Kim Alpert - COTFG Interview Series
Photo by Peter Gannushkin at Roulette Intermedium, 2019
Kim Alpert - I typically contextualize and categorize myself with the term 'media artist', but my practice doesn't have a singular thing I do. It can be challenging at times to explain. I work with visual elements, primarily video, and create performance or exhibition systems, objects, and installations. I'm fascinated at the reactivity of time-based media and how analog and digital processing can alter and create moods. My subject matter explores bodied and disembodied experiences on topics that consume me, like happiness, memory, heredity, gender, health, etc. Someone once called me 'a boundary person' which I liked. I work across disciplines as well as outside art all together in the discipline of discipline, documenting and sharing practice methodology - most recently with my essay project. I make the work to learn to enjoy the process of making work - which has evolved in different ways over the past two decades. In life and in art I find classification and title very limiting and do my best to balance my own desire/belief to remain honest about the fluid nature of everything, while also giving some definition to be able to communicate well with others.
COTFG - What are some of your influences for your recent work? Musical or otherwise.
Kim Alpert - Lately, I've been working with time processing. The subjective experience of time has always been fascinating to me. I've begun to create a visual language that speaks to the elasticity concepts I've been experiencing through how trauma alters memory, the perimeters of consciousness, and how our plasticity can alter our reality. Which is to say, in particular to how we perceive time over time. Examples of this can be seen in the post processing on the gorgeous video from Nick Hughes for Chris Pattishall performing Libra or in my video from the We Series at Elastic Arts about Health.
Much of my work is collaborative with a cast of incredible musicians and their influence is vital to each project. I also just finished preparing the digital version of a new release from the live performance of Momentum 5: Stammer (triptych) from Ken Vandermark. It's dedicated and inspired by Tony Conrad and Alvin Lucier. Those two are huge influences of mine as well and part of my seminal education toward how to express the inexpressible. The Ohmme music video I made over the summer took on a very specific feel based on the shared experiences the band and I have around home videos, VHS, old antenna TV, etc. My work with distortion and analog effects has been ongoing and the aesthetic of electric experimentation fits this uncertain and charged time we are in. This also informed the creative for Anteloper's Bubble Under, which was also in production in the summer of 2020.
What have you been listening to lately?
I've been listening to a lot of Mal Waldron in recent weeks. I heard a recording of him playing All Alone for the first time while in isolation last year. The sound of it cut deep. I spent about 9 months separated from my partner due to the pandemic closed borders between the US and Canada in 2020. The tone in the recording reminded me of times in my childhood I would be sitting too close to my father’s piano hearing the detail in the hammer and resonance in the wood. There was a big gap in Mal’s work for me so I'm making up for that now. I listen to so many different things all the time it is hard to really answer this with any precision. I can be wildly serious about music and deep listening, but I also really love dance music and goofy mashups. I've started looking for albums to pair with family dinner these days which has led to a lot of discovery. I also have a rotation of music I listen to with my morning practice each day which currently includes Waldron along with Gábor Szabó, Yusef Lateef, Mulatu Astake, Moondog, Jeff Parker and others. I listen to a good amount of talks and lectures too. I listen to Ram Dass’s Experiments in Truth and Dying into Life over and over again. There is an almost endless cirriculum there for me. I also put the CD It Only Happens at Night, from Mike Reed’s trio, My Silence, into my car CD player and have yet to take it out. I do hear that pretty often. It features Jason Stein, Nick Butcher, Sharon Van Etten, along with Mike on Drums. I’ve been way out in the Canadian countryside and the balance of music and weird feels about right for the surreal time I’m having.
What does experimental/avant-garde mean to you?
This is an evolving definition for me as I'm not that academic or authoritative a person to which I feel I can make a claim to this. For me, experimental/avant-garde is more of the how or the approach then a definite consistent outcome. For some things at some times it may be wild, maximalist and totally existing outside time or convention, it may also be minimal, lovely, melodic and peaceful. I see truth in the work's approach with curiosity, rigor, exploration, and immersion by the creators, thus resulting in presenting it in an authentic way.
In what ways have you used stream streaming with your projects so far?
I've had a few shows on twitch and tried a few different methods of live performance streaming. With analog equipment it can be challenging to get the same visuals onto a digital screen as they come out. I've tried to use that limitation as a device to drive some innovation from building miniature projection rooms to shooting small physical experiments that lead into a final visual. One of the harder projects for me was in choosing to not mix the live camera feed for Brokeback at Constellation, despite having built the visuals for it. I completely respect the band's wish to do the stream live and am lucky to know and trust the team at Constellation to get the best shots and cuts. That said, watching it felt like my hands were tied behind my back while I was trying to eat soup. Albeit delicious soup.
I am a true believer in how distance and asynchronous interaction, streaming, and connectivity can support building a more sustainable infrastructure in the arts. At Experimental Sound Studio, where I serve on the board, we took a deep focus in expanding our streaming with the launch of The Quarantine Concerts. It's been humbling and inspiring to see the different communities all over the world connect and see different shows. I love seeing people in the comments and hope to see a commitment to this type of blended experience continuing once attended events start up again. Streaming is a viable option to grow audiences. There are a lot of pre pandemic times I would happily pay to watch a show that happened in a small venue across the world or even just across town.