Musical Chairs in the Waiting Room
Overview
Jordan Wason (J.R), one of our current artists in residence, would like to invite you to build and record instrument-objects with him in his waiting room to the Bureau of Illumination on the second floor of Elsewhere Museum. Bring your own instrument or use the room’s musical chairs. Experiment with noise making and merging traditional music with experimental play. Learn to upholster yourself a seat to wait more comfortably, and listen to the sounds as they layer and loop in the room.
You can RSVP to an open time slot on the following dates using the google form. Jordan will also be taking walk-in appointments during the residents’ workshop Saturday, Sept. 25th from 3-5pm, and the residents’ First Fridays Happening on Friday, Oct. 1st from 6-9pm.
See more information on the project below. If you would like to make a special appointment outside of the times available please use the special request option on the google form and give your email and preferred date/time.
9/22 Wednesday
RSVP 5pm, 5:30pm, 7pm, 7:30PM
9/25 Saturday
RSVP 2pm, 2:30pm
Drop-in 3-5PM
9/28 Tuesday
RSVP 8pm, 8:30PM
10/1 Friday
RSVP 4pm, 4:30PM
Drop-in 6-9PM
How to Participate:
The room is continually evolving and there are a number of ways to participate. You can come as an individual and do a one on one session with J.R., or as a small group of friends, or even a band. You can come with any instrument or material you would like to try, such as poems, lyrics, or chord progressions and riffs. If you have guitar pedals bring them, plug in a chair, and see what happens! Or you can come as you are just to experiment with what is at hand. You can focus on recording or you can focus on making a chair to sit in and meditate to the music. In addition to the musical chairs there is an organ with built in drum machine, contact mics, and amplification available.
About the Project “Please Wait for Illumination”
Seeing that there was a Bureau of Illumination at Elsewhere, J.R. decided that there must also be a waiting room, as there is always waiting involved in any bureaucratic process. In a waiting room there is typically music, seating, and frustration. In this waiting room there are unupholstered musical chairs, rolls of fabric, and instruments. Visitors are provided with the materials to work and create while waiting, in a process that both alleviates their frustration and saves the bureau a lot of money. The sounds of the chairs are being collected and will culminate in a game of musical chairs at the end of his residency. The sounds of Elsewhere’s previous history as an upholstery shop are reanimated and reimagined.
“I propose that we sort these objects in the room next door to the Bureau O.I. so they may in waiting coalesce into a room of musical chairs that will help the public feel they are still in movement during the slow process of self illumination, which can often take a lifetime.”
About the Artist
Jordan Wason (J.R.) is an artist from New Jersey, living in New York, who animates objects, co-hosts happenings where art is destroyed, and plays music. He constantly shuffles himself between the three. All his creations journal his attempts at making meaning through absurdity, the rawness of improvisation, and the discovery of narrative within spaces and things.
