Visual Vision

Yuko Otomo
January 2019

The very idea of someone saying I am an artist; I am a writer; I am a painter; I am a poet; I am this; I am a musician; I am a dancer and this is what I do and I am doing, it is in and of itself a political act in this society. It is so un-pragmatic to have consideration beyond simple survival or beyond profit. It is actually a political act.  – Marilyn Sontag

This writing is dedicated to the late Marilyn Sontag (October 1, 1936 – March 28, 2018), a painter, a friend, the founding participating artist of both the Sound Unity Festival & the Vision Festival; the core curatorial team member of the Vision Festival Visual Art; TriBeCa Synagogue Gallery curator & a Carter Burden Galley member.

VF VI: Above & Below @ Knitting Factory 2001

a brief history of the Vision Festival

The origin of The Vision Festival that celebrated its 23rd year in May 2018 goes back to the “Vision for the 21st Century Festival” that took place in 1996, which later simply became the “Vision Festival.” Musicians, dancers, poets & visual artists came together collectively to express their visions for humanity’s course via creativity.

Its community based collective linage, organically grown out of the creative energy/spirit & social awareness goes back to the 80s. In 1984 & 1988, the Sound Unity Festival happened in the East Village NYC out of 2 vital friendships. One between William Parker & Peter Kowald. Another between Kowald & AR Pencke, a postwar Neo-German Expressionist painter & a Jazz drummer. With Kowald, a German bassist, one of the major creative forces of the 70s’ Wuppertal revolution in Germany as the binding force, the festival demonstrated the power of collective creativity. Marilyn Sontag had coined the perfectly fitting name for the festival, the Sound Unity Festival, a gathering of musicians & artists joining together under the leadership of bassist/composer William Parker & dancer/choreographer Patricia Nicholson.

In the mid 90s, carrying the spirit of the Sound Unity Festival, the Parker/Nicholson organized another challenging artists run organization called the Improviser’s Collective. It took place in Context Studio also in the East Village, promoting the idea of self-determination & self-programming for concerts & events. Improviser’s Collective was not for musicians alone but it incorporated creative spirits from other fields such as dance, poetry & visual art as well. The original concept for Arts (Music/Poetry/Dance/Visual Arts) For Art was solidified clearly then. Steve Dalachinsky, Steve Cannon & I were invited as poets in the collective, experiencing many levels of community involvements & struggles. It went on for almost 2 years (1994-1995) producing many memorable concerts with trial & error experimentations.

The Vision for the 21st Century Festival sprouted out of the Improviser’s Collective in 1996 with the leadership of Patricia Nicholson. It took place in Learning Alliance in lower Manhattan as a hand-made homegrown family festival. I was invited to be part of it as a visual artist. We wrote essays on the vision for the new century & made a small booklet out of them to commemorate the inauguration of the festival. Well-received, by both participants & the audience alike, the festival was a great success.

wild flowers: jazz & visual art

Like Haiku, a universal poetic form born out of one specific place on the earth, Japan, in the 17th century, Jazz is a unique universal art form born out of American soil. All over the world, people enjoy listening, playing & studying it. My personal involvement with Jazz started in my late 20s in Japan. Soon I moved to NYC: the mecca of the music. I have been incredibly fortunate to be able to experience its history in such a fulfilling scope & contents. I’ve been given chances to see many giants from the 50s perform & to see the post-loft jazz scene developed into the current situation. Jazz not only gives me tremendous aesthetic enjoyments but also it helps me learn how intuitive thinking works individually & collectively. Jazz demonstrates one of the most democratic processes of music making & it is one of the rare forms of creative endeavor that requires a complete understanding of “spiritual unity”, solo or multi-formations regardless. Without it, it cannot be created.  In order to play this music, you have to know how to “listen” to yourself & to others to understand the spirit of the music’s path. Jazz also demonstrates “improvisation” that is one of the most vital, mystical & alchemical processes of creation. Yet, surprisingly, Jazz, more so in the case of Free Jazz which the Vision Festival associates itself with, is still further marginalized (like wild flowers) in the American society when it embraces Pop, Rock, Punk, Folk, Country & even classical music solidly.

