Catalytic Sound (Night One) • Asheville
7:00 PM
7:30 PM
This year's artists: Dylan Fujioka, Mike Holmes, Kite, Sarah Louise, MANAS, Sijal Nasralla, Ashley Paul, Luke Stewart, Aaron Turner, Robbie Wing.
Schedule of artists:
• Friday 12/8: Sarah Louise, Mike Holmes, Dylan Fujioka + Tashi Dorji, Sijal Nasralla ( Dunums )+ MANAS
• Saturday 12/9: Ashley Paul, Kite + Robbie Wing, Aaron Turner + Thom Nguyen, Luke Stewart + Dylan Fujioka + Tashi Dorji.
Information about the artists:
KITE & Robbie Wing
Kite (Dr. Suzanne Kite) is an Oglála Lakȟóta performance artist, visual artist, and composer raised in Southern California, with a BFA from CalArts in music composition,and an MFA from Bard College’s Milton Avery Graduate School, and a Ph.D. in Fine Arts from Concordia University, Montreal. Kite’s scholarship and practice investigate contemporary Lakȟóta ontologies through research-creation, computational media, and performance, often working in collaboration with family and community members. Recently, Kite has been developing body interfaces for machine learning driven performance and sculptures generated by dreams, and experimental sound and video work. Kite has published in The Journal of Design and Science (MIT Press), with the award winning article, “Making Kin with Machines,” co-authored with Jason Lewis, Noelani Arista, and Archer Pechawis. Kite is currently a 2023 Creative Capital Award Winner, 2023 USA Fellow, and a 2022-2023 Creative Time Open Call artist with Alisha B. Wormsley. Kite is currently Artist-in-Residence and Visiting Scholar at Bard College and a Research Associate and Residency Coordinator for the Abundant Intelligences (Indigenous AI) project.
Robbie Wing (Cherokee Nation) is an artist, musician, and composer. His artistic practice focuses on immersive and spatialized sound installations, ecological sound art, and composition for acoustic instruments, electronics, and field recordings. Robbie has presented his work and performed at various venues, including the Portland Institute for Contemporary Art, Tulsa Artist Fellowship Flagship Gallery, Philbrook Museum, University of Kent in Chatham, UK, Institute for Advanced Studies in Kószeg, Hungary, Roy and Edna Disney CalArts Theater and the Center for Arts, Research & Alliances.
Sarah Louise
My music, art and intuitive dance emerge from a loving relationship with our sacred planet. After releasing a string of albums called “Mystical” by the New York Times and “In tune with the thrust of existence” by NPR, I took a break from recording to drop more deeply into using music for healing, cross-species communication, and communal care. Slowing down and listening to my body and the Earth has gifted me fluid expression as an improviser, helping me offer care through music that meets the moment. One of my greatest joys these days is to help create safer spaces for the creative expression of everyone present, breaking down barriers between performer and audience.
Aaron Turner
Aaron Turner is a musician and artist based in Vashon, WA, publicly
active since 1995. Most widely recognized for his role as a founding
member of the metal bands SUMAC and Isis, and has also participated
in projects such as House of Low Culture, Greymachine, Old Man
Gloom, and Mamiffer. Active primarily as a guitarist, he has maintained
an abiding interest in tethering conscious content to subverted/intuitive
uses of the instrument. His output has been informed by lifetime
involvement with underground metal/punk, often materializing in highly
abstracted forms utilizing improvisation and longform composition. He
has collaborated with artists such as Tashi Dorji, Justin Broadrick,
Masami Akita, Caspar Brötzmann, Keiji Haino, Patrick Shiroishi, Will
Brooks (Dälek), Heather Leigh, Stephen O'Malley, Kevin Martin/The Bug,
and many others. Turner was the founder/art director of the Hydra Head
Records label, and more recently the co-founder SIGE Records with
partner Faith Coloccia. Current projects include ongoing work with the
bands SUMAC, Mamiffer and Old Man Gloom, as well as solo
performances/recordings, and collaborations with Jon Mueller and Jussi
Lehtisalo of Circle.
