Special Event
Ear to Ear: A Music Archive
4 July–
6 July 2008
Convened by: Jeff Khonsary, Jonathan Middleton
Institutional Partner:
Cornershop Projects
Conversations: Saturday, July 5th, 3pm
Closing Party: Sunday, July 6th, 7pm
The Or Gallery and Cornershop Projects present Ear to Ear, a community-based, ad hoc archive of contemporary popular music and music ephemera.
Despite a clear antagonism, the relationship between the legal and the illegal distribution of popular music in the West has been formed through a dialectic process. Recently, as major music labels have begun to adapt in response to market pressures, mainstream interest in the illegal distribution of music has become increasingly acute — focussed almost exclusively on emerging peer to peer technologies. While rooted in older, less formal systems of distribution, these now pervasive, illicit distribution networks differ considerably from their predecessors in that they enforce a strict distance (both physical and emotional) between contributing users.
With all this in mind, Ear To Ear hopes to establish a temporary, non-virtual community interested in popular music. Through a collection of visual, auditory, and printed materials, the project focusses on informal and/or illegal networks of distribution and communication within various music subcultures. Taking cues from exhibition based projects such as Christoph Keller’s Kiosk: Modes of Multiplication as well as mix tape and fanzine culture, Ear to Ear was developed as a hypothetical framework rather then a fully realized archive — and as such it is expansive and open ended.
Ear to Ear: Mixes
At the heart of Ear to Ear is a series of specially commissioned mixed CDs that will be redistributed freely during the run of the project. Participants included: Jeff Derksen, Eric Fredericksen, Andrew Lison, Adam Locke-Norton, Johan Lundh, Alan McConchie, Ceci Moss, Christopher Olson, Kristina Lee Podesva, Mark Soo, Jared Stanley, Jordan Strom, Saelan Twerdy, and Courtenay Webber.
Ear to Ear: Conversations, Saturday, July 5th, 5-7pm
Please join us Saturday, July 5th at 5-7pm for a conversation on issues related to the project. Guest speakers to include: Eric Fredericksen, Jeff McCloy, Kristina Lee Podesva & Saelan Twerdy, Robert Dayton, and Christopher Olson.
Ear to Ear is organized by Jeff Khonsary.
For more information see: http://jeffkhonsary.com/ear-to-ear