Program Notes for Broken Music
curated and introduced by Astria Suparak
for The Knitting Factory, NYC

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Broken Music
Breaking records, converting light into sound, making a turntable with dry ice and a guitar out of a turntable… Musical instruments are destroyed and technology is applied in peculiar ways. These are de-compositions made for video by both contemporary and historical figures, with a nod to Jimi Hendrix and the Fluxus movement.


Record Players
Christian Marclay (New York, NY). 1984. 4:00 min.
New York multi-media artist and vinyl saboteur Christian Marclay with a group of almost anonymous players including Shelly Silver, Pat Hearn, and Zed using records as instruments.

Piano Piece #13 (For Nam June Paik)
Sonic Youth (New York, NY). 1999. 4:25 min.
S.Y. performs a Fluxus composition by George Maciunas

Violin Power (excerpt)
Steina Vasulka (Santa Fe, NM). 1978. 7:10 min.
A "Demo tape on how to play video on the violin" by video pioneer and The Kitchen co-founder, Steina Vasulka.

Ghost (I don't live today)
Christian Marclay (New York, NY). 1985. 4:00 min.
From a performance at the Kitchen made for video in homage to Jimi Hendrix.

I-Beam Music (excerpts)
Barry Schwartz and Nicolas Anatol Baginsky (San Francisco, CA and Hamburg, Germany). 1995.11:30 min.
Schwartz's work incorporates metal, mechanics, computer-controlled hardware, chemically-reactive agents, high-voltage electricity, and live video feeds. Creating an auto-electronic environment, he stands in fountains and waterfalls of non-conductive fluid manipulating various mechanical devices. The components generate an audible environment through various types of audio transducers and amplification. Listen and look.

Kick That Habit
Voice Crack (Switzerland). 1990. Film on video. 43:00 min.
Swiss electronics duo Voice Crack's only film, with live footage playing their signature "Cracked Everyday Electronics". "After years of collaboration, participating in the free music/ free jazz scene on winds, strings, and homemade instruments, the duo of Moslang and Guhl began to move into electronic and synthetic sounds, preferring "the usual and habitual, in everyday utensils from the household, the trades and industry" to commercially built instruments. By the time they recorded the LP Voice Crack, their only instruments were the bits of modern debris that they called "Cracked Everyday Electronics": electric and electronic second-hand waste material in the form of microphones, record players, toys, tape recorders, radios, and the like." - Gino Robair

T.R.T: approx. 75 minutes

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