Deep Time
Basquiat & Cage 8424

Deep Time: Basquiat & Cage 8424

A festival of new music

Curated by Elaine Mitchener

27.11.24–30.11.24

 

Apartment House · Jean-Michel Basquiat · John Cage · Brìghde Chaimbeul · Esi Eshun · Mark Francis · Anton Lukoszevieze · Allan Macdonald · Eddie McGuire · Elaine Mitchener · Kate Molleson · Rie Nakajima · NikNak · Pauline Oliveros · Aidan O’Rourke · Ben Patterson · Bashir Saade · Simone Seales · Sean Shibe · Sodhi · Theoretical Girls · The Rolling Calf (Elaine Mitchener & Neil Charles + petals) · Dam Van Huynh · David Wojnarowicz 

 

‘Art is how we decorate space, music is how we decorate time.’ 

Jean-Michel Basquiat

 

‘The right to be myself, as long as I live! As if I were a sound.’

John Cage

 

Deep Time is Fruitmarket’s annual festival for new music which takes place in Fruitmarket Warehouse. Programmed with a different curatorial voice every year, each edition of Deep Time takes a generative theme as its starting point.

This year the festival, which runs from 27.11.24–30.11.24, is curated by vocalist, movement artist and composer, Elaine Mitchener. 2024 is Fruitmarket’s 50^th anniversary year and Mitchener has focused on 1984 when two artists from New York whose work blended visual art with sound and music were both shown at Fruitmarket during the Edinburgh Festival. John Cage (1912–92), a senior, hugely influential figure in avant-garde music exhibited works on paper in Fruitmarket’s upstairs gallery. Downstairs, a young painter Jean-Michel Basquiat (1960–88) showed visionary paintings influenced by a context of jazz, hip-hop, no wave music, poetry, and art history, in his first institutional exhibition.

Deep Time uses this creatively significant moment as a prompt to bring a series of new commissions, performances, talks and curated playlists by some of the UK’s most radical and progressive experimental artists to Fruitmarket. Mitchener has invited them to respond to the idea of an imagined conversation between Basquiat and Cage, envisaging the meeting in Fruitmarket of these two artists as a cultural intervention that reshaped and reimagined future possibilities. The work of Basquiat and Cage continues to challenge and inspire, and Deep Time invites us to not only look back in reflection but to look forward with renewed energies in these unsettling times.

 

‘I don’t think about art when I’m working. I try to think about life.’

Jean-Michel Basquiat

 

‘Our business in living is to become fluent with the life we are living, and art can help this.’

John Cage

 

Jean-Michel Basquiat & John Cage, Fruitmarket, Edinburgh, 1984. Photo: Sean Hudson 

 

Installation image of ‘Jean-Michel Basquiat: Paintings 1981–1984’, Fruitmarket, 1984. Photo : Sean Hudson  

Elaine Mitchener. Photo: Wendy Huynh

 

6.30pm

IN CONVERSATION: Esi Eshun, Elaine Mitchener and Dam Van Huynh

Ahead of the premiere of their new work commissioned by Fruitmarket for Deep Time, vocalist, movement artist, composer and curator of Deep Time, Elaine Mitchener and dancer and choreographer Dam Van Huynh will be in conversation with artist and writer Esi Eshun.

 

7.30pm

Dam Van Huynh developed in collaboration with Elaine Mitchener

Graffiti Bodies II, 2024

(first performance)

(15 mins)

 

‘At that point, [an artist] was somebody who could draw, but my ideas have changed since then. Now I see an artist as something a lot broader than that.’

Jean-Michel Basquiat 

 

Graffiti Bodies II presents a series of ‘performative graffiti’ that experiment with the gallery experience. The work moves away from a linear dramaturgical approach and instead places value on manifestations of expression within space by overlaying movement and sound art with poetry, sculpture and visual imagery. The piece is inspired by Jean-Michel Basquiat’s notable work La Hara (1981) which addresses the police brutality faced by marginalised urban communities in New York in the 1980s. Through a sensory overload of movement and a cacophony of sound and visual noise, the work reflects on Basquiat’s social commentary, urging us to resist the cyclical nature of history.

