Blair Dr
Williamsburg, VA 23185Map this location
When I am painting, I'm not aware of what I'm doing. It's only after a sort of get acquainted period that I see what I have been about. I have no fears about making changes, destroying the image, etc., because the painting has a life of its own.
- Jackson Pollock

The Language of Chance workshop with sound artist and abstract turntablist Maria Chavez focuses on the values and lessons derived from chance encounters, accidents, and improvisation in her art practice.

Using her book, Of Technique: Chance Procedures on Turntable as the focal point of this lecture, Chavez invites students to discuss serendipity, and accidents while learning about Chavez's sound art work.


About Maria Chavez
The sound installations, visual objects and live turntable performances of Maria Chavez focus on the values of accidents and unique, complicated possibilities with sound-emitting machinery like the turntable.

Influenced by improvisation in contemporary art, her work expands outside of the sound world straddling different disciplines of interest. In 2012, Chavez wrote and illustrated Of Technique: Chance Procedures on Turntable - a how-to manual for those interested in learning the abstract turntablism techniques that she developed with the turntable.

Chavez also works as an independent sound art curator in NYC, collaborating with various organizations and art spaces, helping to produce events and festivals that present the latest of what is being shown in the sound art world. Being an independent curator helps to expand Maria's artistic research when developing new projects for her own practice.

Chavez was awarded the Jerome Foundation's Emerging Artist Grant by New York's Roulette Intermedium in 2008, and in 2009 she became a recipient of the Van Lier Fellowship by The Edward and Sally Van Lier Fund of the New York Community Trust. Maria was an artist in residence with the Merce Cunningham Dance Company, the Clocktower and the DIA: Beacon Museum. She has worked with Christian Marclay and the Whitney Museum of American Art in NYC as part of Christian Marclay: FESTIVAL and has shared the stage with renowned artists such as: Pauline Oliveros; Thurston Moore; Lydia Lunch; Phill Niblock and Otomo Yoshihide.

Chavez received the St. Luke's Chamber Ensemble commission to present a new sound piece in 2015 at the Brooklyn Museum of Art. The Visual Art Center at the University of Texas will present Needlework, a solo exhibition of her work from September 27 to December 17, 2014.

Over the last decade, she has pursued pristine and thoughtful turntablist work.
- The WIRE on Maria Chavez
Contact

For more information, please contact [[cadelaurenti,Chris DeLaurenti]].