https://excorp.compost.party Scene reports from Berlin and Beyond Sun, 10 May 2026 01:39:30 -0400 https://excorp.compost.party/reviews/#greater-new-york-moma-ps1-queens-ny 09 May 2026 00:00:00 +0000
I visited the Greater New York triennial at MOMA PS1 with my friend Alex and we loved it. There was a LOT of incredible work. Kudos to the curators. Of course, I've always loved this museum, and its curation. And it just feels good as an old school. Never change PS1! In contrast, the Whitney Biennial, also currently up in the same city, was just "fine" and was probably in its best iteration in the past 25 years and yet not nearly as interesting as this show at PS1.
I can't even summarize what I saw at PS1 there was so much excellent work, and typical, the website fails to show any of the artwork really, much less exhibit shots or individual photos of all the works and their title and artist.
From my head I'm trying to mention some standouts. Here goes nothing. Tiffany Sia's videos on tiny monitors, hanging in the window, looked great on a rainy day. Kenneth Tam's performance/ video art work was compelling, but I wish had seating. I walked in during a moment that didn't fully absorb me - I'd need to see it again at another moment maybe. Not as strong for example as his work I saw 10 years ago at the Hammer Museum for their version of a biennial that I returned to see 3 times, but nonetheless, that's a high bar to reach, and I did find this experimental performance and installation about immigration taxi driver brothers compelling.
But for example I was able to sit for 20 minutes in another (somewhat hidden) room and absorbed and loved the installation environment by Mekko Harjo. The wall text stated the space was a nod (so it said) to the great Brooklyn club Bossa Nova Civic Club (though it looked nothing like it, so whatev) - meets indigineous traditional fairy tale. If I understand the wall text description correctly the artist is reckoning with the place for the indigineous experience in cities, where over 80% of native people now live. The story was exciting, strange, funny. The sound, which seemed to be of rain and nature field recording soundscapes, played loudly through the SUNN PA system, was in contrast to the appearance of the club-like atmosphere.
There was an EXCEPTIONAL sound art work by the artist Coco Klockner. And fun experimental weavings bound to objects, almost like dyptichs. I failed to write down the artist's name for that. An installation with video (using oldschool VHS/video mixers) and installation, that noted it was based on techniques from noise shows and the DIY scene, by Tom Thayer, was also strong and I sat watching it many minutes.
Also, as I find typical, I did a search for reviews of the exhibition afterwards, to compare what they thought to what I think. And as always I've found that the reviews show images from and describe artworks that didn't register with me that much at all. I'm out of step with the 'critics' though there's a teensy bit of overlap. But it also just goes to show, it's a big art scene and exhibition, with lots to see and play. I highly recommend this one. It's probably the best show I've seen in years. If you're in NYC, GO. And it's free to visit!
]]> https://excorp.compost.party/reviews/#crossing-open-ground-john-luther-adams-long-play-festival-fort-greene-park-brooklyn 03 May 2026 00:00:00 +0000
I've been cranky about this festival for a couple years now because it's so damn expensive, but this was one of their free events. Imagine in your head an amount of money you think they would charge for a DAY PASS for this weekend festival of new music performances? Nope, it's much more than that. They charge $95 + $15 handling fees for a DAY PASS! Insane. I really wanted to go to the performance of Steve Reich's work by So Percussion, but alas. I would have paid maybe up to $45 to see/hear that, but no dice. So instead I went to this free performance of a John Luther Adams work in the park, and invited some friends to join. It was gorgeous, an absolutely exquisite work and performance that I am so thankful I experienced. So my crummy mood was (mostly) turned around.
John Luther Adams is not Steve Reich, but he is a compelling composer. I'm particularly a fan of his *Become* series of works, like [Become Ocean](https://johnlutheradams.bandcamp.com/album/become-ocean), a gorgeous spiraling work that you get so caught up in its torrent of ebbs and flows.
I biked to Fort Greene Park, arriving a couple minutes early. I saw musicians assembling under one of those easy-up tents and asked for the proper place to sit. "Around the monument!" So I locked up the bike and set up. I didn't even need the picnic blanket I brought.
As I was waiting for my friends to arrive I saw some musicians walking about, holding bassoon or piccolo or trumpet, and a number of large drums set on stands. Huge drums. Even timpani.
At some point, as a crowd of hundreds shuffled around or talked amongst themselves I realized I heard chimes and xylophone, staccato rhythmic pings and flurries. The crowd hushed as the pinging increased, and answering chimes from triangles very very distant pinged back. This went on several minutes, and then blastlike beats from a drum thundered through then dropped away. A trumpet and bassoon blowing. A piccolo cutting through. Dozens of musicians calling and responding, then leaving silence, then starting again.
And the sounds of kids' park birthday parties, distant police sirens, and the heavy wind through the leaves in the trees - all these played a part in the orchestra of sounds. Humans were the final accompaniment, their murmuring or shuffling feet, and even one horrible grating drone flying above the crowd. I moved away from that one. But overall such a cool experience wandering around the park as the instruments and sounds moved and shifted, built up and dropped away. Not too disimilar to Become Ocean or his other works.
At one point a person sitting on the ground, in meditation pose with a beatific expression on their face. It's the US so people are annoying with their cameras, trying to take pictures for social media.
Forty-five minutes into the piece I too am meditating, listening to the branches and birds and ambulance bleets far away but echoing up the hill. It all blends together to make the piece. It was a beautiful crescendo and a lovely way to spend an afternoon in the park with friends.
]]> https://excorp.compost.party/reviews/#bodies-of-flora-sue-huang-exquisitecorp-jersey-art-book-fair-opening-night-mana-contemporary-jersey-city-nj 01 May 2026 00:00:00 +0000
This was another of my own performances, this time for the opening of the New Jersey Art Book Fair. What can I say, some things just work. Since I traveled so much this month we had only 2 rehearsals prior to the day of performance. It helps to have an easy-going collaborator who is confident in their own work and trusts you too. I sampled Sue whistling, then used morphagene to time stretch and granular synthesize and make grooves, that I then fed into the Strymon Magneto to let it ooze out, molasses. Sue narrates a story, of family, of history, of extinct plants and forgotten records, while using the overhead projector to move images and text in and out of the frame, projected over a slow color changing background video of smoke or fog or clouds over landscape. It was a hypnotic performance. I had to balance volume not to overpower her quieter though mic'ed up voice, except for one part where I let the Plaits and sequencer speed up doin its thing. I loved playing the 'ghostly' sections, letting the Mutable Instruments Beads add texture to my voice and breath from the mic input. The audience clapped loud and long. Our 30 minute set went over well. So we're looking for more venues to do it again.
