November 6 – 28, 2010
Opening reception, November 6th, 6–8pm
“Cross Promotion originally came from an idea I had about emptying the content of a gallery show until it consisted solely of an advertisement for the gallery’s next show, as a kind of satirical statement about the commercial distractions that sometimes frustrate engagement with artistic work, or can complicate an effort to simply live in the moment. It then occurred to me that having a press release for an upcoming exhibition read aloud would fit in with my previous works in which texts that are not ordinarily vocalized are spoken off the page (the film subtitles in Rashomon Piece, the newspaper / magazine articles in Subway Piece, the article about hearing damage from earbuds in On Deaf Ears). Knowing the congenial relationship between AVA and Diapason, I further conceptualized recording Justin Luke, the proprietor of AVA, reading the press release for AVA’s next show aloud, and recording Michael J. Schumacher, proprietor of Diapason, reading the press release for Diapason’s next show aloud—but installing Justin’s reading as a loop in Diapason and Michael’s reading as a loop in AVA. Thus, each gallery’s December, 2010 show receives a month’s worth of continuous promotion, only in a location other than the gallery itself (but is still related as a sonic art space) — a gallery transplant with a cooperative bent.” –Alan Licht
A special evening of live press release readings, “Ecce Promo”, will take place at the National Arts Club on November 19th at 8pm. Licht has invited a variety of writers, editors, artists, musicians, curators, and normal people to read a favorite press release aloud, be it good, bad, or bizarre. The National Arts Club is located at 15 Gramercy Park South in Manhattan, and the event is free.
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Over the past two decades, guitarist Alan Licht has worked with a veritable who’s who of the experimental world, from free jazz legends (Rashied Ali, Peter Brotzmann) and electronica wizards (Fennesz, Jim O’Rourke) to turntable masters (DJ Olive, Christian Marclay) and veteran Downtown New York composers (Phill Niblock, Rhys Chatham). Licht is also renown in the indie rock scene as a bandleader (Run On, Love Child) and supporting player to cult legends like Tom Verlaine, Arthur Lee, Arto Lindsay, and Jandek. He has released five albums of compositions for tape and solo guitar, and his sound and video installations have been exhibited in the U.S. and Europe. With Sonic Youth’s Lee Ranaldo, he founded Text of Light, an ongoing ensemble which performs freely improvised concerts alongside screenings of classic avant garde cinema. Licht was curator at the famed New York experimental music venue Tonic from 2000 until its closing in 2007, and has written extensively about the arts for the WIRE, Artforum, Modern Painters, Art Review, Film Comment, Sight & Sound, Premiere, Purple, Village Voice, Time Out New York, and other publications. His first book, An Emotional Memoir of Martha Quinn, was published by Drag City Press in 2003; Sound Art:Beyond Music, Between Media, the first extensive survey of the genre in English, was published by Rizzoli in fall 2007.
