Born in Brooklyn, New York, [1] Palestine began by singing sacred Jewish music and studying accordion and piano. At the age of 12 he started playing backup conga and bongo drum for Allen Ginsberg, Gregory Corso, Kenneth Anger, and Tiny Tim. [5] From 1962 to 1969, Palestine was carillonneur for the Saint Thomas Episcopal Church in Manhattan, [2] eventually creating a piece that consisted of 1,500 15-minute performances.
From 1968 to 1972, Palestine studied vocal interpretation with Pandit Pran Nath, [5] experimented on kinetic light sculptures with Len Lye, composed music for Tony and Beverly Conrad’s film Coming Attractions, taught at CalArts with Morton Subotnick, [5] created the sound and movement piece Illuminations with Simone Forti, and developed his own alternative synthesizer: the Spectral Continuum Drone Machine.
Throughout the seventies Palestine created records, videos, sculptural objects, abstract expressionist visual scores, and performed long piano concerts regularly in his loft on North Moore Street [6] in Tribeca in the company of his bevy of stuffed animals. [7] From 1980 to 1995, Palestine performed only rarely, exhibiting instead at Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam; the Moderna Museet, Stockholm; and in documenta 8. During that time, he also founded the Ethnology Cinema Project in New York, which is dedicated to preserving films that document disappearing traditional cultures.
After moving to Europe in 1995, he settled in Brussels. [8] In addition to creating exhibitions, Palestine performed regularly, re-releasing older material and developing new videos and sonic projects. [9]
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