]]> https://excorp.compost.party/reviews/#re-happening-14-black-mountain-college-site-black-mountain-nc 25 Apr 2026 00:00:00 +0000
I was flown to NC for this festival and put up so I could perform at it. Basically, this is an event that's been going on 14 years to commemmorate and in honor of the activities from Black Mountain College. A variety of things happen on this day festival, like interactive weaving activity, a breakout circus marching band, projections and sound installlations set up, a man playing the saw on a floating dock on the lake. The grounds are gorgeous. The people are in good spirits. I'm satiated by the chicken fried chicken and brussel sprouts. For my set I play modular synth soundtrack to a performance art work by my friend/collaborator. I'm enjoying playing and have made a bit of a score for myself. We play two sets and they both get a good response but the second one in particular gets a loud and enthusiastic audience that come up afterwards to talk and look. They like it! Great.
Earlier in the day I came across [Matt Robidoux](https://mattrobidoux.bandcamp.com/) performing as The Spiral Worker. It had a heady description but basically Matt collab'ed with another musician playing flute and maybe clarinet, who was hiding behind a sheet. Matt was wearing all green strange outfit, spiraling around the floor in a circle along a LED lit path around some kind of constructed green circular DIY structure. He was playing modular synth, something like a stylophone, and some wireless DIY breadboard thing that squonked and thwootled. Matt plays freak improv like Sunburned Hand of the Man (obscure reference maybe) or Wolf Eyes - like noisy drone but groovy set that thurns and changes and sounds good. They know how to play. They went to some avant garde music program like Mills probably. I like it so much I go up and introduce myself and we realize we have lots of friends in common. I come back later to catch their second set, and they come to my show too. Overall the festival was fine, a mini burner-y-like thing in the woods and a chance to visit a place i don't get to often.
]]> https://excorp.compost.party/reviews/#jokkoo-x-setten-weekender-baba-sy-b2b-sami-boo-m-mbodj-sxs-gavsborg-nexus-b4mba-mooki6-opoku-b2b-yuko-asanuma-tntc-day-1-90mil-berlin 18 Apr 2026 00:00:00 +0000
I love 90mil and went to this night with someone I love going to clubs with. 90mil is special. Will be sad when they are forced to close up later this year and have to move to their new location on the outskirts of Berlin. But I digress.
This night featured all 6 members of the Jokkoo Collective performing in various combinations of B2B sets. I saw them play as a group in the fall at Atonal Festival on the last night. They were great. This promised to be a more stripped down DIY space show. The night felt great. We were sober-ish, drinking some whiskey with sugar free soda, my fave that they make for me on request at their bar / hangout room there.
I honestly don't remember all the sets but I enjoyed dancing and things were pushing forward and had new flavors of sounds and combos in there. I remember feeling like they were trying out new combos - things I hadn't heard in club music before, not quite named things. I wish I had the vocab to describe.
The highlight was definitely Baby Sy and Sami's set (i think!), where they rapped / sang, a bit reminiscent but more listenable than Death Grips. In fact, at one point with the aggressive beats and bounce and lyrics the audience was so fired up a mosh pit broke out! Never seen that at a club / electronic night before. I checked behind me to make sure shorty was ok but everyone is super peaceful at that club and people were more like bouncing and jamming rather than trying to elbow, and it soon switched back to pure dancing.
We stayed til 3:30 to see the last set but it was unfortunately too mellow / plain so we melted into the night and headed home, literally able to walk home in 15 minutes, what a luxury, and then to bed.
]]> https://excorp.compost.party/reviews/#low-db-performances-temple-university-charles-library-electronic-faire-philadelphia 10 Apr 2026 00:00:00 +0000
This was the ending event to the Electronic Faire, a permacomputing-adjacent fair(e!) held at Temple University's Charles Library in the makerspace. Clearly organized by someone for whom it was a labor of love. I really enjoy the fair, the workshops and talks. And this rooftop quiet concert is likely one of the quietest "shows" ever organized that I've seen. Not quite 4'33" there are loads of students indoors nearby studying for exams or writing papers and directly outside on the roof deck are musicians (barely) playing quiet electronic noise sets that the audience kind of strains to hear. A strange experience for sure. Hard for me to fully get into at that (low) volume but I appreciate the concept. Still, I wish the show was a couple blocks away in one of the north philly warehouses or we were wearing wireless headphones maybe, but I guess that doesn't fit with the low tech theme of the fair.
]]> https://excorp.compost.party/reviews/#codie-nnirror-keith-fullerton-whitman-c-robo-gabor-lazar-algorithmic-art-assembly-night-3-grey-area-san-francisco 28 Mar 2026 00:00:00 +0000
[Codie](https://codie.live/) opened tonight, a 3 woman livecoding supergroup, with Sarah GHP on visuals and Melody and Kate on sound playing Strudel or Tidal I think, linked through flok. Sarah was remote so they played a video of her work. The sound opened with a deep digital dub thing going on. Definitely sounded like they started minimal or with nothing and quickly built up. I loved the transition to dub techno, and I think Sarah's visuals look so different from a lot of other livecoding visuals. She's not using Hydra or other more common tools but instead built her own. There's a tropical vibe, and i believe she runs it through a fairlight visual synth? The bass got deeper, heads were nodding. This was a good opener for the night as giant shapes and colors flashed and got repeated, gridded, or swiped.
Next up was nnirror. Like the first night, a performer in the vague genre i'm calling (incorretly) post-autechre. but seriously, is it okay i say this? nnirror did open for autechre at a bunch of their dates on their recent tour (as did some of the other performers from night 1 i see now!). the broken beats livecoded and patched - juggled, scrambled, fried. sorta coulda dance to them. individual tracks that wove together over the course of 40 minutes. spiky.
followed by keith fullerton whitman. i've seen him perform a number of times, going back to 25 yrs (yes, i'm that old) when i saw him perform live on air on the radio station at my college, where he remixed the [marble madness](https://keithfullertonwhitman.bandcamp.com/track/marbles-2) (go listen to it, please!). his set was all modular synth - a tangled web of cables - a rat's nest. impenetrable. he never unplugs and replugs. everything is plugged into everything else. he's built a system that he knows and can play and plays itself. that he can tug and coax and tickle and it slowly or quickly unfolds into side hustles and pockets of jank and loping beats and grooves, with a bundle of voices chirping around each other. did i like it? i liked it and at times i didn't like it. it's a system that can go either way. and though it was entertaining, it was like watching a single man jam band himself. i did like it i've just decided. i'll see him live again. he spoke earlier in the day and demonstrated that he was trying to figure out his own way of making a new approach to improvisational jazz but true to the modular. was that a part of this performance? i couldn't tell ya. but it was its own sound system, and i have mad respect for him and his approach and experiments. a true virtuosic player of the maschine.