 

Pauline Oliveros

Song for Margrit (for solo voice), 1997

(10 mins)

 

Pauline Oliveros’s Song for Margrit disrupts sound and space in unusual ways. The performer is instructed to make sounds in response to any sound they hear in the room, which can also include sound from the audience. Oliveros’s works, often performed communally, allude to a form of performance that functions ‘without the mediating code of musical performance history.’ A pioneering American composer, performer and humanitarian, Oliveros explored sound, through improvisation, electronic music, ritual, teaching and meditation.

 

‘Deep listening is experiencing heightened awareness or expanded awareness of sound and of silence, of quiet, and of sounding – making sounds.’

Pauline Oliveros

 

Dam Van Huynh. Photo: Thuan Lam Hieu

 

Dam Van Huynh & Elaine Mitchener

Moving Eastman, 2024

(first performance, commissioned by Fruitmarket)

(30 mins)

‘But now music is only one of my attributes. I could be a Dancer, Choreographer, Painter, or any other kind of artist if I so wished.’

Julius Eastman

 

Moving Eastman is a new dance and sonic performance, commissioned by Fruitmarket, that takes inspiration from the intersectional life of the Black American composer Julius Eastman. Using Eastman’s artistic legacy and life story as points of departure, the work is a response to Mitsuye Yamada’s quote ‘invisibility is not a natural state for anyone’, igniting a much-needed discussion on who controls the narrative in recording history and who possesses the authority to tell these stories.

The performance is led by Elaine Mitchener, a British movement and vocal artist with Afro-Caribbean heritage, with original concept and choreography by Vietnamese-American director Dam Van Huynh.

Eastman, who died in 1990 aged just 49, is now acknowledged as a key figure in late 20^th century American music, but during his lifetime he was marginalised due to his race, sexuality and aesthetic. A black, gay, contemporary music composer, he lived every aspect of his identity to its fullest. His uncompromising attitude represented a total assault on the status quo. He would not be reined in. He walked the talk.

While the work does not overtly use Eastman’s music, it embodies his unconventional and improvisational approach towards making art across genres and creative disciplines as a continual quest for artistic freedom. The staging is informed by a meticulously curated collection of found archival materials such as images, notes, interviews, sounds, texts, and quotations, putting Eastman’s collective acts into one singular space.

Moving Eastman was commissioned by Fruitmarket as part of Deep Time, Fruitmarket’s festival of new music. With further development support from Barbican, Hellerau – Dresden, Musical Utopias – The Hague, Britten Pears Arts, Centre 151 and EMProjects.

  

Join us in the bar until 10.30pm for drinks and curated playlists by artists in the programme

 

Visit event page and book tickets

Book a four night Festival Pass

Apartment House. Photo: Alicija Wroblewska

 

6.30pm

IN CONVERSATION: Anton Lukoszevieze and Kate Molleson

Ahead of the premiere of his new work commissioned by Fruitmarket for Deep Time, composer, musician and founder of Apartment House, Anton Lukoszevieze, will be in conversation with writer and broadcaster Kate Molleson.

 

7.30pm

Apartment House

Anton Lukoszevieze: cello

Miles Lukoszevieze: bass guitar, voice

Gordon MacKay: violin

Kerry Yong: keyboard

Apartment House are one of the most important interpreters and advocates for John Cage’s work. For Deep Time, they will present a new work by Anton Lukoszevieze, a Youth Bec(k)oning a Righlteg Leg, commissioned by Fruitmarket, in which the musical and vocal material is derived directly from the graphic notations and words found in many of Jean-Michel Basquiat’s drawings and paintings. This material is reassembled into a new composition focusing on different modes of musical expression. The title is spelled correctly.

