Doors 7:30p
Program 8:00p

UnionDocs
352 Onderdonk Ave
Ridgewood, NY

Please join us for an immersive evening that celebrates and opens PRESSING PLAY/BACK, a new gallery show at UnionDocs by transdisciplinary artist Mike Clemow and composer-percussionist Lisa Schonberg. 

PRESSING PLAY/BACK brings 5 installation works to our gallery space that showcase these two artists distinct yet complementary approaches to exploring sound, environment, existence and perception. To celebrate the installation’s launch on the evening of November 14th, we’re spotlighting a set of dynamic quad-channel sound performances from Schonberg and Clemow.

Mike Clemow roots their practice in field recording, photography, drawing, improvisation and writing, creating speculative sites that invite audiences to question entrenched binary distinctions. Their presented works investigate the boundaries between human and non-human, animate and inanimate, nature and culture. Clemow’s installation at UNDO, entitled Bill of Lading (6), problematizes notions of extraction and objecthood by placing visual and sonic images that have been taken from Amazonia, Brazil up against formal acknowledgements of receipt (the “bill of lading”) from the galleries or institutions where the work is installed. Their multi-channel performance on the 12th, Fire-Fish Nesting in a Burning Bush, will provide a more-than-real encounter with their layered soundscape creations derived from field recordings. 

Lisa Schonberg’s compositions bring her deep engagement with ecological systems into a sonic landscape, combining her background in entomology and in-depth field research with an attuned percussionist’s ear. Her recent work includes participatory installations and performances that seek to challenge our assumptions about overlooked life forms and reveal the complex auditory world embedded in our natural surroundings. Schonberg’s installations on display in our gallery, an artist book and album from her project Old Growth Playback and a listening station and prototype from Refuges for Ants, speculate on future relationships between humans and ecological environments, whether old-growth forests or ant nests. In the field, Schonberg has been developing compositional systems that engage with the sounds of insects and their surroundings — the evening event will feature a program of her site-specific musical compositions and sonic experiments that engage streams, forests, and insects. Schonberg’s work was supported by residencies at Wave Farm and HJ Andrews Experimental Forest, and the Media Arts Assistance Fund, a regrant partnership of NYSCA and Wave Farm with the support of the Office of the Governor & NYS Legislature.

Together, Clemow and Schonberg offer a profound exploration of sound, space, and ecological sciences, encouraging participants to engage with their surroundings in new, embodied, and thought-provoking ways. We’re so excited to put their respective works into conversation here in Ridgewood.

Kick off the opening of PRESSING PLAY/BACK with us by tuning into their live transmissions! See you there!

Program

Bill of Lading (6) (installation)

19 mins, 2017-

Bill of Lading consists of a list of visual and sonic “images” that have been extracted from Amazonia as a result of the artist’s process of making field recordings and photography. Each time the work is shown, the artist documents its importation to that gallery or museum, providing all the necessary translations or transformations, and requires a receipt from the gallery as documentation of carriage and receipt of these items, which will be included in the next showing. Thus the work accumulates documentation tracing these materials from Amazonia to their current location via the acknowledgement of previous institutions in which it has been displayed. There is a stipulation that the work cannot be shown in two places at once, as it is only complete with the documentation of its previous location. This will be the sixth importation/exhibition of the work.

Fire-Fish Nesting in a Burning Bush (performance)

11 mins

Old Growth Playback (installation)

2024

Refuges for Ants (installation)

2023

Lookout Creek (performance)

5:25 mins, 2024

A selection from Old Growth Playback (2024).