next was c_robo_. i pre-listened to his music online cause i saw his name popping up previously. he's fast. it's a new approach to livecoding. strudel i think. with lots of modifications. he showed off in his earlier talk how he assigns hotkeys to jump between samples and effects, adding and subtracting. i could be saying this wrong. but def he's using keybindings with the number keys to affect his livecoding and quickly add and subtract stuff. he does still type and such. traditional hello world type intro commented out text at the beginning and end of the set. his beats are fast. the energy does pull you in and propel you. there is a journey forward even if it doesn't arrive. well, he tried to manufacture an arrival of sorts. he attempted to crash his IDE. now that is possible. basically, as opposed to the original england style i've experienced of starting with no code, he instead has insanely huge multi hundred of lines of livecode prewritten. he's modified his IDE so that he can turn on specific sections to trigger sounds/lines to start and continue playing. so he has all these different tricks in his bag he can trigger, and the sound is hectic but bringing something new to livecoding i think. i dug it. maybe not home listening, but a nice night out trying out new sounds. and yes, he's pushing at the limits of the IDE with all those samples running, it glitched out, paused, many times. and i think he didn't mind that and it's part of the c_robo_ live experience. i dug.
finally, gabor lazar. loud drenching beats but it sounds, hmmm, i'm not engaged. he's playing something on his laptop, but i could'nt see his screen and not sure what he's using and it was fine. i didn't hear of him previously but he was def the 'headliner' so i guess i'm missing out. (checks online). ok so he's on planet mu so he's a somebody! lol. i don't know though, i am still in this same mindframe that i'm trying to escape Warp Records or whatever 1999 and find something different, growing, new. maybe too harsh an assessment from me, but is this different? does it move my body? am i rolling in it? i try it out and it's not bad, it's definitely loud, but i need a break. i go outside to talk with friends. then we gab and gab and gab. i come back in and walk back into the center of the sound and realize it's not bad up close. in the back of the room where i'd stood previously it sounded more dinky. up close the bass envelopes me into a giant smoosh. i like it for the remaining minutes. glad i'm wearing my earplugs.
afterwards i catch up with friends again and we got gigantic burritos the size of a baby. it's 1am and i have a flight the next morning. i shouldn't eat the whole thing. (15 minutes later). damn, i ate the whole thing.
I forgot to mention: V Vale and Marian from [Research Pubs](https://www.researchpubs.com/) were there all three nights. Incredible. I checked out their zines and bought 3 of them and had some good conversations with V. What a hero! I bought Terminal Punk, How to Love Forever (or something like that), and a guide to reading and writing. Research is such an important reference for me. I first found Research 8/9 when I was staying at a rural anarchist commune in germany about 15 years ago and loved reading j. g. ballard and the interviews. what a cool publisher/mentor/thinker. this was a huge highlight for me.
*one other final note: this festival was fun but TOO MANY MEN. it's important to organize with diverse representation of the world. see my review below for an example of what that looks/feels like.*
]]> https://excorp.compost.party/reviews/#ratskin-records-20th-anniversary-night-1-the-church-of-the-buzzard-west-oakland 27 Mar 2026 00:00:00 +0000 *Warning: this post will mention the death of a friend*

I jumped on the BART train, taking it across the bay into Oakland. It's been three years since my last visit. This is a noise show and I'm psyched. I need a break from angular post-autechre breaks and though I know this will look almost the same sub-genre to many people I must confess I'm really more down for noise: that's what gets me fired up.
I am so eagerly anticipating this noise show for a couple reasons. I haven't been to a noise show in a warehouse in Oakland specificially in YEARS and I have fond memories playing these spaces 15 years ago. In 2011 I went on a tour on the west coast, stopping and playing at some warehouse whose name escapes me. I stayed with Jsun McCarty, an incredible noise musician who was building string instruments, amplified and running through various pedals, but even stranger, the bodies of these instruments were built out of discarded styrofoam. I forget what they named these, and I can't look online right now as I'm typing this on a train. But the band name was [Styrofoam Sanchez](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B6Adc1DYEmA) (see video at link), among other funny noise band names they used. We played shows together, and Jsun put me up in his space when i visited. We jammed, hung out, visited a pirate radio station where he got interviewed, tramped around oakland and the mission, lots of fun together.
Sadly, Jsun passed away wayyyy before his time. You can do a web search for the Ghostship warehouse fire to read more, or [this profile on Jsun](https://www.kqed.org/arts/12479036/jason-jsun-mccarty-boundary-pushing-sound-artist-and-illustrator) from KQED. This was a huge tragedy. I remember that day trying to get in touch with Jsun to make sure he was okay. He wasn't.
Jsun's artist/music collaborator Michael Daddona keeps his tradition and artistic activity up, and pays tribute to Jsun. He's organized Ratskin Records as an incredible combination of performers - particularly diverse, including indigineous/native, SWANA artists, Latinx, trans, many many different people. Visiting this warehouse show at The Church of the Buzzard was an incredible scene, full of welcoming people. I met up with my friend Sholeh, who introduced me to her friend Kelan, who was so kind he ordered food delivery for me when I said I was hungry and there were no nearby markets or places to get food open (My bad for assuming it would be like Brooklyn and Berlin and that I could get food after 8 on a Friday!).
Michael put together such an incredible lineup. Every one played a 20 minute set, with like 3 minute intermissions between bands. Truly Michael is such a powerful organizer. I loved all of the sets I saw, from Bored Lord with her wild breakcore and noise to Sholeh's vocal lilting processed singing through modular synth and pedals, to the insane quasi-bro theatrics of Tugboys. I only went to night 1 of the two night event, but it will stay in my mind for a long time. And shout out to the sound engineers. Can you believe they had a high end Meyer sound system with serious room speaker array and subs in a noise warehouse in Oakland? Some of the best noise production I've ever heard, on par with The Handbag Factory (LA) or TV Eye (Queens).
With the aggro gronky texture o hell and jingly skronk beats, walls of squelch, and spine-tickling processed singing, I was totally floored by these 'mature' noise performances - folks that weren't famous - (what would that even mean in noise? maybe wolf eyes is the only quasi-famous band?) but just people honing their craft and playing such strong sets. A feast, truly.
]]> https://excorp.compost.party/reviews/#r-tyler-wolff-parkinson-white-william-fields-nathan-ho-kindohm-and-sebastian-camens-algorithmic-art-assembly-night-1-grey-area-san-francisco 26 Mar 2026 00:00:00 +0000
This was the opening night of the Algorithmic Art Assembly. After some afternoon workshops, folks started to pop up. The venue is a cool theater. I wish I'd been there in its glory days. A beaut. The sound: loud. The scene: dark empty floor. A stage with modular synth or laptop in the center. Performer after performer ascending to the stage and playing 30 - 40 minute sets of oblique saw wavs, slippery sine waves, supercollider-derived mangle-beat repeats, experimental Max mega patches and the like.
I was socializing and connecting with old and new friends - and I don't totally remember who played what. I definitely saw the first three and a half performances, but I missed Kindohm even though he was the only person I'd heard of previously and thought I'd dig his music. R Tyler played vaguely post autechre beat-y things. Not 100% danceable, not that that's required, but also it was not NOT danceable. Things sped up, slowed down, jumped - a glitch. Is it post (i keep using that word - again) post-breakbeat live coding. i think this was in tidalcycles.
Wolf Parkinson White was next. he started ambient-y and brooding but this too became angular and even more undanceable beats. maybe a little memory of the work of bogdan raczynski (but not kid606) cerca 2000? less of a grower / show-er. despite the plinks, tinks, pops and smears there is an even-ness - i think more of a journey might be nice. i paused to get a drink.
the next performer was william fields and truthfully, the two different performers i would have trouble telling apart in terms of their performance. both play a very autechre-influenced not-quite idm style. my apologies to fans and performers of this genre for not being able to more accurately capture the joy of this micro-genre. it's not my jam, and sounds to be a sound of the past, to my ears. i said the same thing about the autechre show i went to in berlin several months ago (scroll down). but i think my own reaction is not the same as others, as everyone else seemed to love that show but to me it was a nostalgia trip. i need new things to listen for i think (which i could point out in a different essay but maybe this ain't the place for it, but loosely i'd say this micro-genre doesn't deviate from that particular sound and approach, and i think it should - the same way i don't want to go hear a straight techno music set circa 1996, i want to hear something evolved).
after william fields came nathan ho. i liked him. he wears a witches outfit with cape and black witch's hat. hilarious. he keeps the bit up. the sound: that does sound like he's trying to push to the next thing, even though he's coming maybe from a similar background. i think (though might not be true) he's a bit younger - and seems like a math nerd. it comes out in the music - (PAUSE - takes a break to pull up an [album](https://nathanho.bandcamp.com/album/haywire-frontier) by Nathan to refresh my memory while writing. HAHA i am SO on the head it's insane. Get this:
> In 2008, at the age of 11, I created Googology Wiki on my parents' computer. "Googology" is a word for the study of large numbers and fast-growing functions, deriving from the 9-year-old Milton Sirotta's coinage of the term "googol." The website was never meant to go beyond my personal use, and I gradually drifted away from it. Fifteen years later, it has grown to tens of thousands of articles and a community of hundreds of active users.
He goes on to write more about his music for the album deriving from a mathematician's 'ordinal number' system key to the study of large numbers. (UPDATE: Nathan gave a talk the next day that was DEEEP tripper mathematician territory. HARD to follow, but def came across as a math/musician genius.)
At this point I'm needing a break from math-breakcore-braindance-beats. I went to get tacos and missed the last set. Sorry.
]]>

This was the opening night of the Algorithmic Art Assembly. After some afternoon workshops, folks started to pop up. The venue is a cool theater. I wish I'd been there in its glory days. A beaut. The sound: loud. The scene: dark empty floor. A stage with modular synth or laptop in the center. Performer after performer ascending to the stage and playing 30 - 40 minute sets of oblique saw wavs, slippery sine waves, supercollider-derived mangle-beat repeats, experimental Max mega patches and the like.
I was socializing and connecting with old and new friends - and I don't totally remember who played what. I definitely saw the first three and a half performances, but I missed Kindohm even though he was the only person I'd heard of previously and thought I'd dig his music. R Tyler played vaguely post autechre beat-y things. Not 100% danceable, not that that's required, but also it was not NOT danceable. Things sped up, slowed down, jumped - a glitch. Is it post (i keep using that word - again) post-breakbeat live coding. i think this was in tidalcycles.
Wolf Parkinson White was next. he started ambient-y and brooding but this too became angular and even more undanceable beats. maybe a little memory of the work of bogdan raczynski (but not kid606) cerca 2000? less of a grower / show-er. despite the plinks, tinks, pops and smears there is an even-ness - i think more of a journey might be nice. i paused to get a drink.
the next performer was william fields and truthfully, the two different performers i would have trouble telling apart in terms of their performance. both play a very autechre-influenced not-quite idm style. my apologies to fans and performers of this genre for not being able to more accurately capture the joy of this micro-genre. it's not my jam, and sounds to be a sound of the past, to my ears. i said the same thing about the autechre show i went to in berlin several months ago (scroll down). but i think my own reaction is not the same as others, as everyone else seemed to love that show but to me it was a nostalgia trip. i need new things to listen for i think (which i could point out in a different essay but maybe this ain't the place for it, but loosely i'd say this micro-genre doesn't deviate from that particular sound and approach, and i think it should - the same way i don't want to go hear a straight techno music set circa 1996, i want to hear something evolved).
after william fields came nathan ho. i liked him. he wears a witches outfit with cape and black witch's hat. hilarious. he keeps the bit up. the sound: that does sound like he's trying to push to the next thing, even though he's coming maybe from a similar background. i think (though might not be true) he's a bit younger - and seems like a math nerd. it comes out in the music - (PAUSE - takes a break to pull up an [album](https://nathanho.bandcamp.com/album/haywire-frontier) by Nathan to refresh my memory while writing. HAHA i am SO on the head it's insane. Get this:
> In 2008, at the age of 11, I created Googology Wiki on my parents' computer. "Googology" is a word for the study of large numbers and fast-growing functions, deriving from the 9-year-old Milton Sirotta's coinage of the term "googol." The website was never meant to go beyond my personal use, and I gradually drifted away from it. Fifteen years later, it has grown to tens of thousands of articles and a community of hundreds of active users.
He goes on to write more about his music for the album deriving from a mathematician's 'ordinal number' system key to the study of large numbers. (UPDATE: Nathan gave a talk the next day that was DEEEP tripper mathematician territory. HARD to follow, but def came across as a math/musician genius.)
At this point I'm needing a break from math-breakcore-braindance-beats. I went to get tacos and missed the last set. Sorry.


The fact that I went to this was mostly an accident. I saw that tickets were required or becoming a 'supporter' (they didn't use the word membership) and it started at $99, which is too high i think. I usually go to the New Museum at most twice a year. Other friends of mine were going. They'd finessed tickets somehow. I messaged my friend S because she had mentioned going, and she said she was a friend's +1 and that I should message our other friend. He got back to me ASAP and said he couldn't go but he had a free ticket and I gave his name at the door. I didn't know if it would work, but at door not only did they let me in they asked if I had a +1. Okay, anyway, this just demonstrates how overly networked and self-serving our community is. Moving on...
The New Museum has been closed a couple years. I thought 2 or 3 but no, didn't it close in 2020ish? Has it been five years? I'm not looking it up, so I don't know. But it's been a while. This was some mega million expansion as they took over the building next door and expanded their galleries. The architecture - fine. A big ole winding staircase, not necessarily visually impressive, not particularly a good use of the space. Some public seating area that's in all glass - strange, I don't want to sit in a place like that. So who knows but I wasn't bowled over by the architecture or the wind-y rooms added on. This was a night of snappy dressing. All the artists age 30 - 55 from Brooklyn had turned out!
I ran into two of my colleagues and many friend and started by ascending to the top. Upstairs was a temp bar and views of the city from the rooftops, but too packed to really see. I descended again to check out the art, stopping first to check out the New Inc art incubator space - their 3d printers and laser cutter and small immersive media room and their co-working space. Very nice. On to the art..
