Intermedia performance by AC Diamond + Suz / Murray, 2024
Program Notes
In 2024, AC Diamond gathered an archive of sights and sounds in the form of voice memos, field recordings, and video notes. In this first-ever collaboration with video artist and filmmaker Suz / Murray, AC strings those vignettes together in an audio-visual performance, using handmade electronic instruments and custom software programs. Suz / Murray uses a projected live feed and embodied camerawork to interpret the performance in real time.
With the performance taking place in John Giorno’s former home, AC gives a nod to Giorno’s use of fruit-flavored incense in his Electronic Sensory Poetry Environments from the late 1960s by filling the space with smoke from lavender, clary sage, and sandalwood incense, courtesy of Holistic Home Co.
Soap Library’s Kerry Santullo introduces the performance by playing some of their recent tape releases, including AC’s SELF/WORK, a semi-theatrical performance set in a dystopian retreat center where healer and patient engage in a battle of wills, incorporating unrelenting speech, tape delays, sound-reactive lights, and olfactory elements.
Documentation
Video:
Filmed by Corinne Spencer
Edited by Suz / Murray
Audio mixed/mastered by AC Diamond
Photo:
All photos by Walter Wlodarczyk
Event produced in collaboration with Soap Library and Giorno Poetry Systems on July 9, 2024. This project was funded in part by an Emergency Grant from Foundation for Contemporary Art.