Imaginary Creatures in the Illuminated Forest

Featuring Barn Owl, Christine Choi and Lazurus

Other-worldly sounds and creatures inhabit the forest to haunt, trick and delight. Electroacoustic band Barn Owl weaves a dark drone narrative using heavily effected electric guitars. Artist Christine Choi summons ‘Ghosts of Gondwana’, an inter-genre essay on extinct New Zealand creatures, lineage, love, creative processes, and their interrelated emotionality. Choi presents a multimedia performance: the reading of the essay will be accompanied by a silent video and an interactive sound station that will be driven by audience movements. Through dreamlike recombinations of images, Ghosts touches on the grief and delight held in both biological and cultural evolution. Musician Lazurus imagines ‘The Trickster’ in his/her many forms whether coyote/crow – demon/sylph through poem/songs and his ongoing relationship with this ever sneaky friend.

Over the past four years, Barn Owl, the San Francisco-based duo of Evan Caminiti and Jon Porras, has created a potent mix of loner acoustic fingerpicking and metallic bombast. “They may only be two dudes, but Jon and Evan sound more like an army of western warriors channeling Neil Young on a peyote vision, or Johnny Cash and Dylan Carlson trying to fend off a massive dust storm with nothing but feedback. It’s a heavy trip from the past that illuminates the future (Hammer Smashed Sound).”
http://electrictotem.com/barnowl/
http://www.myspace.com/barnowlband

Christine Choi is a poet and installation artist living in San Francisco. Her work is driven by a rampant curiosity about human-animal-machine relationships and implicit narratives. During her tenure as an artist-in-residence at Mount Bruce, New Zealand in 2007, she completed her research for the inter-genre essay, “Ghosts of Gondwana,” which will serve as the score for her performance at GREEN SOUND. Christine received an MFA in Writing from the California College of the Arts, and her written works have appeared in literary journals, including In Posse Review and Paul Revere’s Horse. One Bean Press released her second chapbook, in Fall 2008.
http://www.beanchoi.com/

At 10 years old, Lazarus (William Trevor Montgomery) scurried away from a fatal train wreck, unscathed. Not knowing what to do, he walked. He found an old guitar lying in a muddied ditch where four roads came together in rural California. He looked towards the north humming, deciding at that moment that songs would be his trade.
http://www.myspace.com/williamlazarus