Imperialisms come early this year!

December 20th, despite what the flier says. facebook

WMBR fundraising this Wednesday!!!

617-253-8810 The WMBR fundraiser is upon us and my turn at bat is this coming Wednesday (November 2nd) between 6-8pm. We only do this once a year and rely on listeners to make up a huge portion of our operating budget so we do need your help. There are some excellent premiums that I helped pick out, available to all pledgers to WMBR in general, you can see them here (I even designed one). I have a special way to thank donors to my show: with a brand new, super-special, Intercontinental t-shirt, designed by the amazingly talented artist John Dretzka. It's available for a $50 donation, and you get it in addition to the regular WMBR shirts and stuff for that level donation. It will be on a Smoke colored Anvil t-shirt.

This is kind of what it looks like on a young white dude:

ALSO, there is a brand new Intercontinental sticker, designed by me, that will be given to all donors of my show, regardless of the amount. It will be 3"x3":

ALSO, there will be some special cds and LPs and stuff that we'll be giving away ONLY during my show. These will not be available from WMBR in general, they will be given away as drawings between 6-8pm, you can only get them by calling 67-253-8810 tomorrow. ALSO, for a pledge of $150, you can come down and do an hour of my show for me! Come hang out in the vast WMBR record library and see our basement music factory for yourself! We can talk records. All this and you will be taking part in one of the most exciting radio stations in New England and and world. Where you spend your money is perhaps the most important way to effect the cultural landscape of your world. Please consider helping out this amazing station and my little show.

Kala Bandar Records is Born

I have started a record label! The first release is set to come out two weeks from tonight at a record release party as part of the monthly series called Imperialisms, at River Gods in Cambridge, MA. The first record will be a (fully authorized) compilation of international music from the 60's and 70's, which I'm calling "Intercontinental Transmissions volume 1." Here's a picture of the cover, more information can be found over at:

http://kalabandarrecords.blogspot.com/

Imperialisms youtube edition at River Gods

This is tomorrow!

Packrat on Bumpkin Island

This is the companion post to this more formal-looking page.
Packrat was excited to be a part of the 2011 Bumpkin Island Art Encampment. Bumpkin Island is a small island in the Boston Harbor with an interesting and layered history of human occupation. At various points in recent history, it has been used as a farm, children's hospital, military base and park. It is clearly within eyeshot of downtown Boston but is far enough removed that it was used as a camp for German sailors during World War I.

There is architectural evidence of 4 clearly delineated waves of human occupation. Currently, it has more historical relics than useful facilities and is maintained as a park with a strangely casual relationship between historical preservation and ecological practicality. The vegetation has the typical conflict between native and invasive species but is made richer by the persistence of overgrown ornamentals and fruit trees from long gone gardens and agricultural fields. Because the island is a park, much of this historical record is preserved. We became interested in the diverse histories of objects on Bumpkin island as a key to understanding some of the complex relationships that make up the current Bumpkin Island. Packrat is Dirk Adams, Helen White and Jesse Kaminsky.

We chose to work in the oldest surviving structure on the island, a farm house from the early 1800s. We were allowed to clear some of the brush, since it was an invasive species.
these were our tools:
We began by collecting samples. We proceeded as if we were going to collect a sample of one of everything on the island and started with that was most interesting to us. We acknowledge the bias in this method. Here, we are collecting a portion of the Pokeweed plant.
That sample is bagged:
Numbered:
and logged. We identified the object and categorized it according to what type of process brought it to the island: atmospheric, oceanic, anthropogenic or terrestrial
We then flagged the location of the sample with a numbered flag

