MUSICAL PERFORMANCES BY MIYA MASAOKA, ROVA SAXOPHONE QUARTET, PLUS A NIGHT OF GOTH-INSPIRED FILM AND MUSIC, A SPECIAL MILK-TO-CHEESE TASTING, A VARIETY SHOW, AND THREE-WAY LECTURE HIGHLIGHT A DYNAMIC SCHEDULE

Berkeley, CA March 3, 2010-(Download a PDF version of this press release.)The University of California, Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive will close out the spring season of its eclectic Friday night art and performance series L@TE: Friday Nights @ BAM/PFA with a smattering of improvisational music performances, a “milk-to-cheese” tasting and discussion, an evening of silent film and music for your inner Goth, an irreverent variety show, a three-way lecture with sonic accompaniment from a wine-glass drone ensemble, and more.

On March 4 guest programmer and First Person Magazine publisher Betty Nguyen will showcase three new underground artists whose energies evoke the youthful rebellion and desire of the early 1970s New York art and music scenes (think Patti Smith, Richard Hell, Andy Warhol, Robert Mappelthorpe, Chelsea Hotel) in an event titled Fires of Unknown Origin. Los Angeles-based sound artist Kevin Greenspon-surrounded by his machinery-will summon his intricate sounds up into the spiraling concrete heavens of the museum galleries. Randy Lee Sutherland's improvisational project Vholtz is influenced by Sun Ra and Captain Beefheart's Magic Band, and features Bay Area players George Chen, Jonathan Grothman, and Daron Key. Finally, Brooklyn-based guitar shredder Hubble, a.k.a. Ben Greenberg of the band Z's, will animate the museum with heavy doses of trippy feedback. Nguyen continues the anything-goes ethos with Pigeon Dealers: A Variety Show on April 8. Inspired by the words of the composer, multi-instrumentalist, and improviser Ishmael Wadada Leo Smith, “Our music is based on systems and systems are not free,” the evening will feature improvisations with artists whose works riff off their relationships to the Sound System culture. According to the San Francisco Chronicle, the SF-based band Bronze “melds synch grooves and Kraut beats into freakout music for the future.” The droll, deadpan humor of local comedic rising star Chris Thayer will have the BAM/PFA audience laughing and squirming. Los Angeles-based artist Dave Muller, whose work Sgt. Pepper (Chopped & Screwed) is displayed in the current exhibition Abstract Now and Then, will DJ. Short films by San Francisco illustrator and filmmaker David Enos will round out the evening.

On March 11, L@TE programmer Sarah Cahill welcomes koto artist Miya Masaoka, whom the New York Times has described as “an explorer of the extremes of her instrument.” Using difference tones, sine waves, and captured sound from the resonance of the museum, Masaoka will create a new work especially designed to respond to the Gallery B performance space and the cantilevered, tiered galleries that hang above it. She is known for creative, improvisational technique, and a sensibility that combines experimental Western approaches with the tradition of the koto. Masaoka has created works for So Percussion, Bang on a Can, sfSound, Alonzo King's LINES Ballet, Volti, and the Piedmont East Bay Children's Choir. On April 1, one of the longest standing groups in the new music movement, Rova Saxophone Quartet-Larry Ochs, Jon Raskin, Bruce Ackley, and Steve Adams-create genre-bending music that challenges and inspires listeners. The quartet, which has roots in post-bop, free jazz, avant-rock, and twentieth century new music and draws inspiration from the visual arts and the traditional and popular music styles of Africa, Asia, U.S., and Europe, will perform fascinating compositions that will contour to the museum's distinctive acoustic properties.

Programmed by BAM/PFA Film Curators Kathy Geritz and Steve Seid, the closing installment of the Radical L@TE series on March 18, programmed to coincide with the project Radical Light: Alternative Film and Video in the San Francisco Bay Area, 1945–2000, will feature a selection of Bay Area artists who expand cinema into the gallery space with dazzling 3-D, multiple screens, and multiple projectors. This work arises from documentary explorations and scientific experiments, reframed by conceptual concerns. Lynn Marie Kirby's installation, C: to C: Several Centuries After the Double Slit Experiment, is both an homage to Michael Snow's Wavelength and to the double slit experiments that revealed light to be both a particle and a wave. Greta Snider and Johunna Grayson collaborated on the stereoscopic slide show, Dimensional Bodies, an intimate series of portraits that focus on bodily issues, including aging and sexuality. Jeanne C. Finley and John Muse's installation The Adventures of Blacky, based on drawings used in 1950s psychological tests, explores the dark side of childhood. Kerry Laitala will unveil a new three-projector film with sound by Wobbly, and Lynne Sachs will present States of Unbelonging, an installation of light boxes that explores how one person attempts to understand another.
Black will be the color of choice at the April 15 event, L@TE Goes Goth. Featuring a screening of the 1919 silent horror classic The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari with live accompaniment by Cal student DJs, Gallery B will be the place to be for those who find pleasure in the morose. Dr. Caligari is an Expressionist tale of mayhem and mind control, renowned for its twisted design-rife with painted shadows, clipped perspectives, and demented interiors. The scenery echoes the delirium of that original Goth, Conrad Veidt, the somnambulistic stalker controlled by Dr. Caligari. DJs will also train their beats on the film as well as a few gloomy short films that will further the hip hypnosis and command feet to follow. A joint programming endeavor between Seid and the BAM/PFA Student Committee, the evening will feature some appropriately gloomy undisclosed activities and touches, as well as a stunning display of refreshments.