The main thing on view was the opening of a giant exhibit called New Humans: Memories of the Future. Title is so-so, but the exhibit was fun, cool. A history of robots, early and recent and historical art. It's a bajillion item show and hard to describe its 3 floors of objects but some highlights were weavings, Anicka Yi's drone octopus sky creatures, a video installation by Hito Steyerl, very early computational art by Allison Knowles, a cybernetic object by Marvin Minsky, an Alien model by H. R. Heiger, and the robot inside of E. T. from the movie. And that's aside from famous 20th century artists that were presented in the show but easy to miss as they didn't stand out as non-flat 3d objects or interactive works. For example, I'm looking at the artist list and it lists so many from Dali, Jeremy Deller, Vera Molnar, El Lissitzky, Marcel Duchamp, Dubuffet, Agnes Denes, Brancusi, Francis Bacon. I missed these and so much more. I barely remember the Nam June Paik, can't remember the Rebecca Allen, Milford Graves, Bryan Gysin, I do remember the Cao Fe. I'm listing name after name because the exhibit felt like that. Just a ton of shit, some okay writing, but not really a great theme or walkthrough. Just a bunch of stuff.
The New Museum website sucks by the way. No text. Not even really much of an intro. No photos. What a crock. So okay, it's a grab bag of vaguely cybernetic past and recent-ish artworks relating to "robots" and autonomous objects, and weaving, and militarism, and entertainment, and models. I'd love to go back to see the work again. But big message, take-away ideas - not much. And maybe that's okay - the point is to see great artworks that individually might make you think, or display great beauty. Most of the works succeed at that. But as a past museum curator, I expect more from an exhibition. I mean, not everything needs to be a response to LLMs right now, but would it hurt them to take some stance, say something, address it in some way? If not, maybe this is really a catch-up of a show. It would be more honest to just say "we've missed the past 70 years of cybernetic and digital art and here's a bunch of it" and not really what's happening now/new. But if so, what makes this the NEW emphasis NEW Museum, huh??This isn't the grab bag of a Whitney Biennial, or it shouldn't be. One random example: there is a Rammellzee-designed figure decked out urban streetclothes and vaguely samurai-influenced design that Rammellzee was known for. But what does this have to do with New Humans? Honestly, Rammellzee could/should get his own exhibit. It could be treated on its own. A damn audio tour could help so much here! Something! I can make something up, but I'm a digital artist and curator. I'm not a regular visitor.
Maybe that's fine. This isn't a regional art center. This is a showing of great work. But it's a lot. They've selected such a large amount of artists and some great works - but they've mixed everything up into a messy salad. It would benefit from some structure and statements. But it's worth seeing even without this corrected - with hundreds of historic artworks, rarely exhibited, it's worth it for the gems that shine through.
]]> https://excorp.compost.party/reviews/#jennifer-gersten-webb-crawford-david-macchione-more-banquina-no-1-the-backroom-brooklyn-artery-brooklyn 19 Mar 2026 00:00:00 +0000
I arrived pretty late to this one! I missed the first two acts (thus listing the title above as + more) so I can't write on them. I was finishing up something that had a deadline on that day so needed to just finish the damn thing, and then I was hungry and had only had a salad so I got a Chapli Chicken burger at the Burger Bhai place across teh street. I eat "Low carb" so had them wrap it in lettuce. Not super appealing looking. Tasted okay! It was good. My friend joined me and we got spicy fries and I had a couple. I don't usually eat those since I don't really eat potatoes. They were delicious.
To the task at hand: across the street from Burger Bhai we enter the venue and stand in the back. Three hornswogglers (I'm in a Dahl mood) goin' at it skronking at length. Ok, so it's a bass player, viola? (or violin, i think it's a viola), and electric guitar. The viola'ist's bow is completely fucked. Strings hanging all akimbo. She's scraping the shit out of her device. This is the modern classical improv. Everyone's scraping along improv'ing. They are all feeding off each other. The guitar player plucks, uses a little bow on their instrument. The viola player grabs a metal nail and scrapes the strings. The bass player smears his hand along the wood, making squeaky sounds and textures. I love the textures.
I'm enjoying the entire palette of this performance. But it never "goes anywhere." There are no distinct sections. They are clearly improv'ing together but it's all some continual plane of existence, no highs, no lows. Don't get me wrong, it's beautiful and fun and I'm glad I'm checking it out. But it's an acoustic version of that Merzbow show I saw at Knockdown Center a decade ago that was jut guitar/laptop skronkling for 45 minutes with nothing to show for it at the end. I'm not asking for a score, but...(grandpa enters the scene)....back in MY day, we had various methods when did/do improv that we could bring to bear...taking opportunities, finding little scenes where we could try other ways of playing together...dropping out to allow solos...referring back to earlier themes or melodies or rhythms...varying our technique...leaving silences...changing tempo...using eye contact to find moments together.
]]> https://excorp.compost.party/reviews/#open-stage-spring-movement-demetris-charalambous-morgan-gregory-umber-majeed-margot-mae-and-rosalie-yu-cpr-center-for-performance-resarch-brooklyn 14 Mar 2026 00:00:00 +0000
This was a really cool event of performance art put on by artists that I think don't usually do performance art. Each piece was 20 minutes long, and not related to the other works. I arrived after a 45 minute bike ride from my home, on a crisp evening. The daylight savings time change happens here a few weeks before than Europe. So even though it was evening it was still light out here, and that helped with my mood.
I wasn't sure what to expect, maybe an audience of 20 or 40? I'm more used to these kinds of things at galleries where everyone stands around, and I thought CPR was a small room, because a friend had performed there 2 years ago and it was like that. But evidently they have a back room, and it's set up like a black box space with typical theater seating. There was easily 125 people there, and we were crammed together. This larger room was actually a white cube.
An announcer in a regal but plain costume (think HER) welcomed us and let us know there would be audience participation and that if you participate you have to take your shoes off, i guess because of the white floor. Okay. Then they asked for volunteers. I wasn't in a volunteer mood, so i kept my hand down. Five suitable people were chosen from the assembled and they headed up to the floor, standing in the only spotlit section. On the other side of the room, a musician had a folding table set up with a bunch of noisemakers on it and parts of a drum kit (snare, cymbal). They began to play music while the announcer began the piece, instructing everyone to close their eyes and leading a guided meditation about a journey. This helped to set the mood, and the dark lighting throughout and the trancelike music by the musician almost put me to sleep, in a good way. The volunteers on stage were guided through movements, walking along behind the announcer, lifting long rods together as the announcer described a journey along a river. At some point, moving with the participants they guided through the journey walking, rowing, swaying, and reading lines from a poem, overlapping. It was a beautiful piece and I was surprised the participants were so in the pocket since they had been plucked at random, but I guess it was an artsy crowd so everyone mostly just fit the task. A nice piece and spiritual 'journey'.
The next pieces were each different. There was one I loved by a single performer, wearing only small shorts, moving slowly and deliberately, I would say kind of like a dinosaur. He contorted his arms around his head or torso, slowly moved his limbs as appendages, like he was a 4 legged animal, a camel, a pre-homo erectus. A tattoo on his bald head looked like an extra face was on the top or back of his head. A peculiar and not-displeasing visual effect. Other performances included a performance on Pakistan's nuclear ambitions - To be honest, this one was the hardest to follow and I lost track of it. This was mostly told through a voiceover with slides and video. It was almost like an experimental essay or 'performative talk' I think they call these things. Neat idea but I was lost and it kept going on and on.
