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  Photo courtesy of Sabisha Friedberg
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Sabisha Friedberg: Interstice

In this residency at the Clocktower Gallery, Sabisha Friedberg paired her visual practice in drawing and painting with music composition to address the theme of interstice - that which intervenes between things, or breaks what is continuous. Drawings and songs are presented as renderings of a thematic existence of an in-between; an effusive emotive state existing between defined lines is explored in a musical performance presented by Friedberg in the Clocktower’s Upper Gallery.

The performance, taking place as a concert in the Upper Gallery in the Fall of 2012, alludes to a period in the early part of the Century, circa 1912, characterized by curious societal tensions, and odd and contradictory movements artistically and musically. Friedberg performed, with five New York-based musicians, both constructed and improvisational melodies and interstitial musical weavings presented as a single passage. The original songs hark to the craft of the ‘teens music, contorting the arrangements of then-popular ballads while introducing experimental arrangements and acousmatic treatments.

The piece is comprised, both visually and musically, of an extracted past which has been re-contextualized with the constant of conveying a common emotive state, beginning in an old framework and held in the interpretive line of the new armature, this sentimental space joining them. These songs and images are renderings of the unseen or not readily perceived structures. Lyrics address themes of detached otherworldliness and, as if in reflection, earthly desires and longings.

Friedberg delves into the historicity of the subject while considering its context and relevance in contemporaneity, addressing the certain substance or emotion that connects the two. The piece explores themes of longing, melancholy, reverie, farewells and goings, and is ultimately dedicated to the in-between, ever-present forms that dwell in perpetuity, both wondrous and ominous.