OPENSIGNAL FESTIVAL, May 16-17, 2014



BFB playing OPENSIGNAL, May 17, 9:30 pm

Studio 1
Providence, RI





OPENSIGNAL FESTIVAL, May 16-17, 2014


PROVIDENCE RI opensignal concludes its colloquium and concert series with a 2-day festival on Friday, May 16th and Saturday, May 17th at Brown University’s Granoff Center for Creative Arts.

Over the two days, there will be performances by both Brown University students/alumni and local artists, including Betsey Biggs, Laura Cetilia, Bridget Feral, Lyn Goeringer, Akiko Hatakeyama, Claire Kwong, Lucy Lewis, Congyuan Luo, Caroline Park/Asha Tamirisa, Andrea Pensado, Victory Perm, Pitch, Wilted Woman, and Kristina Wolfe.  

On Saturday, May 17th, visiting artists Maria Chavez (NYC) and Blectum from Blechdom (Bevin Kelley and Kristin Erickson, CA/PVD) will perform solo concerts as well as give talks on their practices.  Tara Rodgers (DC), author of the acclaimed electronic music text Pink Noises, will deliver the keynote lecture and perform on Saturday as well.  In addition, more than 80 sound artists, performers, and composers from around the world will be featured in a large-scale sound installation that will run both Friday and Saturday in the Granoff building.  

The festival is the culmination of a year’s worth of events that have featured experimental electronic musicians Suzanne Thorpe and Bonnie Jones (co-founders of Techne) and Laetitia Sonami, among others.  Records and other merchandise will be for sale throughout the festival, including opensignal’s debut compilation.


About opensignal
opensignal is a collective of artists based in Providence RI concerned with the state of gender and race in experimental electronic music and art practices.  opensignal operates with generous funding and support from the Brown University Department of Music and MEME program, the Brown University Creative Arts Council Arts Initiative Grant, the Sheridan Center for Teaching and Learning’s new Mentorship Initiative, and the Pembroke Center’s Steinhaus/Zisson Research Grant.

For updated information, as well as the festival schedule, please visit www.cargocollective.com/opensignal or email openopensignal@gmail.com.  The Granoff Center for the Creative Arts is located at 154 Angell Street, Providence RI.


BLECTUM FROM BLECHDOM is blevin BLECTUM (born Bevin Kelley) plus kevin BLECHDOM (born Kristin Erickson). BFB was born into being as an inseparable computer/electronic music duality on Halloween of 1998, in Oakland,CA (the right place at the right time). Soon after they released several snaus-laden audio portals -- their first full-length, "The Messy Jesse Fiesta" tied (with Markus Popp / Oval) for second prize in Digital Music at the Prix Ars Electronica in Linz, Austria. They have gone on to both become certificated doctoral dual entities, Kevin at CalArts in Los Angeles, and Blevin at Brown University's MEME program in Providence. Their work as BFB has appeared on labels such as Orthlorng Musork, Tigerbeat6, Deluxe, and Phthalo, and separately they have released a slew of solo selections. A new BFB record, Deep Bone, will at long last be unleashed on an unsuspecting public in 2014. Playing live electronics and multimedia, BFB manifests an alternate twin universe for your perverse trans-dimensional pleasure. To their joyous and udder surprise the invisible zipper that connects their connections to connectedness recently began to reverse its gigantic pendulating path, only to begin raveling what it had previously been unraveling, like pulling the yarn from a torn sweater while being knitted by yarn still connected to the sheep that was running as fast as it could in the opposite direction, approaching the speed of galactic cannibalism. These humans and their music are considered by some to be exceptionally irreverent, humorous, harmonious, hormonious, melodious, and uncomfortably rhythmical yet beauteously fragile - tormentingly vomitously fun, but trouble/troubled/troubling.