Tuesday 8 October 2019, 6pm, Ikon
Please note that this is an off-site event taking place at Ikon Gallery in Birmingham.
Keiko Yamamoto, founding member of OTOProjects, curates a series of concerts connecting Ikon, Centrala and the artistic community of Cafe OTO. Supported by The Estate of Barry Flanagan.
Free, suggested donation £3*
Booking essential
https://www.ikon-gallery.org/event/david-toop/
In the early 1970s, Carlyle Reedy, Paul Burwell and David Toop were invited to perform in Flanagan’s exhibition at the Rowan Gallery, London, though little remains of this improvised performance as it was not recorded or filmed. For Ikon, Toop explores the ghostliness of such events, disinterring memories from virtually nothing – a photograph, voices of living witnesses (if they can be persuaded) or perhaps instruments and gestures used over 45 years ago.
David Toop has been developing a practice that crosses boundaries of sound, listening, music and materials since 1970. This encompasses improvised music performance, writing, electronic sound, field recording, exhibition curating, sound art installations and opera. It includes eight acclaimed books, including Rap Attack (1984), Ocean of Sound (1995), Sinister Resonance (2010), Into the Maelstrom (2016), Flutter Echo(2019) and Inflamed Invisible: Writing On Art and Sound 1976-2018 (2019). Briefly a member of David Cunningham’s pop project The Flying Lizards in 1979, he has released fourteen solo albums, from New and Rediscovered Musical Instruments on Brian Eno’s Obscure label (1975) and Sound Body on David Sylvian’s Samadhisound label (2006) to Entities Inertias Faint Beings (2016) and Apparition Paintings (2021). His 1978 Amazonas recordings of Yanomami shamanism and ritual were released on Sub Rosa as Lost Shadows (2016). In recent years his collaborations include Rie Nakajima, Akio Suzuki, Tania Caroline Chen, John Butcher, Ken Ikeda, Elaine Mitchener, Henry Grimes, Sharon Gal, Camille Norment, Sidsel Endresen, Alasdair Roberts, Lucie Stepankova, Fred Frith, Thurston Moore, Ryuichi Sakamoto. Curator of sound art exhibitions including Sonic Boom at the Hayward Gallery (2000), his opera – Star-shaped Biscuit – was performed in 2012.
