Melissa F. Clarke, Cities Are Natural (Composition One)



Clocktower artist-in-residence Melissa F. Clarke performs with Leila Bordreuil and Byron Westbrook during Pioneer Work's May 2015 Second Sundays event. Staged in Clarke's video installation made of glass, paper and metal, Clarke plays field recordings taken from the Red Hook area, Bordreuil performs an experimental piece on the cello, and Westbrook synthesizes sounds collected from urban location recordings. The trio create sounds that integrate the building’s infrastructure and ideas of the city as natural.

The performance recordings are followed by an interview with the artists.

Leila Bordreuil is a cellist, composer, and sound artist. Through a unique and original vocabulary of extended techniques, preparations, and imaginative amplification methods, her instrument is used as an abstract resonant body to challenge conventional cello practice.

Byron Westbrook is an artist and musician based in Brooklyn NY. He works with listening, perception and awareness, often pursuing routes of social engagement. His electronic sound interventions play with dynamics of perception of space, sometimes as multi-channel sound performances or as installation work using video or lighting.
 

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Many of the below recordings were documented while Clocktower was in the midst of a transformation. The original name, The Clocktower Gallery, was given to the exhibition, residency, and performance space in TriBeCa, founded by alternative spaces movement pioneer Alanna Heiss in 1972. After 2001, the Clocktower Gallery re-inaugurated its exhibition programming in 2005 as part of MoMA/PS1 and, after 2008, under the auspices of Art International Radio. In 2013, we moved on from our downtown Manhattan location, and have since renamed the organization Clocktower Productions, a title which encompasses our radio, exhibition, and event programming.

For more Clocktower history, listen to The Clocktower Oral History Project, in which such figures as Vito Acconci, Bill Beirne, Colette, Jeffrey Deitch, Mary Heilmann, Jene Highstein, Ann Magnuson, Richard Nonas and Joel Shapiro reflect upon their experiences with this unique New York space. Organized by artist Nancy Hwang for the Fall 2009 AVANT-GUIDE TO NYC: Discovering Absence exhibition at apexart.


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