PROGRAM THREE
curated by John Davis
presented in association with
Bimodal Press, Southern Exposure and The Lab
Performances will also be LIVE-STREAMED at www.twitch.tv/bimodalpress
all programs + details here
Artists In Person:
Scott Stark + Wobbly • Amma Ateria + Mark Wilson • Anna Geyer + Billy Gomberg
Admission: $10 General/$6 Cinematheque Members and members of The Lab.
Event tickets here
Visit our Facebook Event here
COVID-19 SAFETY REQUIREMENTS: Proof of vaccination (including booster) required for all attendees. Masks must be worn at all times while in the venue.
Gravity Spells II is a four-evening series of sound, music and live cinema performance featuring twenty-four Bay Area artists collaborating through live cinema, music and sound art practices. Curated by John Davis, Gravity Spells II celebrates Bimodal Press’ multimedia publication of the same name. Full details on this series and publication available here.
Gravity Spells II: Program Three
performances by:
Scott Stark + Wobbly
Amma Ateria + Mark Wilson
Anna Geyer + Billy Gomberg
Scott Stark has made over eighty films and videos since the early 1980s, and has created numerous moving image installations, live performances and photo-collages. He received an MFA from the San Francisco Art Institute and served on the Board of Directors of San Francisco Cinematheque 1984–1991. He is the webmaster of Flicker, the web resource for experimental film and video. In 2012 Stark co-founded an avant garde film screening series, Experimental Response Cinema, in Austin TX. He lives in San Francisco.
Jon Leidecker (aka Wobbly) is a human in the loop, improvising with machines that listen, making music that models a survivable version of the world. Specializing in live performance, his approach to collage blurs the line between solo and group work. His lectures on the secret histories of electronic music have been presented at Mills; Stanford; Oxford; UCs Berkeley, Davis and Santa Cruz; MACBA and Peabody Conservatory. In 2015 he inherited Negativland's long-running radio program Over The Edge, broadcasting weekly from KPFA Berkeley.
Amma Ateria is an electroacoustic composer/sound artist born in Hong Kong, based in California. Her work explores themes in the coexistence of polarity, polyrhythmic occurrences and psychoacoustics with focus in equal-loudness contour. With an immediacy of tension and release, her performances navigate between oppositions with stark transitions, transforming deafening noise into meditative stance. Her research focuses on objective/subjective perceptions of sound, noise colours and multi-channel behavioral assignments. With memories of condensed cities, she gravitates to frequencies of close-ranged aircrafts, inaudible conversations, out of body experiences, sustained harmonics and synthesized speed of air.
Mark Wilson makes films, drawings, prints and photographs, often exploring sequential forms, such as the cylinder seal, phenakistoscope, chronophotography, comic book and animation storyboard. He studied filmmaking at the San Francisco Art Institute with Ernie Gehr, Nathainel Dorsky, Gunvor Nelson, Lawrence Jordan and Barbara Hammer. Wilson regularly organizes and co-curates film screenings in San Francisco and co-curated the gallery and performance exhibition Timeless Motion at SOMArts.
Anna Geyer is an award-winning experimental filmmaker and writer. A fascination with non-traditional methods of both production and presentation is apparent in her work. Cameraless, non-representational images combined with found footage work have been the emphasis of much of her recent efforts, although she frequently describes her work as “experimental with a narrative bent.” She teaches cinema classes at City College of San Francisco.
Billy Gomberg is a musician and very occasional multimedia artist living in San Francisco since 2018. His practice incorporates musical material from synthesis and improvisation, various fidelities of field recordings and electroacoustic material, to lay ground and illuminate our duration there, a means to articulate a poetry of our inner lives. Gomberg’s recorded work has been published by Students of Decay, Dinzu Artefacts and Another Timbre, among others. Over the past fifteen years he has performed around the US, and quite rarely in Europe.
Gravity Spells II: The Publication
Gravity Spells II celebrates Bimodal Press’ publication of the same name: a multimedia “bundle” featuring 2 LPs, 4 DVDs, a perfect bound letterpress booklet containing original commissioned essays, color images, artist bios, a silkscreened show poster and announcement card, packaged in a hand-printed sleeve.
Contents:
LP (sound/music): Paul DeMarinis; Suki O’Kane; Laetitia Sonami; Zachary James Watkins
DVD (moving images): Kieth Evans; Zach Iannazzi; Janis Crystal Lipzin; Scott Stark
Original Writing: John Davis; Steve Anker; Brian Darr; Paul DeMarinis; Tooth (arc); Kathleen Quillian; Tanya Zimbardo
Publication will be available for purchase at all performance events
or via San Francisco Cinematheque here.
Gravity Spells II is dedicated with love to the memory of Paul Clipson who perpetually guides and inspires us through his indelible humor, vision, commitment to craft and deep generosity of spirit. We miss you buddy!