And if I live a thousand lives I hope to remember one was produced by Bonnie Jones in 2015 and originally commissioned for EVENING WILL COME: A MONTHLY JOURNAL OF POETICS (THE ART OF LOSING—ISSUE 58, curated by John Melillo and Johanna Skibsrud.
Bonnie says:
This piece uses 6-minute looping cassette tapes that I've been incorporating into my live concert performance set up. I usually create feedback and different playback by pressing on all the keys of the cassette player. Because I'm pressing all of the different keys, including record and stop and forward, the cassette actually starts to pick up some of the concert that's happening, so oftentimes on a cassette I'll start to hear the other musicians or little fragments of other players that are in the set with me. Over the course of several years of using the same cassette player and the same cassette tape, the record of the recording turns out to be this kind of palimpsested recording; multiple layers of different performances over several years. The final result that you hear is actually multiple concerts where I've recorded and re-recorded over this one 6-minute loop of cassette tape.
Constellations says:
More than others we've played, Bonnie's piece is grounded in the process of its creation and its physicality. Working her worn out tape reel till it glitches and moans, Bonnie's work speaks to memory, ghosts, and chance.
This piece does a magic thing of infusing a recording with the nowness of live music; it is as much a happening as the musical performances that were its building blocks, with the failure of the recording technology as performer and conductor.
In a percussive wave of otherworldly sighs and stutters, the richly textured sound leaves us guessing, with memorable sonic moments passing before can fully process them, so that when they stay longer than expected we are moved and curious - but the tape rolls on.
Bonnie Jones is a Korean-American improvising musician, poet, and performer working with electronic sound and text. She performs solo and in numerous collaborative music, film, and visual art projects. Bonnie was a founding member of the Transmodern Festival and CHELA Gallery and is currently a member of the High Zero Festival collective. In 2010, she co-founded TECHNE, an organization that introduces young female-identified women to technology-focused art making, improvisation, and community collaboration. TECHNE’s programs are delivered through partnerships with grassroots organizations that share an aligned commitment to racial and gender equity. She has received commissions from the London ICA and Walters Art Museum and has presented her work extensively at institutions in the US, Mexico, Europe and Asia. Bonnie was a 2018 recipient of the Foundation for Contemporary Arts Grants to Artists Award. Born in South Korea she was raised on a dairy farm in New Jersey, and currently resides in Baltimore, Maryland and Providence RI on the lands of the Susquehannock, Piscataway, Algonquian, and Narrangansett.