Machine Project is a nonprofit Los Angeles community space that produces events, workshops, and site-specific installations with the goal of making rarified knowledge accessible. For L@TE, the collective is bringing some of these interactive activities north to Berkeley. On April 29, Machine Project Executive Director Mark Allen hosts FERMENT(cheese), a multimedia performance, presentation, and tasting exploring milk's evolution. The evening will feature a milk-to-cheese tasting accompanied by field recordings of cows eating grass, curd draining, cheese aging, and an oral history with local dairyman, John Taverna. Within this environment, Los Angeles–based sound artist Chris Kallmyer will create site-specific and dispersed soundworks with the experimental ensemble TempWerks. Sue Conley, cofounder of the renowned Cowgirl Creamery, will speak about the art of cheese making, and the sustainable qualities of artisan and farmstead agriculture. Through an immersive sound environment, we invite visitors to more fully experience the fermented arts. On May 6 Machine Project closes out the spring L@TE schedule with Triway Hyperlecture Cage Match, an experimental three-way lecture blowout with musical accompaniment. Jason Brown, Colin Dickey, and Jason Torchinsky will simultaneously deliver presentations covering some or all of the following topics-phrenological graverobbing, pre-1860 automobiles, the lizard people and their tunnels under Los Angeles, mechanical televisions, a paranoid history of San Francisco, ergotism, demonic possession, the scourge of masturbation and its relationship to capitalism, and Flaubert's very complicated feelings about images. These presentations will be accompanied by incidental musical performances, including j.frede and his wine-glass drone ensemble, and underwater recordings of the San Francisco Bay.

L@TE Calendar
With the exception of the April 29 and May 6 events, Friday night programs begin at 7:30 p.m. in Gallery B; doors open at 5 p.m. with DJs filling the galleries with music and sounds beginning at 6:30 p.m.

Mar. 4
Fires of Unknown Origin
Featuring: Kevin Greenspon, Vholtz, and Hubble
Programmed by Betty Nguyen
Doors 5 p.m. / DJ Bezoar Formations 6:30 p.m. / Performance 7:30 p.m.

Mar. 11
Miya Masaoka
Programmed by Sarah Cahill
Doors 5 p.m. / DJ Citizen Zain 6:30 p.m. / Performance 7:30 p.m.

Mar. 18
Radical L@TE
Programmed by Steve Seid and Kathy Geritz
Doors 5 p.m. / DJ set by Wobbly 6:30 p.m. / Performance 7:30 p.m.

Apr. 1
Rova Saxophone Quartet
Programmed by Sarah Cahill
Doors 5 p.m. / DJ 6:30 p.m. / Performance 7:30 p.m.

Apr. 8
Pigeon Dealer: A Variety Show
Featuring Bronze, Chris Thayer, Dave Muller, and Chris Enos
Programmed by Betty Nguyen
Doors 5 p.m. / DJ 6:30 p.m. / Performance 7:30 p.m.

Apr. 15
L@TE Goes Goth
Programmed by Steve Seid and the BAM/PFA Student Committee
Doors 5 p.m. / DJ 6:30 p.m. / Performance 7:30 p.m.

Apr. 29
FERMENT(cheese)
Programmed by Mark Allen
Doors 5 p.m. / Tasting 6-9 p.m. / Performance and Presentation 7:30 p.m.

May 6
Triway Hyperlecture Cage Match
Featuring Jason Brown, Colin Dickey, Jason Torchinsky, and j.frede
Programmed by Mark Allen
Doors 5 p.m. / Lectures and Performance 7:00 p.m.

$7 After 5
General admission to the BAM/PFA galleries is $7 after 5 p.m. on L@TE Fridays. Show your ticket for a same-day PFA screening or gallery visit and get in to L@TE free. Admission is always free for BAM/PFA members and UC Berkeley students, faculty, and staff.

About L@TE
L@TE: Friday Nights @ BAM/PFA is the institution's afterhours program, featuring guest programmers-as well as BAM/PFA curators-who showcase mostly local artists, musicians, filmmakers, performance artists, and other creative types resulting in a series of eclectic performance and events. Galleries are kept open until 9 p.m. Programs begin at 7:30 p.m. in Gallery B; doors open at 5 p.m.

Credit
L@TE is made possible in part by the continued support of the BAM/PFA Trustees. Special thanks to our media sponsors, East Bay Express and San Francisco Bay Guardian.

More Online
For updates and advance tickets, visit bampfa.berkeley.edu/late.

About BAM/PFA
The Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive (BAM/PFA) is the visual arts center of the University of California, Berkeley, the nation's leading public research university. One of the largest university art museums in the United States in both size and attendance, BAM/PFA aims to inspire the imagination and ignite critical dialogue through contemporary and historical art and film, engaging audiences from the UC Berkeley campus, the Bay Area, and beyond. Each year BAM/PFA presents fifteen art exhibitions, 380 film programs, and dozens of performances, as well as lectures, symposia, and tours. The museum's collection of more than 30,000 works ranges from Neolithic Chinese pottery to contemporary video art. Among the collection's exceptional strengths are Ming and Qing dynasty Chinese painting, Italian Baroque painting, Old Master works on paper, early American painting, mid-twentieth-century abstract painting-including important works by Hans Hofmann, Jackson Pollock, Eva Hesse, and Mark Rothko-Japanese cinema, Soviet silent film, West Coast avant-garde video and film, animation, and international classic films.

Berkeley Art Museum Information
Location: 2626 Bancroft Way, just below College Avenue across from the UC Berkeley campus.

Gallery and Museum Store Hours: Wednesday through Sunday, 11 a.m.–5 p.m. Open L@TE Fridays until 9 p.m. Closed Monday and Tuesday.

Information: 24-hour recorded message (510) 642-0808; fax (510) 642-4889; TDD (510) 642-8734.

Website: bampfa.berkeley.edu