Chris Durnin Article

The article linked below is about Chris Durnin, who performed at NODAMS last November with No-Method. The article also mentions a young jaw harpist from Cottage Grove, without mentioning his name - but it's Nico Cornelius, who performed outdoors at NODAMS 2017, on the Old Nick's patio. As a matter of fact, Chris met Nico at our event, and booked him on the spot! This is just the kind of artist networking that we were hoping to achieve with our project. And it's all made possible by movers and shakers such as Chris Durnin.

Chris Durnin and Corvallis’ Experimental Front
by Chris McDowell
Corvallis Advocate
January 17, 2018

Radio Retrospective

One of our favorite radio programs has dedicated its playlist this evening to experimental music, including some artists who were featured at NODAMS last Friday. Here is a quote of radio host Fred Kellogg's announcement on Facebook, followed by a link to his Spinitron list of what was broadcast:

Monthly NW Artist's show

This month will be largely if not entirely experimental music artists including some of those who performed at the First Annual NW Oregon Different Arts & Music Showcase (NODAMS) which was held in Eugene this past Friday evening.

 Free Jazz with Fred. Monday, 11/6/17, 8-10pm. KAOS 89.3 FM, Olympia, WA. Community Radio.
Streaming worldwide at https://www.kaosradio.org/

Spinitron playlist

Concert Photos

The performances at NODAMS 2017 were outstanding! We are so proud of these amazing artists for blazing new trails and making our show a resounding success! And here are some pics to prove that it really happened:

Don Haugen

Don Haugen

Chris Durnin of no-method

Matt Kellam of no-method

Vortex Remover

Peter DeGroot of Vortex Remover

Rob Groves of Vortex Remover

Xapchyk

Kyle Stant and Jerry Soga of Xapchyk

David Morgan of Xapchyk

When they took the stage, the band that we had booked as A Pack of Majors announced that they had changed their name to Trembling Earth Contract.

Trembling Earth Contract

Craig Birnie and Cameron Wick of Trembling Earth Contract

Cameron Wick, Michael Billings and Connor Eccles of Trembling Earth Contract

Our Sponsor

We would like to gratefully mention that our sponsor for NODAMS 2017 is Epic Seconds, Located at 30 E. 11th in Eugene, OR. (Formerly The CD/Game Exchange.) Buy, sell and trade music, movies and video games! Open 7 days a week. Show your support for the arts by shopping at a store that supports the arts!

Epic Seconds facebook page:
 https://www.facebook.com/EpicSecondsEugene/

Surrealism

Surrealism persists to this day, and can be encountered in weird movie dream sequences, in goofy advertisements, and in literary stream-of-consciousness passages in novels. Yet the original intent of Surrealism was not necessarily to provide a device for revealing inner states of mind, nor to grab attention for marketing soda pop. Instead, it was meant to advance a socio-political agenda. Due to a number of bitter schisms among its founding members, however, the message of Surrealism dissipated and its meaning became up for grabs for anyone to interpret on an individual and personal basis. This is perhaps for the best.

Emerging in Paris around 1920, from the Dada movement of the prior decade - and in fact founded by several of the Dadaists themselves - Surrealism placed more emphasis on generating art through subconscious psychological processes, rather than by the deliberately iconoclastic methods of Dada. In both cases, a desire to shock and shake up the complacent norms of society was evident. But these strange new works of art could hardly be relied upon to point out the preferred direction for society to aim toward.

1st issue, Dec. 1924

 

Consequently, André Breton, the self-appointed leader of the Surrealists, took the opportunity to write a couple of manifestos on Surrealism, to explain its purpose and agenda - which of course, was actually only Breton's own agenda. He insisted that Surrealism was essentially an expression and promotion of communist ideals. Yet the most famous Surrealist, Salvador Dali, was a staunch monarchist. The clash between Dali and Breton over this issue led to Dali's exile from Breton's club of Surrealist artists. Yet Dali continues to be identified as a Surrealist long after his death, and few people nowadays associate Surrealism with either monarchism or communism. It's just weird art, that's all.

Techniques used by Surrealists include automatic writing, depictions of distorted or disassembled objects in unusual juxtapositions, blind collaboration, incorporating accidents and mistakes, using dreams and hallucinations for inspiration, and the re-appropriation of symbols and myths. An example of blind collaboration is the parlor game Exquisite Corpse, in which the drawing paper is passed around to the next artist, folded to conceal the work in progress. The point is surprise, generally yielding both incongruity and connectivity when the final product is unfolded. All of these techniques are meant to restrain the conscious mind from meddling too much in the creative process, in order to produce art that could serve equally well as a Rorschach test - with its ambiguities revealing more about the psychology of the viewer than they do about the artist.

Some of the better known Surrealists include: Max Ernst, Yves Tanguy, Paul Éluard, Salvador Dali, André Breton, Antonin Artaud, Joan Miró, Luis Buñuel, Man Ray, Hans Arp, Tristan Tzara, Erik Satie, and (peripherally) Pablo Picasso. It was largely a boy's club. But there were indeed some female Surrealists, such as Méret Oppenheim and Gala Éluard.

Wikipedia article: Surrealism