Richard Gavin Bryars is an English composer and double bassist. He has worked in jazz, free improvisation, minimalism, historicism, avant-garde, and experimental music.
Postmodern art is a body of art movements that sought to contradict some aspects of modernism or some aspects that emerged or developed in its aftermath. In general, movements such as intermedia, installation art, conceptual art and multimedia, particularly involving video are described as postmodern.
Contemporary classical music is Western art music composed close to the present day. At the beginning of the 21st century, it commonly referred to the post-1945 modern forms of post-tonal music after the death of Anton Webern, and included serial music, electronic music, experimental music, and minimalist music. Newer forms of music include spectral music, and post-minimalism.
Einstein on the Beach is an opera in four acts composed by Philip Glass and directed by theatrical producer Robert Wilson, who also collaborated with Glass on the work's libretto. The opera eschews traditional narrative in favor of a formalist approach based on structured spaces laid out by Wilson in a series of storyboards which are framed and connected by five "knee plays" or intermezzos. The music was written "in the spring, summer and fall of 1975." Glass recounts the collaborative process: "I put [Wilson’s notebook of sketches] on the piano and composed each section like a portrait of the drawing before me. The score was begun in the spring of 1975 and completed by the following November, and those drawings were before me all the time."
Heiner Goebbels is a German composer, conductor and professor at Justus-Liebig-University in Gießen and artistic director of the International Festival of the Arts Ruhrtriennale 2012–14. His composition Stifters Dinge (2007) received five votes in a 2017 Classic Voice poll of the greatest works of art music since 2000, and writers for The Guardian ranked his composition Hashirigaki (2000) the ninth greatest classical composition of the same period.
Christopher Knowles is an American poet and painter. He was born in New York City on May 4, 1959, and has received a diagnosis of possible brain damage. He is often referred to as autistic. In 1976, his poetry was used by Robert Wilson for the avant-garde minimalist Philip Glass opera, Einstein on the Beach. Wilson describes his discovery of the then 13-year-old Knowles in the extended notes to the Tomato Records release of Einstein on the Beach:
In early 1973 a man ... gave me an audio tape ... I was fascinated. The tape was entitled "Emily Likes the TV". On it a young man's voice spoke continuously creating repetitions and variations on phrases about Emily watching the TV. I began to realize that the words flowed to a patterned rhythm whose logic was self-supporting. It was a piece coded much like music. Like a cantata or fugue it worked with conjugations of thoughts repeated in variations...
Robert Wilson is an American experimental theater stage director and playwright who has been described by The New York Times as "[America]'s – or even the world's – foremost vanguard 'theater artist.'" He has also worked as a choreographer, performer, painter, sculptor, video artist, and sound and lighting designer.
the CIVIL warS: a tree is best measured when it is down is an opera created in the early 1980s by director Robert Wilson to music by Philip Glass, David Byrne, Gavin Bryars and others. The vast five-act work has never been performed whole.
Maya Beiser is an American musician, cellist, performing artist and producer who lives in New York City. Beiser was raised on a kibbutz in Israel by her French mother and Argentine father, and graduated from Yale University School of Music. She has been described by the Boston Globe as "a force of nature", "a cello goddess" by The New Yorker and "the reigning queen of the avant-garde cello" by The Washington Post. Beiser is a 2015 United States Artists Distinguished Music Fellow and the Inaugural Mellon Distinguished Visiting Artist at the MIT Center for Art, Science & Technology.
The Millennium Film Workshop is a non-profit media arts center located in New York City. It is dedicated to the exhibition, study, and practice of avant-garde and experimental cinema. It was also where the St. Mark's Poetry Project began. Ken Jacobs stated in 2013 that he chose the name Millennium "...because it would have to be that to actually give out equipment, education, space to work in, etc. for free. Dictionary definition: 'A hoped for period of joy, serenity, prosperity and justice.' "
Howard Brookner was an American film director. He produced and directed the documentary Burroughs about William S. Burroughs (1983), Robert Wilson and the Civil Wars on theatre director Robert Wilson (1986), and directed, co-produced and co-wrote Bloodhounds of Broadway (1989).
The 12th Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF) took place in Toronto, Ontario, Canada between September 10 and September 19, 1987. I've Heard the Mermaids Singing by Patricia Rozema was selected as the opening film.
Aaron Brookner is an American film director and scriptwriter. His debut feature film was The Silver Goat (2011), the first feature film made for iPad exhibition. He produced the restoration of cult classic Burroughs, directed by Howard Brookner, which was re-released by The Criterion Collection. His film Uncle Howard was selected as part of the US Documentary Competition at the 2016 Sundance Film Festival.
The Watermill Center is a center for the arts and humanities in Water Mill, New York, founded in 1992 by artist and theater director Robert Wilson.
Richard Gallo (1946–2007) was an American stage actor, performance artist, and experimental theater stage director, noted mostly for his street performances and provocative costumes. His work blurred the boundaries between performance art, theatre, and fashion. Gallo performed outside the luxury stores and hotels on Fifth Avenue wearing costumes that referenced glamour, sadomasochism, and high fashion. His street performances challenged mainstream conceptions of identity, masculinity, and sexuality.
Steven Watson is an author, art and cultural historian, curator, and documentary filmmaker.
Artifacts at the End of a Decade (1981) is a boxed multiple containing works from 44 artists who were active in New York City in the 1970's. Assembled by Steven Watson and Carol Huebner Venezia, Artifacts is a collection of pieces designed uniquely for this project. The portfolio is 15 in × 18 in × 6 in and weighs 17 pounds. Its "pages" are made from everything from glass, copper, clay, rope, felt, and film to lycra, neoprene, polyester, mylar, vinyl, stucco, and glitter. Artifacts was described by Jessica Scott of UMass Amherst as a "multidisciplinary American survey of the 1970's in the form of an artists' archive." Artifacts is a limited edition of 100.
