Twenty years ago today (or at least come August), Long Beach didn’t know what hit it when for a single night artist/curatorial group FLOOD first transformed the East Village Arts District into an extended gallery of sound-focused multisensory installations spread across 30 indoor and outdoor locations that attendees encountered as they steered themselves through the area.
Marco Schindelmann was one of those attendees by happenstance on that fateful Saturday. After having dinner with friends, Schindelmann trekked through the East Village to get to his car — and what he encountered changed the course of his life.
“I walked past the 1st & Elm Community Garden and saw it was strewn with televisions, which was surreal and wonderful,” he recalls. “Then a little farther down in an alley was a pair of cowboy boots broadcasting sound of some sort. Then I came across the tiny little speakers, like little mushrooms, and you had to bend down on one knee and put your ear really close to them to hear what they were playing. […] Multifarious manifestations of aesthetic experience everywhere. That really appealed to me.
The following year, Schindelmann’s MLuM was a SoundWalk participant, staging a five-hour performance-art piece in the Grand Salon of the Cooper Arms Building (with “all sorts of sound elements occurring at the same time; real-time manipulation; it worked with muzak; there was a Buddhist element, a Christian element, a shamanistic element; women in evening gowns…”). FLOOD was impressed and asked him to join as a full-fledged member, and from 2006 he was a SoundWalk co-producer until 2013, when FLOOD decided that the 10th iteration would be the last.
“Like the rest of the country, Long Beach was hit hard by the financial collapse that began in 2007,” he says. “Some small businesses in the East Village didn’t survive, limiting the number of indoor spaces that could host installations. Also, I’m sorry to say that some of the surviving local businesses got greedy and wanted to charge rent to host installations — even though SoundWalk activated the area in a way that few events ever did. After SoundWalk 2012, [FLOOD co-founder and SoundWalk originator] Kamran Assadi suggested that perhaps we had exhausted the possibilities in the East Village, and after deliberation we decided that the 10th SoundWalk would be the last.”
But in 2016, Schindelmann was approached by Angels Gate Cultural Center Executive Director Amy Eriksen about reincarnating/reimagining SoundWalk there. Deeply involved in planning an alternate event, Assadi gave his blessing for Schindelmann to be the main producer for what became soundpedro, which (COVID interruptions aside) has been preserving and advancing a unique South Bay sound-art tradition since 2017.
For the uninitiated, an obvious question: What the fuck is “sound art”? One possible answer: Think of it as any intentional shaping of the sonic landscape, large or small. (Consider music a specialized subgenre of sound art with special attention paid to rhythm and melody.) At its abstract best, a work of sound art will draw your attention to auditory phenomena that otherwise you might have taken for granted or missed entirely — including the aural ambiance in which you are immersed wherever you go.
Across an extended space beset with multiple works, you may find yourself wondering whether this or that sonic element was a preplanned part of a particular installation or the event in general. The point is: it doesn’t matter. It’s part of your experience in that given moment.
Apropos, soundpedro2024’s theme is CHARIVARI (from the Latin caribaria, “mess, pandemonium, commotion,” etc.), which FLOOD notes “has a rich history [including] ‘absurd portraits,’ ‘a loud, unmelodious cacophony’ sometimes used to make a statement or to protest (think clanging pots and pans), a potpourri or bringing together of unrelated elements, and even a Bavarian belt chain adorned with amulets.”
While the annual onsite soundpedro centerpiece takes place June 1, part and parcel of the 2024 event is the soundplay <=> southbay retrospective, which looks back over 20 years since the seminal SoundWalk 2004 event, bears witness to the present, and hearkens to the future.
“The act of listening — aurally or non-aurally — entails focusing on a sound, be it in front, behind, above, below, or through one’s body,” Schindelmann says. “Part of the beauty of most sound-art events is that contextural [sic] bleed is inevitable, be it sonic or mental. Whispers and chirps seep in, as do recollection and foresight. During soundplay <=> southbay, one’s internal grasp of the moment leans on past experience and future projection to reshape the present. We can be fully focused on the present moment, here at Angels Gate in 2024, but we’re also getting a wonderful bleed from the 20 years previous, and we’re letting the possibilities of the next 20 years bleed into our present considerations.”
Looking forward, FLOOD’s future may include a new sound-art event in the Yucca Valley, where Assadi moved recently in the wake of deciding to close his Utopia Restaurant after 24 years as an East Village anchor.
In the present, soundpedro’s June 1 transformation of Angels Gate’s seven acres will feature nearly 50 installations, including:
- 3TONcinema, “a dynamic installation wherein a series of visual symbols is sonified by way of a performative 16mm film projection”;
- As Seen On TV, “an interactive installation using old TV’s, camcorders, CCTV cameras, and VHS footage captured at previous onsite soundpedro events. The audio will be captured live from audience interaction through microphones, contact microphones, looping and reverb pedals”;
- Bug Tag, which “is played when a micro-radio transmitter sends out cricket field recordings. The space will be filled with 25-30 radios (battery operated and wall plugs) and viewers and participants will be invited to tune the radios to the station transmitting the cricket recordings. Once the crickets are found, the radios will be set down, building a meadow. The radio transmitter is to be placed in the center of the room, allowing bodily interaction in the space to effect the signals being picked up by the radios. When a radio goes out of tune, viewers/participants will be invited to retune the radios, searching through the sea of signals, playing tag with the bugs”;
- Meanderthals, who “will stroll throughout [Angels Gate] producing various sounds as they travel in costume — part troubadours, part jesters, part moving installations, activating the space briefly with new textures as they move along”;
- Sound of War our Bodies Store, a “sound compilation extracted from UNICEF and found recordings which explore the manipulation in news dissemination related [to] weapons of war. Audio loops mirror and echo the relentlessness of war and its destruction.Audio and video installation serve as a conduit shifting perspectives on the human condition and ways in which death and suffering are utilized as tools.”
Another is J3M5’s “experimental live [performance] of glitch, r[h]ythmic noise and dubtronics [which] explores technical integrations with stereo effects, extensive MIDI, CV and modified hardware.” The man behind the moniker, James Allen (no relation to RLn’s publisher), says recent happenings make soundpedro more important to the sound-art community than ever.
“soundpedro is always very relevant and important due to the close connection with visual/conceptual arts,” Allen says. “I’m very thankful to take part in soundpedro this year, without which I’m not sure how much visibility/audibility this facet of my live practice would presently have,” especially in light of “cancellation [of the] NorCal Noise Festival, and with the International Noise Conference, [which is] no longer a large-scale fest [and] being mostly limited to locals.”
Schindelmann is gratified that, seven years on, soundpedro’s reanimation of the SoundWalk tradition is not only alive and well but growing by the year.
“Each year with soundpedro we’re seeing new faces; it’s not just the same group of artists year after year,” he says. “One of [this year’s participants] commented that one of the things he appreciates about soundpedro is the diversity of approaches, aesthetics, and sensibilities that are part of the event. Whereas most other sound-art events tend to be more specialized, FLOOD takes more of a generalist approach, which leads to cross-pollination within the community.”
WHAT / WHEN:
- soundplay <=> southbay: an ongoing retrospective of 20 years of SoundWalk/soundpedro, open Thursday through Saturday 10am–4pm through June 1.
- soundpedro, an evening of ear-oriented multisensory presentations: Saturday, June 1, 7pm–10pm.
WHERE: Angels Gate Cultural Center, 3601 S. Gaffey St., San Pedro 90731; angelsgateart.org
ADMISSION: free! (includes parking)
MORE INFO: soundpedro.art