VOICES, Meetings With Remarkable People

Phill Niblock, Minimalist Composer and Intermedia Artist

VOICES, Meetings with Remarkable People
HD, couleurs, 64 min, 2014

A cineportrait of Phill Niblock (1933–2024), American composer, pioneer of drone music, essentially creating music through the slow accumulation of sustained microtones obtained from reprocessing acoustic instruments, filmmaker and director of avant-garde music foundation Experimental Intermedia in NYC, who,  since the 60s developed a multidisciplinary body of work, mostly performed by himself, with Minimalist music, conceptual art and structural cinema, systematic art and politics. Recognized as one of the greatest experimental composers of our time, he was awarded the John Cage Prize in 2014 and his work has been shown around the world: The Museum of Modern Art, the Centre Pompidou, Akademie der Kunste, Berlin, Carpenter Center for the Visual Arts at Harvard.
Phill Niblock made music and intermedia performances since the ’60s that was showed around the world (The Museum of Modern Art, The Wadsworth Atheneum, the Kitchen, the Paris Autumn Festival, Akademie der Kunste, Berlin, Carpenter Center for the Visual Arts at Harvard).. Since 1985, he directed  the Experimental Intermedia Foundation in New York, where he produced Music and Intermedia presentations since 1975 and he was the curator of EI’s XI Record label.
Phill Niblock was born in Indiana in 1933. He is a retired professor of film, video and photography at The College of Staten Island, the City University of New York. Phill Niblock’s music is available on the XI, Moikai, Mode, Matiere Memoire, Room 40, and Touch labels. DVDs of films and music are available on the Extreme label and Von Archive. Buy the DVD Watch the Film on VOD
Phill Niblock, minimalist composer & intermedia artist / Rina Sherman VOICES, Meetings with Remarkable People

 [Experimental Intermedia] March 2024 Series – March 17-25
The first Experimental Intermedia March Series without Phill Niblock, NYC, 2024
Curated by Katherine Liberovskaya

Phill Niblock Loft EI Soho / Rina Sherman

 [Experimental Intermedia] March 2024 Series – March 17-25
The first Experimental Intermedia March Series Programme without Phill Niblock, Soho, NYC, 2024

Monday March 18, 2024, Sarah Bernstein (NYC) – at Zürcher Gallery  Solo violin/voice performance utilizing heavily-processed sound and raw expression, melding noise, electronic improvisation, art rock and existential poetry into an ecstatic unity

Rina Sherman, autoportrait, Joan Jonas exhibition: Good Night Good Morning, MOMA, March 22, 2024

[Experimental Intermedia] March 2024 Series – March 17-25
The first Experimental Intermedia March Series Programme without Phill Niblock, Soho, NYC, 2024, curated by Katherine Liberovskaya
Saturday 23 March, 2024, Rina Sherman (Paris) / Phill Niblock – at @emilyharveyfoundation

In 2013, I made a cineportrait, Phill Niblock, Minimalist Composer and Intermedia Artist (Rina Sherman, VOICES, rencontres avec des personnes remarquables)

Katherine Liberovskaya and Gwenolee Zürcher / Rina Sherman

Katherine Liberovskaya, curator of the  March 2024 Series – March 17-25 [Experimental Intermedia] and Gwenolee Zürcher, director Zürcher Gallery.

Kaffe Matthews (Berlin) - at Zürcher Gallery / rina Sherman

Monday March 18, Kaffe Matthews  (Berlin) – at Zürcher Gallery 
Live processing 15th century alchemical systems through the Riple; An instrument occupied with the generation and processing of all colours of noise, designed through discoveries made by the British alchemist George Ripley; Noise, colours, lightning, square waves and clocks, mashed with salt and fed by mercury to feed the Toad, the gold, the final output? Today with the WORM on vocals – www.kaffematthews.net

Joan Jonas Emily Harvey Foundation / Rina Sherman

Friday March 22, Joan Jonas (NYC) – at the Emily Harvey Foundation   
Joan Jonas will screen a selection of older and newer video works

[Experimental Intermedia] March 2024 Series – March 17-25
The first Experimental Intermedia March Series Programme without Phill Niblock, Soho, NYC, 2024, curated by Katherine Liberovskaya
Saturday 23 March, 2024, Rina Sherman (Paris) / Phill Niblock – at @emilyharveyfoundation

On one of my first trips to New York after coming to Paris in exile in 1984, Phill Niblock filmed a portrait of me in a series of portraits, Anecdotes From Childhood, that featured in his 2007 exhibition at the Gahlberg Gallery and was taken up in Working Title (2013) published by Presses du réel in a bilingual edition; Phill Niblock traveled constantly, and we saw each other often when he came to perform in Paris.