As a visual artist, I am obsessively interested in “Intuition/Intuitive Thinking” that goes beyond the logic of logos & its organic relationship to creation. What is Intuition? How does it work in the thought process & the creative process? How does it relate itself to “improvisation”? Can it be shared collectively? It is fascinating to see how Jazz relates to visual art. How interesting it is to realize that Jazz & Modern (visual) Art share the same birth century: the 20th Century! They even share the same terminology & some ideas such as “tone”, “color”, “composition” & “improvisation” to describe certain creative elements. There are quite a few visual artists who showed their interests in Jazz throughout the history of modern art.

In the past, there was Mondrian, an avid Jazz fan who died in the middle of painting his last painting “Victory Boogie Woogie” figuring out of “syncopation & intuition” in his visual philosophy search; Matisse who did a collage book “Jazz”; Miro who invited Duke Ellington & Cecil Taylor to play in his foundation in Spain; Stuart Davis who painted the quote by Ellington: “It don’t mean a thing if you ain’t got that swing” next to names of the 3 major postwar artists: De Kooning/Arshile Gorky/John Graham in the work titled “American Painting” (1932-42-54 o/c). He personally befriended with Ellington & also named his son “Earl” after Earl Hines.  Bob Thompson who was a close friend of Thelonious Monk, Ornette Coleman & other musicians & painted “Garden of Music” depicting images of Coleman, Don Cherry, John Coltrane, Sonny Rollins & Ed Blackwell  & did a cover art for Steve Lacy; Gertrude Abercrombie whose work I was just introduced to very recently, a friend of Dizzy Gillespie who called her “the first Bop artist.”

In our time, there is Jack Whitten, who left the words in his writing: “Learn to live by the philosophy of Jazz”; David Hammons with his Monk & Coltrane inspired installations; Melvin Edwards with works dedicated to Billie Holiday & Chano Pozo; Stanley Whitney who claims Ornette Coleman’s “The Shape of Jazz to come” as a major impact in his creative life. Bill Dixon & Peter Brotzman who started their careers as visual artists first, Emilio Cruz kept both arts: music & visual art alive all through his creative life & Anthony Braxton who claims the art of Kandinsky as one of his main inspirations. Besides the creative philosophical influences on visual art, there are some artists who work directly associating Jazz motifs & subjects, depicting images of musicians playing such as the Vision Festival’s own Music Witness: Jeff Schlanger & Jorgo Schaefer, Melvin Clark… the list will go on.

& there is Jazz photography. It is a unique genre of its own graced with its rich history. The list of devoted photographers who’ve captured some of the most decisive ecstatic moment of this music & the musicians is quite impressive. They are like religious iconographers of our time. Chuck Stewart, Val Wilmer, Guy Le Querrec, Jacques Bisceglia, Thierry Trombert, Raymond Ross, Lona Foote, Larry Fink… & the Vision Festival regulars such as Enid Farber, Peter Gannushkin, Robert Sutherland Cohen, Alan Nahigian, Jack Vartoogian, Micheal Wilderman, Scott Freidlander, Marek Larski, Luciano Rossetti, Ziga Koritnik… Although not strictly Jazz photographers, Roy DeCarava & W. Eugene Smith’s contributions in this field are tremendous. Smith not only preserved the images, but also hosted many historical concerts at his 6th Ave loft during 1957-1965 at the height of the music revolution. It was one of the earliest Loft Jazz movement scenes.

non -white-box exhibition spaces

The Vision Festival has never had a permanent home. It has been a “gypsy/nomad” festival without a home-ground base over the years. Every year, the organizers struggle to find “the right space” for the events to take place. Because of such circumstances, visual artists including Jazz photographers in the festival never fail to face an unusual challenge over “where & how” to present work.

In many unusual “non-white-box” spaces, we’ve done stage art, mounted work & done site-specific installations. Incorporating the already existing architectural qualities & the history of the space into the process, we challenge our creativity individually & collectively in order to cope with the given reality. What an inspiring experience it is to go through the process of magical transformations through the shared power of visual art! I’ve learned so much about life & art participating in it over 20 years. Yes, it is a very political act indeed as Marilyn Sontag states in the opening remarks of this article.

