In Performance: Andrew Schneider – Wow and Flutter

Andrew Schneider uses the body as a physical playback device of recorded media. Using custom built wearable electronics, subsonic sound scores, interactive projections, and a site-specific rope and pulley system, Wow and Flutter literalizes the mashup. Recorded media exists embedded within the physical mediums of plastic magnetic tape, grooved vinyl records, and celluloid film. The tiny bits of silver hallide crystals, iron coating, and recycled vinyl makeup the whole that is the recorded memory of events past. Recording, and playback of recorded media, is imperfect. Tape stretch, chemical decomposition, and structural deterioration of the media itself distorts what was originally captured. Further, cassette players, turntables, and darkroom enlargers distort the final perception. Human’s memory mechanisms are similarly flawed. The body too scans with tired eyes, hears through walls, and touches through calloused fingers. We write what we do not mean, and we remember what never happened. We convey thoughts and memories through the medium of speech. Language separates us from the experience of the real. All of our existence is mediated in some way. We remember the photograph of an event more than we remember the event itself. We try to log and capture our existence to share with others and more so to share with ourselves. We shield ourselves from experience with the lenses, screens, and microphones used in an attempt to preserve the experience itself. Wow and Flutter seeks the physical playback of collective memory both real and fictional, both personal and found, both physical artifacts and sweeping cultural memes. Digital storage systems have made the collection and distribution of information and knowledge ubiquitous. But they have also collapsed the physical space of organization. When everything, all information is all accessible, and all at the same time and all simultaneously; order, ordinance does not matter. Linear time as we know it is indifferent. Things poke holes in the present moment from other places. The whole of everything is now in one frame. Everything at once. All the time. Flattened out. With a meat tenderizer.

Wow and Flutter
February 25-27, 2010
8:00PM
Chocolate Factory
5-49 49th Ave
L.I.C. – New York
(718) 482-7069

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