I've forgotten one of the performances, and there were 5 total. The last one was also interactive in a way. First a naked woman crawled out in the corner of the room and wrapped around what appeared to be a smaller speaker or amplifier. Then a woman came out and had a microphone, didn't at all refer to the naked woman in the corner, but asked the audience if anyone there made more than $200,000 a year. One man raised his hand, and she asked again and he said he thought she asked if anyone made more than $200 a year. Confusing. There may have been a language barrier happening. The she asked if anyone made more than $150,000 a year. No one raised their hand. She explained she was trying to find a scapegoat wealthy person there but it made sense the audience was all artists. Anyway, then she asked everyone to come down to the floor and two friends joined her and she told us they were going to "rock out." She cajoled about half the audience to come down to surround the band while they played maybe 2 quick rock-y songs that vaguely resembled Rage Against the Machine to me. I looked over and the naked woman in the corner disappeared, maybe while the audience was 'rocking out.' (Can you tell I hate that term?). I think there was some lyrics about unions? It wasn't the strongest work for me but it's how the hour and a half performance night ended, and though I was losing interest around then, I was glad that something new happened every 20 minutes and I got to see a variety of work performed. I don't usually see performance art that often, maybe a couple times a year, much less than i go to see experimental music, but it's good to try these out.
]]> https://excorp.compost.party/reviews/#members-preview-of-whitney-biennial-and-calder-at-100-whitney-biennial-nyc 07 Mar 2026 00:00:00 +0000 *Whitney Biennial crowd looking at Samia Halaby's digital computational paintings made in BASIC and C*
Well shoot, I cannot believe I am saying this: I liked the Whitney Biennial. I have seen at least 4 or 5 Whitney Biennials, and they all sucked. I don't even like to say the work 'suck'. But they did. And yet, this one, I liked. I really liked it.
It neither tried too hard nor leaned into trend too too much. The works felt accessible, small or made from someone following their own method rather than some blue chip formula. I'm speaking in generalities. And bear with me for one more: I could generally see the seams in the works. The handmade. The DIY. Not tooo many painters. Not too many works that look sellable.
Let's get into specifics. The show sits on two floors of the obtuse ugly unpleasant building. It's no MOMA, and who knows what the new New Museum will feel like when it opens in a couple weeks.
Some standout works:
* Jacoby Cooper's works featuring doorbell surveillance systems, with voiced recordings that were supposedly written by AI trained on the social media posts of people who had passed away. Surprisingly one of the few AI pieces of art I've ever liked. It helps that the piece was clearly handmade, recorded by a human even if the script was written, and there was a bit of an uncanny view of the mirror-clad cameras. * Akira Ikezoe painted a number of strange compelling paintings that featured sci fi scenes with robots, factories, solar panels, animals. Painting versions of storylines and scenes from Caves of Qud, if you know the reference. A cross between a picture book, Where's Waldo, and japanese minimalist cartooning.* 1986 computer generated paintings by Samia Halaby. This Palestinian-American artist, who had fled war as a child, had been a painter, and taught herself BASIC and C in the 80s to learn to make digital painting. These works were strong and captivated a huge audience of viewers at the biennial.* Japanese experimental musician Aki Onda had an installation where he interpreted a score by a ethnomusicologist/composer whose name I neglected to note. The experimental piece was played across a series of 20 or so different radios. * Basel abbas and Ruanne Abou-Rahme had a haunting gorgeous installation - numbing beats, dark video loosely projected over a room showing ruins and wandering in cemetaries, i believe in Palestine.
We spent about two hours perusing the show and then ascended to the eighth floor to see the Calder's Circus at 100 show. I love this work, but have seen it in so many configurations over time that this time, with being overloaded from the biennial i actually didn't have enough concentration to give it my all, maybe spending only 10 minutes on something that i normally would probably have spent an hour viewing. that said, i did enjoy his wire sculptures, the documentary that i've seen before and will see again, and the ephemera like drawings and showbills for his circus performances.
Overall, i recommend the biennial. the calder show comes down tomorrow so is likely closed, but will i assume go on tour. or parts can be seen at many museums like the new calder museum opening in philadelphia.
the biennial will be up several months. i think i'll return. i want to spend more time with some of the video pieces, on a less crowded day.
overall, this biennial was smaller, not pomp-y, not overproduced works, and not overthought curating. while showing a wide variety of work, there were a lot more hits than misses than i expected, and it's worth a view.
]]> https://excorp.compost.party/reviews/#melissa-almaguer-samantha-kochis-hans-young-binter-yo-vinyl-richie-hery-paz-roman-diaz-jesus-ricardo-andus-banquina-no-1-the-backroom-brooklyn-artery-brooklyn 26 Feb 2026 00:00:00 +0000
My man Richie played this show. We've known each other a decade or so, part of the same art collective. And was I hyped: I like his style, and this was actually in my own damn neighborhood for once! I love living closer to the huge park but man do I live far from the neighborhoods with lots of concerts and such. I literally just walked 5 minutes to get to this show. I miss when I used to live in hipsterdom and this was the norm for me! Anyway, I digress.
This spot is a Brooklyn hipster trinket shop during the day. They sell gifts like nice ceramics, soaps and kids items and novelty gifts and jewelry.
This was curated by Cecilia Lopez and Melissa Almaguer. A new monthly show. All free improv sets.
The opening act was Almaguer, Kochis and Binter playing as a trio: a tap dancer with keyboard synth and flute. This was truly weird. Great!
The tap dancer had two different surfaces, with different textures, which she could not just tap but rub. A medley of shakers and other noisemakers lay nearby, which she would brush against or strike with her foot too. Accompanied by the keyboard, played making treble-y pad sounds that were unremarkable doodle-doos that evaporated into nothing.
While the tap dancing was extremely visually arresting, I'm never a huge fan of tap, but here, I appreciated it for its novelty within an improv set.
Let me also interrupt myself here and say the flautist was too damn loud. I get that flute can be lost, so in that sense it makes sense to have a mic, but man, it was so shrill. She switched to piccolo at one point too, as if that was even needed. I was truly fearful for my hearring and though I put in my ear plugs as I always do in these circumstances i even added a finger to firmly push in my left earplug. The long long piece didn't go anywhere. No buildup. No movements. Just lots of stuff tried out. A rehearsal. After how long, 35 minutes or so, the set ended and the tapper asked the other organizer if they could do another piece. NO was the firm response.
Short break and then [Yo Vinyl Richie](https://selbatnrut.bandcamp.com/album/walking-down-avenue-b) was up. Cue up that Bandcamp album while you're reading this.
