Hilarie Ashton, “Are You There, (Oh) G-d: Rapture in Pop Music Sound/Voices”
Ashon Crawley, “Resonance”
Joon Oluchi Lee, “Mary Gaitskill, a Melon Baller, and a George Michael Song”
Eric Lott, “Backup as Foreground”
Michaelangelo Matos, “Prisoner of Your Love: How Tina Turner Came Back”
Charles Mudede, “Fontella Bass and the Philosophy of Sound”
Matthew Valnes, “‘Just a Little Bit of Soul Now’: Voice-Altering Technologies and the Sounds of Funk”
Seattle-based artist Wynne Greenwood, better-known in music circles as Tracy + The Plastics, has been giving voice to feminist and queer politics by way of her eclectic practice for over a decade. In her performances as Tracy + The Plastics, “members” of the band—slightly bossy front woman Tracy, contentious keyboardist Nikki, and spaced-out percussionist Cola, who “play all the instruments and sing” on the band’s albums—appear in live performances as Greenwood performing as Tracy onstage, awkwardly, hilariously interacting with Nikki and Cola as pre-recorded video projections. Between 1999 and 2006 Tracy + The Plastics performed in venues ranging from punk clubs to theaters to the Whitney Museum, and the “band” was recently revisited as part of Greenwood’s 2015 residency at New York City’s New Museum of Contemporary Art.
Greenwood has written of the band’s underlying goal: “A Tracy + the Plastics performance attempts to destroy the hierarchical dynamics of mass media’s say/see spaces by placing as much importance on the video images (the plastics) as the live performer (Tracy).” And, between the stilted, silence-laden on-stage “banter” of Greenwood in her various permutations and the pointedly open stage set-up, wherein the performance occupies a space that bleeds out into the seating, this hierarchy-destroying approach extends to artist-audience dynamics as the viewers are similarly encouraged to blur the line between who is there to “say” and who is there to “see.” And, in Greenwood’s many projects since—in recordings, videos, installations, collaborations with the LTTR collective and, most recently, her Kelly project at The New Museum—she has explored the role of diverse, overlapping, contradictory voices in the activist communities of which she is a part.
In this interview with art historian Maria Elena Buszek, Greenwood address the multiple “voices” she applies and mines, the relevance of music and club culture, and both the pleasures and problems of hybridity in her work, as well as screen examples of her performances and music videos.
Popular music loses towering figures every year. But just a few months in, 2016 feels like a deluge of grieving: From Maurice White to Paul Kantner, Natalie Cole to Lemmy Kilmister, David Bowie to Glenn Frey, this has already been a staggering year of loss. Here, the Pop Conference will pay tribute to the deceased in a concentrated fashion—and in our idiom, with critical and evocative words, images and sounds on the big Sky Church screen, and a spirit of celebration. Join us for a series of short papers and video clips considering the aforementioned music deities and a few more besides. Participants will share personal reflections and wrestle with these artists’ legacies and unique musical voices.
Christine Bacareza Balance, "The Gangsters We Are All Looking For"
Ricardo Montez, "In Control of Being Out of Control: Grace Jones, Keith Haring and the Ends of Paradise"
Roy Pérez, "Abduction Near Hialeah and Other Startling Transports: Desire and Dissonance in the Martin Wong Papers"