This work will be followed by a programme that weaves in and out of Basquiat and Cage’s work and reflects on their home city of New York. New York at the time was a place with a rapidly changing art market, the AIDS crisis, no wave bands emerging from the late ‘70s, and the album era of music. It was a chaotic, graffiti saturated city, with many underground scenes and downtown experiments. The programme will explore connections, side glances, identities, methods and contradictions, explored not just through Basquiat and Cage’s music and art, but also through the tape journals of New York writer, artist and activist David Wojnarowicz, the 1980s no wave post punk New York band Theoretical Girls, and the graphic scores of Fluxus artist Ben Patterson.

 

John Cage

Score (40 Drawings by Thoreau) and 23 Parts, 1974

(20 mins)

 

David Wojnarowicz

From ‘Cross Country’ tape journals, 1989/2024

(first performance of reworked version of his tape journals)

(7 mins)

Copyright Estate of David Wojnarowicz
Courtesy of the Estate of David Wojnarowicz

 

Anton Lukoszevieze

a Youth Bec(k)oning a Righlteg Leg, 2024

(first performance, commissioned by Fruitmarket)

(10 mins)

 

Theoretical Girls

New experimental versions of 3 songs from 1977–1981/2024

(first performance)

(9 mins)

 

Ben Patterson

Ants, 1960–62

(10 mins)

 

Join us in the bar until 10.30pm for drinks and curated playlists by artists in the programme

 

Visit event page and book tickets

Book a four night Festival Pass

Rie Nakajima. Photo: Fabio Lugaro

 

6.30pm

Rie Nakajima

The Detail of the Whole, 2024

(commissioned by Fruitmarket)

(25 mins)

Japanese sculptor and sound artist, Rie Nakajima, whose works are composed in direct response to architectural spaces, will present a new installation and performance, commissioned by Fruitmarket for Deep Time. Nakajima presents a performance that is inspired by both Basquiat and Cage’s interest in found objects, images and sound:

‘Paper, tin, jars, plastic, batteries, plates, wood, stone, cups, balloons, sticks, glass, bowls, motors … substances and shapes are there in a room with us with other elements such as furniture, floors, ceilings, walls etc. Randomly they start to find relationships. No order but with preciseness in its own way. The expression of the space is audible. We are allowed to be there together, accepting the fact that what we experience are never the same. It is as if telling us “It’s ok”.’

 

7.15pm

IN CONVERSATION: Esi Eshun and Rie Nakajima

Following her performance Rie Nakajima will be in conversation with artist and writer Esi Eshun about her work and the elements of Basquiat and Cage’s work that speak to her practice.

 

Contact sheet of portraits of John Cage and The Whistlebinkies at the opening of Cage’s exhibition, Fruitmarket, 1984. Photo: Sean Hudson

 

Brìghde Chaimbeul: pipes

Allan Macdonald: voice

Aidan O’Rourke: fiddle

Bashir Saade: ney flute

Simone Seales: cello

Sean Shibe: guitar

Sodhi: tabla

 

8.15pm

John Cage

Scottish Circus (revisited), 1984/2024

(30 mins)

 

In 1984, John Cage’s exhibition at Fruitmarket opened with a collaboration between the composer and the Scottish traditional music group the Whistlebinkies, when the group gave an improvised performance, under Cage’s direction, that brought together avant-garde and traditional folk music. Eddie McGuire of the Whistlebinkies had long been influenced by Cage’s work and stayed in contact with him after their first meeting at Fruitmarket, commissioning a work that built on the improvised performance, which premiered at Musica Nova festival in Glasgow as Scottish Circus in 1990.

The work comprises ‘select pieces of Scottish traditional music for the instruments and voices of the group. This should be done without regard for the speed, key, mood, type of piece (e.g. Jig, Reel, Slow Air, Hornpipe, Piobaireachd, Pipe March, Lament, Lullaby, Gaelic Song, etc), of the pieces chosen by the other players.’ Cage said of the performance: ‘In Scottish Circus I simply asked them to do what they do. Not to do it together, but in circus, so that each musician becomes an individual, rather than part of a fixed group’. Cage was in attendance in Glasgow, just two years before his death. Scottish Circus was later played in the galleries of the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam in 1992 and was also performed in and around Inverleith House in Edinburgh for the opening of an exhibition of John Cage and Merce Cunningham’s drawings in 2007.