Wheeling out his 3 turntables, then arranging a couple dozen albums on the floor, in stacks that were inscrutable to me but I could tell were some kind of ordering system, a visual score he was about to perform. Richie is doin' something unique: there's lots of bebop, hard bop, post bop, free improv, a little soul, then recent experimental albums by other musicians. He freely uses his hand, beat juggles but maybe that's the strangest part as he's not playing beats. The strength of his work is in his layering, which makes sense. Environmental album sound effects like rain, forests, etc while squeaky experimental jazz is played at the wrong speed, sped up, slowed down, stopped and started by hand and squeaks and gurgles played like an instrument on the third turntable. Richie's set was also long. So long in fact that I was antsy and wanted to go. I saw the next group setting up, looking like it would be crazy loud, and I truly was not up for that. I gracefully Irish goodbye'd and fled into the night.
]]> https://excorp.compost.party/reviews/#cube-and-drew-mcdowall-union-pool-brooklyn 27 Jan 2026 00:00:00 +0000
i'd been looking forward to this, half because it's a free show, half because i haven't been to this venue in a decade and wanted to see what it was like again. it was good! hasn't changed at all. big comfortable room, low light, mostly just a drinkin' bar, very williamsburg, a back area to sit and smoke, and a back room with a stage and nice feel for a concert.
i ended up talking with c. spencer yeh a bit while we waited to be let in. we caught up and talked the good ole days of the experimental music scene on the east coast from boston-providence-nyc-philly-baltimore-dc - talkin venues and acts and such. he was burning star core. i had a few names and had a few different venues over the years. anyway.
well, they let too many people in and we were squished like sardines and that was uncomfortable and not very covid-friendly. but not only was the show free there were free shots and free beer samples from some good brands. i have no idea why. i got tipsy and didn't even spend any money.
CUBE was the opener, and i know him. he's also the publisher and writer of BAITED AREA, a really well-done magazine with interviews with artists, DIY royalty, musicians. I highly recommend it. Well written. Excellent production. CUBE was back from a series of shows on a mini tour in the west coast, plus he opened for Autechre for a series of their north american shows. his music is fun, some cool gimmick things in it. like crunchy scratchy stuff that goes on too long (that i like), or that loops and loops and too many things synced and loop (again, i like this), and he has some old bedside tablelamp that flashes in time with his beats. all that is good. the beats or music as such is vaguely mid-range blip blip blip, i kept thinking 'post-drill-and-bass'. i never got tooo deep into it but i guess it's okay. for some reason, he sings sort of too, though you can't make out any lyrics, and so there are 'songs' of sorts, but then again he lets the blip blip scratchy shit proliferate throughout and between the tracks. so it's okay! but i wouldn't listen at home.
the headliner came on a bit later, drew macdowell. i saw his modular synth waiting while CUBE played and was excited for the set. and it was a deep tripper set. heavy slowly evolving chords and textures that went on an hour or maybe more. i was stuck in the back left corner completely crushed in between a dozen people. it was almost okay on account of the free show and free alcohol but at some point i'd had enough and thought - "this is fun but i'm very uncomfortable being this squished and i haven't paid any money and i want to go home" and i ducked out, probably a couple minutes before the end, but that was fine. i bought the latest issue of BAITED AREA and brought it on the subway with me. so even though there were delays on the line, i read 3 - 4 interview articles and had a grand time.
]]> https://excorp.compost.party/reviews/#lafrae-sci-ben-shirken-x-dorothy-carlos-lucky-dragons-new-ear-festival-night-3-nyc 18 Jan 2026 00:00:00 +0000
really great show tonight. was in a bit of a funk due to a disagreement with someone i care about. stopped on the way to the show, in a blizzard!, to get tacos from the spot near where i used to live. the best taco shop in new york city that i know of. the taqueria on wyckoff spot across from the hospital. that one. anyway...was running late because the L was down and i was talking to my parents on the phone and it was a blizzard. anyway, got to the show on time and there were plenty of chairs and people filing in.
chatted with the dragons before the show. we were very close when we lived in the same city, and i've known them for hmmm 15 years or 20 years (long time!). Was great to reconnect since i hadn't seen them in person for a couple years, maybe since pre-pandemic!
the lights dimmed and the mc announced it would start. the first act lafrae sci i didn't know anything about. i was sitting in the second row for the second time at this festival, surrounded by friends. lafrae sci played this palette of sea sounds with occasional bass thuds with echoes and some real POWER. that overwhelmed the wave-scapes. it was beautiful and lush and the combo of the wash sounds and beer had me nodding a little. i was thinking of a drexciya sound scape and was surprised afterwards to read that was indeed a reference. far out.
act 2 were ben and dorothy. dorothy on electric cello and ben on laptop and an o-coast semi-modular that he seemed to use mostly as an audio processor of the cello. this started fast and scattering and strong and proceeded on from there. a masterful and heavy noisy improv-y but never boring or uneven performance. not so much that dorothy attacked her strings but overwhelmed them, plucked them, stroked them, resonated them, making them cry out, talk, laugh, screetch. ben laptop twiddled but i didn't mind, as he was clearly processing her input and adding in samples and granular synthesis and just really the synthesis of the two together made a slab of textures that never stayed the same but never jump jumped. it just seriously built a wall of sonic textures moving evenly and clearly from a to b to c to d to e, etc.
finally were the lucky dragons. i've seen them perform between 6 and a dozen times, even hiring them to perform at a museum i worked at a decade and a half ago. but i haven't seen them play in maybe 8 years. they have never played a bad set, and no one else sounds like them. this was gorgeous starting with their intense fast cycling loops that produce intense bursts. it's really hard for me to develop the right language to describe what they do since they have their own genre and sound that isn't described well by other systems. like clearly they play 'experimental music shows' but that's not a good description of their music. there are elements of steve reich / glass but if reich or glass new how to use a sampler and max/msp. ya dig?
i have so much appreciation and joy for their music. at some point sara dragon (not her name) picks up the mic and begins intoning a description of orchids. their sex lives. their gender. the view of an orchid as seen by a bee. the inability of scientists to classify new species, or they disagree on them. all this being stated calmly, clearly while a wall of fast vibrato'ed electronic musical lines and loops and scratches, so fast but so full-sounding and resonant.
to my left i notice a man scribbling in his notebook throughout the show. does he pull out his phone at one point to record the audio secretly? i think he is a critic. my instinct. i was at an opera or classical show in the summer when i saw a woman pull out a notebook to scribble in during and after the concert. the next day i saw her review in the new york times i think it was. what journal is my seatmate writing for? when the lights come up he quickly gets up and disappears. everyone else stands around and talks and talks and talks. we all love the show and are having so much fun rapping together. meanwhile our critic has rushed home in the blizzard to type up his review while it's fresh in his head, with his pages and pages of notes.
good show. let's see where his review gets published and what he thought. but it would be hard not to love that show.