This work is modeled after HJA resident Leah Wilson’s work, Ambient (2014), which hangs on the wall outside the apartment I stayed in at HJA. Andrews researcher Fred Swanson suggested that I create an audio piece based on her approach. Leah had examined and represented the reflections of light and color in and around a small stone placed in the stream. I became excited about this idea of looking at one physical space and taking readings/documentation of the myriad of sonic textures, pitches and combinations that can occur in that one point – and thus making a tangible representation of what might ordinarily seem like a indecipherable stream of noise. Through this work I have thought about the immense musicality of stream acoustics, how we might grow more familiar with each stream site’s acoustic details through isolation and repetition. I re-visited Leah’s approximate sampling site on Lookout Creek, at the water gage. I placed a Hydrophone in one spot on a flat rock at the stream bottom, and took one 10 second recording every two minutes. From each 10 second sample, I extracted 4 recordings of eighth-note value at set points across samples, and built a loop of each eighth note set. The composition begins with the 1st sample’s loop, and moves through each subsequent loop, with sections of overlap between each consecutive pair. I did not effect or process the sounds beyond using an equalizer and adding a touch of reverb. Anthony Brisson did the final mastering of this work.

Old Growth Playback (performance)

4:36 mins, 2024

A selection from Old Growth Playback (2024).

What will old-growth forests of the future sound like? Schonberg’s compositions of percussion, field recording, and synthesized soundscapes were conceived during her time as an artist-in-residence at HJ Andrews Experimental Forest, a biological research station in Oregon’s Cascade Mountains.

The Trash Heap Has Spoken (performance)

3 mins

Invertebrate Feelings (performance)

3 mins

Taschi (performance)

3:30 mins

Program Duration: 60 mins

Bios

Mike Clemow (he/they) is a transdisciplinary artist based in Brooklyn, NY. Their work is manifested in performances and installations using sound, text, images, and found objects. Clemow’s project includes the creation of improvised and speculative sites from documents of experience. Their practice involves field recording, photography, drawing, and writing. Their work addresses the relations of its own production and the history of its media, creating spaces of inquiry in which engage concepts of access, and privilege, as well as challenge entrenched binary ontologies such as nature vs. culture, human vs. non-human, animate vs. inanimate, and mind vs. matter.

Their recent projects include sonic studies of the Mobile-Tensaw River Delta in Alabama, sonic performances using unpredictable generative systems, and painting in collaboration with artificial intelligence.

Mike Clemow graduated from NYU’s Interactive Telecommunications Program in 2009. Their work has been shown at Issue Project Room, River to River Festival, Eyebeam, Spectrum, Exit Art, Diapason, AC Institute, and Festival MOD (Guadalajara, MX), the Museo Reina Sofia (Madrid, SP), the Wrong Biennial, Synthesis Gallery (Berlin), and Gadsden Museum in Gadsden, AL. They were awarded the Sonic Mmabolela sound art residency in Limpopo, South Africa in 2013 and 2015, LABVERDE residency, and Mana Contemporary BSMT Residency in 2017, IDEA New Rochelle in 2019, Naturphilia Residency (Gadsden, AL) 2023, and the I-Park Interdisciplinary Residency in 2024.

Lisa Schonberg is a composer, percussionist and author creating sound works based in ecological research. Informed by her background in entomology, Schonberg is interested how these sound works can reveal and challenge assumptions about insects and other overlooked or avoided nonhumans. Since 2017 she has been collaborating with Brazilian entomologists on research investigating ant bioacoustics in the Amazon. In this and other field research, Schonberg has been developing composition systems that interact with sounds of insects and their environments.

Recently presented work includes the participatory sound installation The Insects are Present, the art-book and album Old Growth Playback, and works on endangered Hawaiian bees, fungi, and plastics. Schonberg’s compositions are performed by Secret Drum Band and UAU. Her publications include The Hylaeus Project, The DIY Guide to Drums, and contributions to the journals Technoetic Arts and Acoustic Ecology Review.

She has presented work at The Nobel Prize Museum, The Museum of Contemporary Art Antwerp, FILE Festival, and Museo Reina Sofia (SP), and performed at the TBA Festival, the Pompidou, the Brooklyn Museum, Bosque da Ciencia (BR), and the American Museum of Natural History. Schonberg has been an artist in residence at Wave Farm, Labverde, the Banff Centre, Pioneerworks, HJ Andrews Experimental Station, and Signal Fire. Her work has been supported by NYSCA, The Center for Deep Listening, the Oregon Arts Commission, Regional Arts and Culture Commission (OR), & The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts. She is currently a PhD candidate in Electronic Arts at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in Troy, NY.