It is fascinating to see the list of venues that the festival & some off-shut satellite shows have taken place in the past 23 years. Learning Alliance; St. Nicolas of Myra Church basement; an ex-synaguge Orensanz Foundation; Old Catholic Church Youth Center; QUANDO; The New Age Cabaret (formally known as the Electric Circus); Mercury Lounge; White St. Synaguge; an ex-public school building Clemente Soto Velez Cultural Center; 2nd location Knitting Factory; Abrons Arts Center; Judson Memorial Church & Roulette Brooklyn where the last few years’ events took place.

Despite the richness of its history & how it is entwined with other fields of creativity, it seems that the creative & social significances of this music are unfortunately, still not fully appreciated, studied & understood. How can we make this universal art fully embrace in its own birthplace? Haiku is still loved & practiced not only in its birth place but also in many different languages. How can we establish a similar enthusiasm & respect for this bountiful treasure offered to everyone? It is a quest we carry together.

artists at the Vision Festival

With the inclusivity as the principle philosophy of curation, many remarkable artists from different fields & nationalities  have participated in the past 23 years. Painters, sculptures, installation artists, photographers, video artists all joined together to embrace the music. The below is the full list of participants in alphebetical order.

Dennis Bellone, Elena Beriolo, Amir Bey, Jacques Bisceglia, Chakaia Booker, Michael Brain, Bill Brand, Irini Bratti, Leronn Brooks, Skip Brown, Phyllis Bulkin-Lehrer, Anne Büssow, Paul Clay, Tim Clifford, John Corbin, Kiernan Costello, Dennis Cowley, Bob Craddick, Tony Cragg, Emilio Cruz, Nadine DeKoningswarter, Stephanie Demanuelle, Bill Dixon, Jim Donahue, Lois Eby, Stephania Errore, Enid Farber, Kit Fitzgerald, Lona Foote, Barbara Friedman, Peter Gannushkin, Diane Green, Jonas Hidalgo, Jene Highstein, Christine Hughes, Ann Humanfeld, Inner City Projects, Robert Janz, Andreas Jung, Charlotte Ka, Robin Kahn, Margaret Kannenstine, Raymond King, Alain Kirili, Ziga Koritnik, Peter Kowald, Jackson Krall, Melissa Kretschmer, Diana Kurz, Oliver Lake, Liu Lan Ding, M.P. Landis, Diane Greene Lent, Rozanne Levine, El Loko, Ariane Lopez-Huici, Whitfield Lovell, Ellenore Magid, Katy Martin, Bill Mazza, Susan Mastrangelo, Victor Melamed, Maya Misra, Kazuko Miyamoto, Michael Müller, Alan Nahigian, Richard Nonas, Eva Ohlow, Christine Olsavsky, Yuko Otomo, Joe Overstreet, Miriam Parker, Julie Ezelle Patton, Lucio Pozzi, Nick Reuchel, Ted Riederer, Marcy Rosenblat, Raymond Ross, Luciano Rossetti, Alan Roth, Jörgo Schäfer, Jeff Schlanger, Tina Seligman, Maura Sheehan, Mark Sheldon, Zak Sherzad, Alan Silva, Marilyn Sontag, Cassie Thorton, Yoka Toda, Esteban del Valle, Jason Weller, Michael Wilderman, Kim Winkler, Lili White, Stanley Whitney, Henry Wood, Jo Wood-Brown, Holly Zausner.

art & jazz as dialogue

I asked Jo Wood-Brown and Katy Martin if they would speak about the challenges of creating visual art within the context of a live jazz performance and how visual art can function as another voice in the mix as part of a larger conversation.

 In Dialogue: Jo Wood-Brown and Katy Martin →

◊

Yuko Otomo is a visual artist & a bilingual poet/writer of Japanese origin. Her publications include Garden: Selected Haiku (Beehive Press), Genesis (Sisyphus Press), Small Poems (Ugly Duckling Presse), The Hand of The Poet (UDP), STUDY & Other Poems on Art (UDP), Elements (Feral Press), KOAN (New Feral Press) & FROZEN HEATWAVE: a poetry collaboration project with Steve Dalachinksy (Luna Bison Prods).

Read more by Yuko Otomo on Arteidolia→