and created an infrastructure of wooden stakes along the walking pathsDirk carried a lot of the flagsWe then tied color-coded string to the numbered flagThe string was color-coded to mean: blue=oceanic, black=atmospheric, red/orange=anthropogenic and green=terrestrial. We colored the string with sharpies, like this:The wooden stakes were used to route the string back to the central collectionWe ran the string coming from the flags along the stakes so that atmospheric was at the top, followed by oceanic, terrestrial and anthropogenic.The stakes were pre-marked in one-inch increments, we used staples to hold the string loosely in placeI estimate we covered a half-mile of trailsHere are the numbered balls of string, waiting to be connected to the central collection funnelSince we were working in a public park, we had to be careful to route everything away from where people walked or high enough overhead that it would not be in the way. Here are some of the strings routed from one of the main hubs, over the walking path and into the old farmhouseOur central collection funnel was made with the same cotton string we tied to the flags. We needed to secure string around the doorway to build the funnel so Dirk and I played catch with a ball of string for 6 hours. I had a broken wrist alreadyAn important restriction with this art encampment is that you could only build with what you can carry. String can be carried in a very compact spool and yet can take up a remarkable amount of space when it's unwound. I fell in love with this curve early on.and the way the early morning sun came through the windowHere is the first wall, almost finishedlaying out the framework for the second wallthe second wall makes it more of a funnelPhotographing a large scale installation is always difficult, especially without a wide angle lens. I use the photoshop to photomerge a lot, here is my favorite panorama that I made in photoshopHere is another one from the side that turned out a little rougherand a nice shot of the morning light coming through the eastern window
After the funnel was complete, we placed the 35 samples we collected inside so that you could trace the line back to the original, flagged locationHere are a few other samples we collected, number 10 is a rose hipand number 11 is raspberry
After 3 days of installation and 6 hours of living time, we began dismantling the funnel. We started by rolling the string up on the flags back to the main funnel. The larger ones were farther away. Here are a bunch of them waiting to be cut loose.
Look for them at the Bumpkin Island follow up show at a Fort Point gallery soon.

Packrat gif

large, sprawling installations that involve temporal processing are difficult to capture in still photograph but this animation does little more to capture the Packrat piece that was at the Bumpkin Island Art Encampment this weekend. Still, I think it's funny. Packrat is Dirk Adams, Jesse Kaminsky and Helen White

balloon flower

Bumpkin Island Art Encampment

I'm very excited to be taking part in the 2011 Bumpkin Island Art Encampment as a part of the Packrat collective. We'll be building giant funnel webs out of string and collecting and analyzing the constituent parts of the island. More information here and here

celebrating two years of Imperialisms tonight at River Gods. TONIGHT

Imperialisms returns to River Gods in Central Square tonight but this time it's with gifts. We've been holding down this monthly night of rare foreign language records for two years and we're celebrating by giving away some limited Imperialisms t shirts and Intercontinental stickers. Come by from 9-1am for all the crazy sounds.

If you haven't been, Imperialisms is a monthly dj night that I perform with Angela Sawyer of Weirdo Records, you can find a gallery of all the wonderful fliers that Angela has put together and some of my playlists here
and this months event is on facebook

djing for Group Doueh and Khaira Arby at Oberon TONIGHT!

The Imperialisms duo (me and Angela Sawyer) will be djing tonight at Club Oberon for the Group Doueh/Khaira Arby show. Khaira Arby will be joined by the horn section from Debo Band, should be very exciting. It's co-presented by End of an Empire and Bowery Boston.

tickets: http://www.boweryboston.com/event/47037/

Invasion at 57Delle Project Space update

Finally, documentation from the show "Invasion" at 57Delle Project Space is online. It was an honor to be among the final two shows to happen at that space before it was gutted to make way for condos. Thanks to everyone involved in 57Delle. Everything that lives, dies.


http://www.jessekaminsky.com/projects/invasion_2011/invasion.html

djing at the ICA Boston for The Record: Contemporary Art and Vinyl

hey, I'll be djing for one hour on June 3rd, playing all pre-revolutionary Iranian 45s, as a part of the ICA Boston show "The Record: Contemporary Art and Vinyl"

Imperialisms in April

Carnevale in Venice

I'll be djing at this event at Oberon on April 13th, playing all Italian rock music, opening for The Upper Crust.

2010 Annual Report

Pursuing multiple creative endeavors while holding down a day job can be difficult. Over the past couple of years I have developed a couple of strategies to help me focus energy towards things I'd like be doing with life. I'm essentially measuring time spent on various activities, comparing it to what I did last year and to how I'd like to be doing. Ultimately, it is meant to form my daily activities but the byproduct is a lot of historical data, which has led to this annual report. For reference, here's my report from 2009 in two parts: part 1 and part 2

and here's what 2010 looked like

Invasion videos by Video Sphere

thanks to Werner Grundl at VideoSphere

Imperialisms at River Gods