Nomi Epstein: bregne
Exhibition Information:
November 11, 2018 - January 20, 2019
Daily, 9-5pm
Opening Reception & Performance:
Sunday, November 11, 2018
3-5pm
Lincoln Park Conservatory*
2391 North Stockton Drive
Chicago, IL, 60614
bregne is a site-responsive installation inhabiting Lincoln Park’s Fern Room by Nomi Epstein. The work looks at the visual blooming process of ferns and uses the unfurling pattern as framework for instrumentation and environmental listening experience.
Fascinated by the way in which ferns grow, while creating this installation Epstein was focused on the distinctive plant shape and motion inherent in the blooming process. As the fern releases from the ground, it forms a tight, knotty spiral. Unravelling it’s scroll, the fern shows its exquisite expansive layers of green arms, or fronds, a coil releasing itself. In bregne, this shape and contour are used as conceptual sources for both choosing the types of sound employed in the installation, and for how instruments are manipulated to produce sound. These include the circular shape of an instrument, and/or the circular motion used to generate sound from an instrument, but also the dichotomy of open/closed which is articulated through a literal and metaphorical approach to instrumental sound, directionality of sound, and listening experience.
About Nomi Epstein
Nomi Epstein is a Chicago-based composer, as well as curator, performer, and educator. Her music centers around her interest in sonic fragility, where structure arises out of textural subtleties. An active practitioner of experimental music, she regularly collaborates with ensembles throughout Europe and the US. She is the founder/curator of the critically acclaimed, experimental music performance collective a•pe•ri•od•ic, and performs as part of this ensemble in addition to the experimental improvisation trio, NbN. She produced the Chicago area 2012 centennial John Cage Festival, co-produced the 2014 Chicago Wandelweiser Festival and the 2017 Galina Ustvolskaya Festival, and continues to research, write, and lecture on post-Cagean, notated, experimental music. Epstein has served on the faculties of Northwestern, Roosevelt, UIC, DePaul, and the University of Iowa.
For more information on Nomi Epstein:
http://www.aperiodicchicago.com/