]]> https://excorp.compost.party/reviews/#tallulah-calderwood-sue-huang-konjur-collective-new-ear-festival-night-1-nyc 16 Jan 2026 00:00:00 +0000
this is a festival taking place at fridman gallery in new york, on bowery near the new museum and a couple blocks from chinatown. so my friend dan and i decided to meet at spicy village before the concert. let me tell you, spicy village was incredible. high recommend. we got the chicken pile, i don't think that's what it was called, but something like that. also, nothing about the food was very spicy, though it was tasty. we also got a stewed beef thing with hand drawn noodles. i mostly skipped the noodle but the beef was succulent. dan likes peanutes and they had fried salty peanuts so we got that too. i honestly think we shoulda skipped that as i started drinking too much water to offset it. we also went to get boba milk tea but i forgot the milk part and just got iced oolong, which tasted like nothing. my mistake.
Now for the concert. Calderwood was ambienty noodly in a good way and maybe it was the whiskey we had earlier in the evening and the low light levels, it couldn't have been the plastic chairs, but i was next to the heater, and the next thing i knew i had nodded off a few minutes, 10, 20? how long was the set? it had started harsh and im not sure what she was doing as she was sitting on the floor and we were sitting on chairs in rows and had no view of her but i think she was bowing a metal string and that was picked up and amplified and run through processing on the computer. in the end it came out as beautiful murmuring electronic noodly doos but like i said, sleeeeep sleep.
that was set 1. next was sue huang, who gave a vocal performance, reading an autobiographical but poetic text about divorce, dating, the pandemic, the LA fires, and the fires of kuwait. it was a strong read. maybe a 25 minute recitation with a black and white experimental video behind showing scenes, stock scenes? wind, nature, buildings, streets, curving. it worked. worked well.
finally the konjur collective. a hard bop and occasional free improv and occasional 'conscious' spoken word. there was even some kora. and each of the 4 members of the quartet seem to play sax on the side too. outfits definitely post-arkestra. this one went hard and i really liked it, hadn't seen a performanco on that tip in a long time. definitely had a 'philly/baltimore vibe' to me.
each of the 3 performances were very different from each other and so it was a nice trip to different lands. satisfied despite the higher cost of the ticket (we thought).
]]> https://excorp.compost.party/reviews/#pasha-cas-itala-aguilera-kosmologym-flux-iv-nyc 11 Jan 2026 00:00:00 +0000
this was a grab bag closing party for two exhibits and i think an artist talk and photo slideshow but i arrived super duper late. flux has two locations and i went to the wrong location, then thought i was feeling sick and should head home but then doubled back when i felt bad i had come all the way out and should go support my friends so i went so i wouldn't experience FOMO. i ended up missing the formal part but everyone was hanging out in a small group left so i hung out too, said goodbye to my friends heading back to kazakstan and then berlin. and then made my way home too.
]]> https://excorp.compost.party/reviews/#the-magic-flute-metropolitan-opera-nyc 03 Jan 2026 00:00:00 +0000
The first performance of the year I attended is the opera. Last year I ended up buying a couple tix to some operas during 'cyber monday' when i exploited a little loop hole i discovered that let me buy a couple of cheap(er)ish tix. i ended up going to 4 different operas that spring i think. but this year i didn't see any that particularly compelled me, and i had always wanted to see this opera, so this was the only ticket i bought. i even got a balcony box ticket because it said obstructed view but the 'seat with a view' website made it seem like the seat would be fine. NO IT WASN"T. the girl in the seat next to me swung her big head and jacket in front of me and blocked my view. i was fuming and should have said something but i kept my tongue because i was too mad and didn't think of a polite thing i could say that i wouldn't have yelled. i mean, honestly. it was really annoying. i also didn't like the plot of the opera. dumb. and i like mozart, i really do. but bleh. i made a poor choice. and there was no intermission! i like intermissions. i was really annoyed. the opera, even with discounts is still very expensive, and i like it to drag on with multiple acts and a long intermission. but no, this was all in one, scene after scene after scene. a dumb story that i didn't care about and didn't even pretend to make any sense, and i don't mean that in the opera sense, i mean like in a nonsense way. it was just not that interesting a story. i feel funny criticizing mozart. but this was not my thing. didn't love anything in fact, not the staging, not my seat, the singing of everything in english. this was 'lighthearted' and the struggle was basic. BASIC. there i said it. this was a BASIC opera. serves me right for going to this instead of the opera about the school shooting that they're self-satisfied about, very human and deep and compelling, but i don't want to go to an opera or a musical or a theater piece or a movie about a school shooting i don't. anyway, back to the magic flute. this was a miss for me! 2 stars.
]]> https://excorp.compost.party/reviews/#annual-art-auction-space-1026-philadelphia 12 Dec 2025 00:00:00 +0000
Well this was a fun one but i didn't win anything. or at least, i didn't want to spend so much money. backing up, i got there and there was a huge spread of food and drinks. i felt dumb because i had just gone to find food in the neighborhood first and spent money when i didn't need to. since i got to the gallery and realized they fed and liquored people up to get them to open up their wallets and bid on things. this is a gallery i've curated shows and events at, but not in over a decade. they are friends, and i like the space a lot. it's a long running artist run space, 26 years in fact.
at the auction, which is their annual fundraiser, they had a few hundred items - mostly paintings but also drawings, photographs, sculpture, and some objects. the big highlight this year was a photograph by zoe strauss of two mummers men with their dicks exposed, showing tattoos on them. strange. it went for a lot, but can't remember how much. maybe just under a thousand bucks? lots of other items. i wanted to bid on this one painting of a home goods store in the suburbs near where my parents live where i bought my teak cutting board. it was just such a funny and sad painting of a big box store in the suburbs surrounded by a parking lot. but i was prepared to spend up to 60 bucks, and as soon as it shot past that i was prepared to spend up to maybe 90 but it ended up going for 200 or so and i was not about that right now. i don't even have the wallspace.
party steve showed up cause i tipped him off. even joe. pete and emily came and we went to the trestle inn afterwards. it was liike i hadn't even left this city 10 years ago. or it was like we were picking it back up. but steve was in a bad mood. joe was in pain and used a cane and had to go rest. and pete and emily left almost as soon as they dragged me over because their babysitter wanted them to come home. i walked wearily to the commuter rail. it was freezing. i had to kill almost an hour so i got a slice of really bad pizza and read a book, waiting for the train, then heading back to the woods and eventually to bed.
]]> https://excorp.compost.party/reviews/#zzzelin-exquisitecorp-zk-u-berlin 20 Nov 2025 00:00:00 +0000
this was a performance part of open studios. no input mixing, experimental vocals, clarinet, synth. can't review myself! hard to see from an outsider's eyes. my internal feeling was that the parts worked at times, didn't wor at other times. ! makes sense since 1 of the trio didn't practice with the other 2 first. anyway, i haven't listened back to the recording yet. then can make some decisions on what i thought.
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this was a performance part of open studios. no input mixing, experimental vocals, clarinet, synth. can't review myself! hard to see from an outsider's eyes. my internal feeling was that the parts worked at times, didn't wor at other times. ! makes sense since 1 of the trio didn't practice with the other 2 first. anyway, i haven't listened back to the recording yet. then can make some decisions on what i thought.
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