KC Wei took a short respite from art rock? and is back to curate Wrong Wave no. 6.  It starts Wed Oct 10, with the world premiere of KC’s art rock? The Popular Esoteric (2018), and Myles Black’s The Virga Soundtrack (2018) at VIVO Media Arts, followed by conversation with the directors.

The Virga Soundtrack is Myles Black’s unfinished film focused on queer expressionism and incomplete communication.  ‘Virga’ is a meteorological term for when rain evaporates before reaching the earth, leaving a vapour trail which hangs from a cloud.  Shot on a phone camera without a budget, each scene is a collaborative experiment fixed to songs by those in the film.

art rock? The Popular Esoteric is a music documentary about Vancouver, featuring performances by bands through director KC Wei’s music as public art treatment.  Filmed over the last 4 years, the film follows the evolution of an underground art rock scene, celebrating the weird and beautiful practices of those who continue to rub against the grain.  

Fri Oct 12th at the NRG Zone 1965 Main St
Doors 9pm, Music starts at 10pm
Kamikaze Nurse is a rock band featuring KC Wei, Ethan Reyes, Nik Gauer, and John Brennan.  Named after Simone Weil’s unfulfilled humanitarian death wish, the band formed in Spring 2018, and are working on a full length album.

Crotch is two un-natured halves forming a whole, thus formed in the womb of the holy entirety has been unleashed upon this marginal reality you call home to bring revolution to the senses and freedom to the ears.  A psychedelic shock wave of barraging hiss and splendour.  Stop. Look and listen to the undulating sounds of the “new rock”. Never to be contained, A commodity of filth. Existential oblivion reaching out to touch your withered consumer driven hands. Embrace the static,
Obliterate the stasis,
Swallow your ego and shout with glee —
government is slavery!” —
Now let me eat cake.

Maskara is the solo project of Nic Hughes (Shearing Pinx, Group Vision, Prxncxss Apparently).  Dark, baroque, and cinematic, Maskara is a mask on top of another mask.

Vomit Fraud isa new electronic collaboration between longtime Vancouver artist-musicians Kay Higgins and Brady Cranfield

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Sat Oct 13th at 8EAST 8 E Pender St
Wrong Wave 666 Launch & Live Music
Launch 8pm, performances at 9pm

Wrong Wave 666:Inspired by Aby Warburg’s Mnemosyne Atlas, festival curator KC Wei collaborated with festival performers to pull from their personal archives of ephemera, notes, research, and images to create a book that associatively examines the stuff that coalesces around their music practices.  Copies of Wrong Wave 666 will be for sale for $10, along with performances by:

dashes is a sound collaboration between John Brennan and Elisa Ferrari.  Paying homage to microtonal exchanges that occur incidentally through layering sustained dissonant frequencies, their performances combine sounds of amplified objects, feedback manipulation, and modified percussion with field recordings and voice.

 

Julian Hou & Tiziana La Melia
Both practicing visual artists, Julian Hou and Tizian La Melia have a collaborative sound practice as well.

Tiziana La Melia is an artist and writer.  She was born in Palermo, raised on an orchard in the Okanagan and currently resides in Vancouver (unceded territories). A book of poetry titled The Eyelash and the Monochrome was recently published with Talonbooks and a new edition of Oral Like Cloaks, Dialect is forthcoming with Blank Cheque Press.  Recent solo and collaborative exhibitions of her work include Garden Gossip, Walter Phillips Gallery, Banff (2017-18), and The Pigeon Looks for Death in the Space Between the Needle and the Haystack, Unit 17, Vancouver (2018).  Her work has been included in group exhibitions such as Vancouver Special: Ambivalent Pleasures, Vancouver Art Gallery, Vancouver (2016-17); Down to Write You This Poem Sat, Oakville Galleries, Oakville (2016); Enter the Fog, The Rooms, St. Johns (2016), amongst others.  Her writing has appeared in Art21, Organism for Poetic Research, C Magazine, The Interjection Calender, and other places.  In 2014, La Melia won the national title for the 16th annual RBC Canadian Painting Competition.

Julian Hou is an artist living as a guest on unceded Coast Salish territories working in audio, digital media, performance, and installation.  He is releasing a forthcoming album of audio works.  He has recently held solo exhibitions at Unit 17, Vancouver (2018); Artspeak, Vancouver (2017); 8eleven, Toronto (2017).  Performances and group exhibitions include Things that can happen, Hong Kong (2017); Damien and the Love Guru, Brussels (2017); Kamias Triennale, Manila (2017); Vancouver Art Gallery (2016-2017), amongst others. He was curatorial resident at 221A in 2014, and has co-curated projects at Model Projects, Vancouver with Tiziana La Melia.

My Name is Del‘s pedal steel guitar style and faithful interpretations of 1970’s Country vinyl records, which act as samples, as they are in poor condition and repetitively skip, greasily greets the occasional candied harmony.  His collection of records has grown from findings outside of Vancouver record stores, discarded after hours. Inspired by a recording of his divorced parents’ duet of Islands In The Stream by Kenny Rogers and Dolly Parton, My Name is Del sing-talks his way from made-up stories about hopping freight trains to drinking craft beer at home alone.

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KC Wei is an artist, filmmaker, writer, and musician based in Vancouver, unceded territories.  She graduated with an MFA from Simon Fraser University in 2012. Her practice has evolved from filmmaking (Murky Colors (2012), Vater und Sohn / Father and Son / 父与子 (2013)), into works that cross over between art, music, and the community at large (Kingsgate Mall Happenings (2014), Chinatown Happenings (2015), the Karaoke Music Video Free Store (2017), the art rock? series (2015-2018)).  In 2016, she began Agony Klub, a music and printed matter label that releases material under the framework of the “popular esoteric.” She plays in the music projects Kamikaze Nurse and hazy.

Wrong Wave no. 6 takes place on the unceded territories of the Musqueam, Squamish, and Tsleil-Waututh peoples.  All the events are free/by donation.  For more information, visit the facebook event page, and on instagram: @unitpitt #wrongwave666