In Arts News

Resonating
BY NATE LIPPENS

The visual-art exhibitions at this year's Bumbershoot Festival prove once and for all that the arts portion of the event isn't merely an afterthought to round out the roster. They also expand the notion of what visual art is, focusing this year on sound-based art. Aside from the work that the excellent Jack Straw Media does to promote and highlight sound art, there hasn't been nearly enough serious consideration of the form, especially on an institutional level, a fact particularly surprising in such a tech-savvy city. Which is why In Resonance, the sound-art exhibition curated by Fionn Meade and Robert Millis, is such a welcome event, drawing on local, national, and international artists, and including auxiliary events at On the Boards, CoCA, and the Henry Art Gallery.

Meade and Millis have brought together a diverse lineup of artists for the program, including Steve Roden (who will be doing a work next year for the Turrell Skyspace at the Henry), Marina Rosenfeld, and Stephen Vitiello. Seattle is well represented with Jesse Paul Miller, Climax Golden Twins, Christine Wallers, and Steve Peters. And San FranciscoÐbased Jim Haynes and Los Angeles video and sound artist Jennifer West both have sublime work in the show. Rounding out the exhibition are such luminaries as Sonic Youth's Thurston Moore, Tokyo-based Toshiya Tsunoda, and the Phonographers Union. It's a wide swath that demonstrates the flexibility of the genre and cements the importance of the form in the cross-disciplinary contemporary art world.

The program will open with a show at On the Boards on Tuesday, August 30, at 8:00 p.m. with contributing artists Jim Haynes, Roden, Rosenfeld, and special guest Eyvind Kang in a live performance that should add a dimension to the often-disembodied art form. The opening gala is the following night, Wednesday, August 31, at 5:00 p.m., in the Rainier Room Courtyard. Steve Roden, Marina Rosenfeld, and Stephen Vitiello, all of whom are presenting installation work and sound sculptures, will participate in In Resonance: A Forum on Sound-Based Art at the Henry Art Gallery on Thursday, September 1. Christoph Cox, who is a philosopher and critic for Artforum, Wire, and Cabinet Magazine will moderate the panel and open the forum with a lecture.

The final part of the program will run through mid-October at CoCA. Wish/Alchemy, a two-part group show, opens on Friday, September 2. The site-specific sound-based installation Alchemy by Seattle artists Christine Wallers and Steve Peters is part of In Resonance, while Wish is an accompanying group show curated by Jim O'Donnell with work by Jonathan Gitelson, Blake Haygood, Rashid Johnson, Miranda Lichtenstein, Kelly Mark, Jillian Mcdonald, Lilly McElroy and Melissa Pauw.

All of these ambitious events should help raise the profile of sound art in Seattle, which fits well with video art, inspiring more events that are co-presented by a variety of venues.