Forty years after this important moment at Fruitmarket, composer and fiddler Aidan O’Rourke brings together a group of musicians from a broad spectrum of cultural traditions to reflect on what it means to be a folk musician in Scotland today. The group will perform a renewed version of Scottish Circus, accompanied by improvisations around ancient Gaelic song – a music that Cage loved.

 

9.15pm

IN CONVERSATION: Fiona Bradley, Mark Francis, Eddie McGuire, Aidan O’Rourke and Simone Seales

Following the new performance of John Cage’s Scottish Circus, we are delighted to welcome Mark Francis, previously Director of Fruitmarket and curator of the Basquiat and Cage exhibitions in 1984 and composer and flautist Eddie McGuire who performed at the opening of the 1984 Cage exhibition at Fruitmarket. They will be in conversation with fiddler and composer Aidan O’Rourke and cellist Simone Seales who are together performing in this new 2024 performance of Scottish Circus, with Fruitmarket Director Fiona Bradley, to discuss the exhibitions, the artists and their legacy in art and music today.

 

Join us in the bar until 10.30pm for drinks and curated playlists by artists in the programme

 

Visit event page and book tickets

Book a four night Festival Pass

Elaine Mitchener, petals, Neil Charles. Photos: D Djuric, Thay Bonin. D Djuric

 

7pm

The Rolling Calf: Elaine Mitchener / Neil Charles + special guest petals

 

Gold Griot / Griot’s Refrain

(30 mins)

The Rolling Calf (TRC) is a black British avant-garde improvising electroacoustic collective led by vocalist Elaine Mitchener, with core members saxophonist Jason Yarde and bassist Neil Charles.

For Deep Time, The Rolling Calf is joined by multi-disciplinary musician and poet, petals, to present Gold Griot / Griot’s Refrain, a performance inspired by Jean-Michel Basquiat’s, Gold Griot (1984). Their musical response (Griot’s Refrain) will be a meditation on the wisdom expressed through the painting. The Rolling Calf will use free improvisation while also drawing on aspects of Basquiat’s work and working processes: arranging and superimposing phrases and text to create an aural score that draws out the importance of the performative aspect of Basquiat’s work as key to understanding his connection to music. Basquiat’s ‘performative line’ and ‘the ways in which his art weaves bodies, sound and black diasporic histories’ (Kobena Mercer) will act as the starting point for the group’s sonic exploration.

 

NikNak. Photo: Ila Brugal

 

7.45pm

NikNak

Basquiat & Cage: A manipulated live conversation between two artists on turntables, 2024

(commissioned by Fruitmarket)

(30 mins)

We close Deep Time: Basquiat & Cage 8424 with a new commission by the musical polymath, NikNak, who will create an improvised, manipulated conversation between Basquiat & Cage on turntables, bringing the two artists together sonically in the space of the Fruitmarket forty years after their exhibitions. The turntables offer a new way of controlling the voices of two creative geniuses who both had strong connections to the turntable.

While Basquiat’s and Cage’s work was exhibited at the same time at Fruitmarket in 1984, the installations and openings did not coincide, and it seems they never met in person. With NikNak’s commission, curator Elaine Mitchener’s concept of the ‘imagined conversation’ between Basquiat and Cage will be brought to life through the immersive, experimental turntablism of NikNak.

 

8.30pm

IN CONVERSATION: Esi Eshun, Elaine Mitchener and NikNak

Bringing the festival to a close, vocalist, movement artist, composer and curator of Deep Time Elaine Mitchener and turntablist NikNak will be conversation with Esi Eshun about their music, and the importance of Basquiat and Cage to artists today.

 

Join us in the bar until 10.30pm for drinks and curated playlists by artists in the programme

 

Visit event page and book tickets

Book a four night Festival Pass

 

 

 

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