Depot/Centralia/Tiber, WorkroomG03, 2013.
The trio of Michael Ashkin, Tim Feeney, and Annie Lewandowski began its interdisciplinary collaboration in 2011, when Lewandowski and Feeney began improvising soundtracks to Ashkin’s films. Ashkin’s works direct our attention to slow-moving processes within decaying environments, such as abandoned buildings, industrial sites, or desert landscapes. These images intersect with Lewandowski and Feeney’s sparse improvisations, which draw attention to small details available within slowly changing sonic fields.
Filmed at a decommissioned military depot in upstate New York, Depot captures the first 22 minutes of light experienced by a swarm of flies covering a westward-facing window. The accompanying music traces the movement of the insects and calls attention to subtle details of position, density, and speed. This experience is steeped in the observer’s constantly-changing perception of the passage of time. Centralia takes its name from a central Pennsylvania mining town where coal deposits have been burning since 1962, causing major environmental problems. Ashkin’s film directs our attention to an ongoing mining operation nearby, emphasizing layers of disappearance and absence in the process of history, while Lewandowski and Feeney’s sparse and ethereal improvisations create an atmosphere of stark desolation. Tiber concludes the set by doubling the image of floating refuse with a similar electronic miasma.
Michael Ashkin
Selected Performances
Center for New Music, San Francisco, CA, October 2014
Songlines, Mills College, October 2014
Johnson Museum of Art 40th Anniversary Gala, Cornell University, September 2013
Oberlin College, October 2012