Speaking with a forked tongue — Negativland’s Mark Hosler will discuss three decades or culture jamming at his Soundasaurus session.

DETAILS

Soundasaurus Experimental Sound and Media Festival
Engineered Air Theatre
Thursday, January 21 - Saturday, January 23

More in: New Age / Experimental

Who doesn’t love dinosaurs? Even though they haven’t dominated the Alberta landscape in a couple of eons, give or take, their presence is still felt and these beloved prehistoric giants continue to inspire the imagination like nothing since. When the Epcor Centre for the Performing Arts needed a name and a concept for its proposed experimental music mini- festival, Soundasaurus was the natural choice. There’s also the obvious irony of linking futuristic, experimental soundscapes to our primordial history. The dichotomy is not lost on Epcor communications co-ordinator Anna Blaxley,. who sees a direct parallel.

“I think that’s kind of Epcor Centre,” she says. “We are an established art centre, we’re coming up on our 25th anniversary and we’re known to the public in a way, but in other ways, I think there’s an opportunity for us to really step into that role of being the voice and the home of new artistic expression, and not just a more classical or traditional artistic venue,” she says. At this point in its history, the centre started wondering: What sort of boundaries can we push? “We are in this new decade, we are looking to expand our audiences, to branch out to different demographics, take some risks and just kind of play.”

Blaxley, whose favourite dinosaur is the ostrich-like omnivore Struthiomimus, explains the partnership with One Yellow Rabbit as part of a new mandate. “One of our new and really exciting goals is to partner with our amazing resident companies and make it less of a landlord-tenant relationship,” she says. “We’re all so strong individually, so what would happen if we teamed up?”

At the top of the Soundasaurus food chain is the presentation by Negativland’s Mark Hosler. Negativland: Adventures in Illegal Art chronicles the San Francisco-based group’s three decades of “hoaxes, pranks and culture jamming.” Negativland achieved notoriety in the early ’90s when its single “The Letter U and the Numeral 2” incurred the wrath of U2’s label, Island Records, and the label’s entire legal department (think a small pack of scrappy raptors nipping merrily away at a great lumbering behemoth). Hosler, along with fellow Negativlander Don Joyce, had the opportunity to ambush-interview U2 guitarist The Edge, who quickly distanced the band from its label’s heavy-handed “sledgehammer” offensive, but at a time when audio sampling was a considerably newer frontier, Negativland’s historical placement was set in the fossil record.

Like a lot of international artists, Hosler’s relationship with Alberta is primarily through The Banff Centre for Performing Arts, but his presentation will give Calgarians a chance to catch up on Negativland’s activities over the last 20 years. “We’re really excited about that,” says Tammy McGrath, Epcor’s visual and media arts programmer. “I’ve chatted with [Hosler] a few times and his program sounds like it’s going to be amazing.”

McGrath, who cites the Flintstone-friendly brontosaurus as her personal Jurassic favourite, is also excited about Jeremy Owen Turner’s Avatar Audio Performance, which takes place in the popular online world, Second Life. “He has done online collaborations with artists from all over the place,” she says. “He’s been doing online performances with artists across Canada and overseas as well. [For Soundasaurus], he’s doing an online avatar audio performance in Second Life. He’s actually going to be online performing on the instruments he’s actually created in Second Life, just for this performance. That’s not something you’ll see every day.”

As the visual arts programmer, McGrath stresses the visual component of the aforementioned piece and several other soundasaurs. “Adam Tindale and Clinker are doing a piece called A Valid Line, featuring drone [and] ambient acoustic textures with visuals as well,” says McGrath. “There’ll be lots to see, lots to hear. It’s definitely not going to be a static couple of evenings.”

“This is obviously the first time we’ve done this type of festival” says McGrath, who envisions Soundasaurus evolving into an annual Calgary favourite. Blaxley concurs , adding, “We’re a bit of the old classical arts building trying a new and risky option, and I think that’s pretty cool.”