James Rushford

MORGUE OARS

LISTENING IS CREPUSCULAR. MUSIC IS A SHADOW.

(The anemone and glow-worm help me to unconsciousness)

In listening to music, we can speak of perspective as the conscious foregrounding and projecting of specific objects and events. We can also speak of an inversion of perspective by focusing on that which might initially be ‘backgrounded’ in listening (a constant aim of music analysis and psychoacoustics). But this is still just a projection of listening, a desiring-listening. Is it possible to listen without any foreground?  Would this involve something like ‘backgrounding’ consciousness?

(Hiddenness is something intentional but also something we are thrown into, refusing to bend to our will)

Music itself is saturated by noise (a whiteness, not necessarily physical noise, partly the noise of listening?) but how do we hear its intensity? What is its aesthetic blackness?

(“darkness makes sight concentrate to such a degree that besides pain it sometimes brings blindness to the eye if it lasts too long … [d]arkness is not the pure state of privation but is of visible nature deriving from the conjunction of the privative and positive entities”)

(Is a crepuscular listening that which is emerging or receding in consciousness?)

The image of musical shadowcan be used to unpack a notion of aesthetic ‘darkening’ and reduction in the treatment of compositional materiality, process, and perspective (in both performer and the listener). Chiaroscuro paintings by Adam de Coster, and the use of Claude Glass mirror in 18th century landscape painting techniques, can provide a conceptual camera obscura in which Black Metal is viewed through Wandelweiser aesthetics.

James Rushford is an Australian composer-performer. His work is drawn from a familiarity with specific concrète, improvised, avant-garde and collagist languages. Currently, his work deals with the aesthetic concept of musical shadow.

As a composer, James has been commissioned by the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra (Glasgow), Melbourne Symphony Orchestra, Ensemble Neon (Oslo), Speak Percussion (Melbourne), Ensemble Vortex (Geneva), Ensemble Offspring (Sydney), Decibel (Perth), Melbourne International Arts Festival (2006/2008), Norway Ultima Festival (2011), Unsound Festival (New York 2014) and Liquid Architecture Festival (2010).

As a performer, he has presented work at STEIM Institute (Amsterdam), Logos Foundation (Ghent), Issue Project Room (New York), Instants Chavirés (Montreuil), Constellation (Chicago), Café Oto (London), Super Deluxe (Tokyo), Blank Forms (New York), Monday Evening Concerts (Los Angeles), Cave12 (Geneva), Send & Receive Festival (Winnipeg), WORM (Rotterdam), Centre for Contemporary Art (Warsaw), Only Connect Festival (Oslo), Now Now (2011/2012), Adelaide Festival (2014), Melbourne International Jazz Festival (2011) and the Tectonics Festival (Adelaide 2014, New York 2015, Tel Aviv 2015). He has also performed as a soloist with the Krakow Sinfonietta, Australian Art Orchestra, Michel Pisaro, Eyvind King, David Behrman and Jon Rose.

James has collaborative projects with Joe Talia, Golden Fur (with Samuel Dunscombe & Judith Hamann), Ora Clementi (with crys cole), Oren Ambarchi, Klaus Lang, Kassel Jaeger, Anthony Pateras, Will Guthrie, Annea Lockwood, Graham Lambkin, Francis Plagne, Tashi Wada, the visual artist Michael Salerno and the writer Dennis Cooper.

His music has been published by Pogus (US), Prisma (Norway), Bocian (Poland), Penultimate Press (UK), Another Timbre (UK), Holidays (IT), Black Truffle (AUS) and KYE (US).

James holds a Doctorate from the California Institute of the Arts, and was a 2018 fellow at Akademie Schloss Solitude in Stuttgart.

http://www.james-rushford.com/

Documentation