Ashley Paul
Ashley Paul is an American multi-instrumentalist/ composer. Her intuitive process integrates free form song structures with a focused approach to sound. Using a complexity of instruments including saxophone, clarinet, voice, prepared guitar and percussion she creates a delicate palette, uniquely her own.
During the summer of 2020 Ashley began composing for her trio RAY featuring Yoni Silver and Otto Willberg. Ashley released the album ‘Ray’ on Slip in late 2020 and ‘I am Fog’ on Orange Milk in 2022. The trio explores the fringes of free improvisation and song form, where melodies are dissected and slowly pieced together, alluding to shape but only occasionally binding together.
Ashley has performed or collaborated with Nik Void, Thurston Moore, Rashad Becker, Loren Connors, Gavin Bryars, Aki Onda, Lucy Railton, Simon Fisher Turner, Rhys Chatham and Heatsick. She has been commissioned to compose work for Musarc Choir premiered at LCMF 2018, A quintet for Counterflows Festival 2017 and “The Pace of Time” premiered at Roundhouse (London) 2013. Ashley performed the World and US premieres of Phill Niblock’s Asheli, a piece composed specifically for her and Eli Keszler and performed live with Niblock. She performed the US premiere of Mauricio Kagel’s Der Schall at Merkin Concert Hall (NYC) and premiered Anthony Coleman’s quartet Damaged by Sunlight at Banlieues Bleues Festival (Paris). She received a residency at ISSUE Project Room in 2008 and a Fellowship Grant in composition from the Rhode Island State Council of the Arts, 2010. In 2020 Ashley was a finalist for The Arts Foundation ‘Futures Award’ in experimental music.
Dylan Fujioka
Dylan Fujioka is a Japanese American composer, multi-instrumentalist and improvisor that has been writing, recording & touring as a member of multiple bands (Chelsea Wolfe, Mangchi, Best Coast, Meatbodies, Upsilon Acrux) as well as solo since 2008. He also composes for TV/Film. He was born and raised in Los Angeles CA.
Luke Stewart
Luke Stewart is a musician, performer, improviser-composer, organizer, and writer-researcher whose work represents a deep reverence for the history and tradition of Creative Music: a tradition which encompasses the diverse styles of expression within the body of Black Music in the United States, Africa, and throughout the world. Stewart’s regular ensembles include Irreversible Entanglements, SILT Trio, Exposure Quintet, and the experimental rock duo Blacks’ Myths; he also performs regularly in numerous collaborations.
Mike Holmes
Mike Holmes, aka Nostalgianoid, is a black queer multidisciplinary artist from Asheville, NC. Music has been a passion for them for as long as they can remember, and for more than half of their life, played in various projects ranging across genres along with creating their own music through different mediums. Improvisation and spontaneity has been a cornerstone for Mike since day one, and they merge that with a sonic search for channeling emotion, approaching their playing cathartically. Examples of this can be heard on Embarrassment of Belonging, a collaborative album brought together by Landon George with Mike, Andy Loebs, and Will Younts that was released on Ramble Records; All I Ever Wanted Was A House I Could Scream In, a self-titled album released on Short Lived Media by a project created by Landon, Will, and Mike that has included other players live, including a performance at Black Mountain College’s ReHappening; and UNRELENTOR, a solo album created from a phone app by Mike that was released on the Philly label Hex Sport. You can find more of Mike’s music at Nostalgianoid.bandcamp.com
Sijal Nasralla/ Dunums
Dunums is a music, multi-media, and collaborative performance project led by Sijal Nasralla since 2009. In Arabic, "dunum" (dūnam) is an arbitrary unit of land measurement, approximately 1 Hectare, used differently to quantify space among villages throughout Palestine. A dunum can be the shrinking or exploding of space, a personal testament to the tremendous land loss and/or the emotional/material transformation brought by settler colonialism.
