Lectures on Maryanne Amacher

ABSTRACTS

Amy Cimini:
Listening in the Drift

Abstract to follow

Bill Dietz:
“I must discover actual ways of destroying their existence perceptually”

Can we understand Maryanne Amacher’s sound-centered œuvre as a practice of abolition? When the American artist writes, “I must discover actual ways of destroying their existence perceptually” (in her final published text, known as The Agreement), she is referring to loudspeakers. Bill Dietz is looking at the question of the degree to which this program of perceptual destruction can be extended to naturalized, culturally hegemonic modes of perception themselves.

Julia H. Schröder:
Maryanne Amacher’s Scientific Interests

Abstract to follow

Edwin van der Heide:
Maryanne Amacher’s Plaything

Unequivocally one the most magnificent musical mavericks of the 20th century. With the composition Plaything, Maryanne Amacher leaves to our mortal listening world one of her more personal live-to-multi-channel disc performances comprising one of her departures from structure borne sound. After studying with Karlheinz Stockhausen and working with John Cage, Amacher took off on her own psychoacoustic flight path, developing work that was critically described as: “hallucinating swarms of biological air from every direction”, “3D illusions of difference-tone ear dances where the sound seems to emanate from inside your own skull!” and “immense volumes that make the frequencies feel liquid – all-enveloping buzzing rumbles wrapped in sandstorm textures”. Through multiple residency periods with Recombinant Media Labs in 2000, Amacher designed a legendary ‘airborne audio’ Plaything composition. In this lecture we will look into and have a contextual look at what’s at play including an the in-ear-tones.

Kevin Parks:
Accessing the Past, Shaping the Future: The Maryanne Amacher Archive and the New York Public Library

Abstract to follow