Outpost Artists Resources is a non-profit arts organization located in Ridgewood, Queens. We have been serving the arts community since 1990 providing access to video, sound services and new media assistance at well below market rates. In 2003, we began the Cuts and Burns Residency Program, which provides artists with free access to our facility including personal assistance by our staff of video editors, audio engineers, and computer programmers
Outpost Artists Resources supports new creative work through its residencies, and events – its mission is to serve artists in need of technical assistance with video, audio, and physical computing based art projects and to foster a dialogue between visual art and experimental music. Outpost hosts gallery exhibitions, artists talks, screenings and events that pair visual art, video, experimental music, and performance in an effort to bring adventurous audiences challenging interdisciplinary projects.
FIRE OVER HEAVEN 3/21/24: LAUREN TOSSWILL & ST CELFER
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This month’s Fire Over Heaven has been curated by Ian Douglas-Moore. Here are some words about the show from him:
“The artists I’ve invited for the March edition of Fire Over Heaven make very different work, but both are interested in the dangers inherent in improvisation. Creating in the moment can expose the performer and increase the possibility of failure, but for these two those risks are generative.
A couple months ago I saw Lauren Tosswill perform a deceptively simple and understated set that brought together performance art, speech, concrete sounds, visual art, and audience participation into something that was quietly powerful and wonderfully confounding. I’m looking forward to seeing what she brings to Fire Over Heaven.
Loyal listeners to Outpost’s own Ridgewood Radio may recognize the recorded work of St Celfer, but this will be the first opportunity to hear him live in NYC since his move back to the city. He’s bringing a couple instruments of his own making, and I’m curious to see how these create the wide range of expressive electronic sounds heard on his bandcamp albums.”
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Lauren Tosswill is an experimental performance artist working with sound, site, and movement to explore improvisation and vulnerability. Her debut solo album, my home in the year, was released on enmossed (US) in 2018. Her work appears on the 2019 vinyl release Hotline, a compilation featuring Raven Chacon, Demian DinéYazhi’, and others. She also has a 2022 solo release titled “1, 2” on Hard Return (UK). She has forthcoming releases on Emmanuel Vincent Presents, Party Perfect, and enmossed. Her sound and video work has been exhibited at various institutions including The Baltimore Museum of Art, The Institute for Contemporary Art at VCU, The University of New England, and The Portland Museum of Art. Lauren has given livestream performances for Overtoon, Sonorium, Boston Hassle, Non-Event, Experimental Sound Studio, and The Wire. Lauren received her MFA in music/sound from the Milton Avery Graduate School of the Arts at Bard College.
St Celfer returns to his birthplace bringing future folk improvisations that use glitch-tronics which tread failure with counterblasts through the vanishing point. Sound is amalgamated and congealed into a resolution of crossed and overloaded signals.
During the isolation of the pandemic St Celfer devised instruments focused on the interface between man and machine. They mount to a single mic stand with interconnected gear attached and arranged so that the player can best make music in the moment.
Each unique performance embraces sensory overload in order to unlock ways of perceiving a world made narrow by the impositions of power. There is a lot of noise today – we just need to hear the music within it.
Expect tributes to New York City and the Downtown Scene and tracks that have been picked as ‘New and Notable’ by Bandcamp (StCelfer.bandcamp.com) for 3 years running.
