the archives
Cauleen Smith
THE JOURNEYMAN
SEPTEMBER 7 – OCTOBER 20th, 2012
OPENING RECEPTION: SEPTEMBER 7, 6-9PM
Slide Lecture and Listening Party: Saturday, September 22nd, 3pm
Live Recording Sessions October 2 and October 17
With an accompanying bi-fold and essay by Terri Kapsalis.
Filmmaker Cauleen Smith wraps up her 2-year Chicago residency and research on Sun Ra with her exhibition The Journeyman - an installation, recording studio, and library about artistic process, research and the relationship between an artist and the subjects they revere. The exhibition will be accompanied by the release of a limited edition vinyl record mixed by Smith that includes recordings she made over the course of her project in Chicago and materials found in the Sun Ra archive at Experimental Sound Studio.
Experimental filmmaker Smith has been a “long-term” resident of threewalls’, first joining us in 2010 as part of the Studio Chicago program in conjunction with the Sullivan Galleries at The School of the Art Institute of Chicago. Initially Smith intended to extend her on-going film work on jazz, radical black creativity, and the American urban matrix to a work on Chicago and the legend and impact of phenom Sun Ra. Her research led her down a winding path to residencies at the University of Chicago, Center for Race and Culture, and Experimental Sound Studio’s Sun Ra archives.
Between time spent in Chicago and teaching in San Diego, Smith produced The Solar Flare Arkestral Marching Band, a series of marching band flash mob street performances inspired by Sun Ra’s Arkestra where Chicago Southside high-school marching bands would play a single Sun Ra song arranged for them by local musicians and composers. This series was recorded as part of a number of short films that Smith made while in the city, culminating in two exhibitions: A Seed is a Star, on exhibition at the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago (May 12-September 16th, 2012) and The Journeyman at threewalls. Both exhibitions cultivate a specific, immersive experience or manipulation of space, with her exhibition at threewalls’ generating the character of research, with study, listening and recording spaces butted up against each other in a meditation on the process of research, creation and the making of myth– both in homage to Sun Ra’s own intensive auto-didact methods and Smith’s experience studying his extensive archives.
In conjunction with The Journeyman, Smith, in collaboration with Todd Carter, will open the space to musicians to record and perform in a makeshift recording studio. Those performances are on October 3 and October 17.
threewalls’ would like to extend a special thanks to John Corbett for the loan of a selection of Sun Ra’s books for the library.
Cauleen Smith (born 1967) is a filmmaker whose work reflects upon the everyday possibilities of the black imagination. Smith’s films have been featured in group exhibitions at the Houston Contemporary Art Museum; the Blanton Museum of Art, Austin; and the New Museum, New York. Beginning in 1994, she wrote, directed, and produced her first narrative feature film, Drylongso (1998), which was selected for the American Spectrum of Sundance Film Festival, and won best feature film at both the Urbanworld Film Festival and the Los Angeles Pan-African Film Festival Smith earned an MFA from the University of California, Los Angeles.
More information on
September 22, 3-5 PM, Lecture on Black Utopia: The Movie + Listening Party for Black Utopia LP
October 2, 7-9 PM, Live Recording Session at The Recorded Memory Studio with Leroy Bach + Khari Lemeul
October 17, 7-9 PM, Live Recording Session at The Recorded Memory Studio with Marvin Tate + Special Guests
Available for purchase:
Cauleen Smith: Black Utopia LP
Produced by Experimental Sound Studio
PLEASE NOTE: PRICES HAVE CHANGED!
Available for sale at threewalls and Experimental Sound Studio in two editions:
For the Collector
2 12" color swirl vinyl LPs, handbound portfolio covers, 32 page booklet, hand silk-screened jackets + data DVD
$100, edition of 40 (SOLD OUT!)
For the Fan
2 12" color swirl vinyl LPs, 32 page booklet and hand silk-screened jackets in an obi wrap
$45, edition of 100
BLACK UTOPIA
Record One
Side A: "Gemini"
Featuring:
"Somewhere over the Cosmic Rainbow"
Written and Performed by Krista Franklin
Sun Ra Moog Solo*
"A Time To Keep" Collage #01 - #04"
Sun Ra Rehearsal Recordings*
Arkestral Moniker Montage
Sun Ra Lecture Fragment*
Side B: "Shaped Notes"
Featuring:
256 Hz Tuning Fork*
Piano Tuning*
Sun Ra Rehearsal*
A.A.C.M. Orchestral Tuning*
Sun Ra Solo Piano Performance Live*
Brother Kelan Phil Cohran Conversation
Record Two:
Side C: "Speculations"
Featuring:
Sun Ra Rehearsal Lecture*
Dick Gregory: My Brother's Keeper*
Second Stop is Jupiter
Sun Ra & Arkestral Live Performance with Jenkins and June Tyson on Vocals - Location and Date Unkown
Side D: "The Learned and the Learned"
Featuring:
Sun Ra Lectures A Group of Young People as the Arkestra sets up in the background
Alton Abrahm's Ansewring Machine Message Tape
From Angela to Sun Ra (No Man)
Written & Performed by Avery R. Young
Press: