Cellist Lester St. Louis and trumpeter Chris Williams are the electroacoustic duo HxH (pronounced “H by H”). Together, they blend acoustic sound, grainy electronics, breaks, cuts, and beats into a kind of expansive, post-techno experimentalism that unfolds with a sense of limitless possibility. For Lampo, St. Louis and Williams premiere loop.max.infinite, a concert-length performance featuring strings, horn, and sample-based electronics, presented in quad sound.

HxH has performed at Pioneer Works, Roulette Intermedium, The Kitchen, Musik Installationen Nürnberg, ‘T’ Space Rhinebeck, The Lot Radio, and Abasement. The duo has collaborated with artists and organizations including Torkwase Dyson, fields harrington, Black Science Fiction, Found Sound Nation, TAK Ensemble, and the International Contemporary Ensemble.

HxH has performed at Pioneer Works, Roulette Intermedium, The Kitchen, Musik Installationen Nürnberg, ‘T’ Space Rhinebeck, The Lot Radio, and Abasement. The duo has collaborated with artists and organizations including Torkwase Dyson, fields harrington, Black Science Fiction, Found Sound Nation, TAK Ensemble, and the International Contemporary Ensemble.

Lester St. Louis (b.1993, Queens, NY) is a New York-based composer, improviser, cellist, sound designer, and curator. He did not begin playing the cello until he was 16 years old and quickly learned that he has perfect pitch. Upon graduating high school, he audited classes all over New York City, studying cello, theory, musicianship and composition, all without the aid of an institution. Since then, he has performed through the United States, Europe, South America, and China. In addition to his duo HxH with Chris Williams, he has collaborated with Jaimie Branch’s Fly or Die, Ben Lamar Gay, Yaeji, Tortoise, Yo La Tengo, Miho Hatori, Dré A. Hočevar, Charmaine Lee, Otim Alpha, Nate Wooley, Isabel Crespo Pardo, TAK Ensemble, Random International, Irreversible Entanglements, Pheroan Aklaff, Terence Nance, Wet Ink Ensemble, and many more. The JACK Quartet, RAGE Thormbones, Jennifer Koh, String Noise, and Ghost Ensemble have commissioned his compositions. St. Louis also cocurates a monthly series in Brooklyn with bassist Luke Stewart called Assembly.

Chris Williams (b.1990, Sacramento, CA) is an interdisciplinary artist and musician based in Brooklyn. His work explores the dyad of ancestral trauma and power existing in all Black Americans. Williams has toured extensively throughout the UnitedStates and Europe. He has been commissioned by the International Contemporary Ensemble and WasteLAnd, the Los Angeles concert series. He was 2023 American Composers Forum Fellow and a 2024 Hermitage Artist Retreat Fellow, and he has been in residence at the Banff Centre for Arts and Creativity and the Atlantic Center for the Arts. Collaborators include Eyvind Kang, Joanna Mattrey, Lester St. Louis, Patrick Shiroishi, Bennie Maupin, Nicole Mitchell, Fay Victor, Wendy Eisenberg, Yaeji, Luke Stewart, Pink Siifu, and Marjani Forte-Saunders.

Lampo, established in 1997, supports artists working in new music, experimental sound, and other interdisciplinary practices. The Chicago-based organization's core activity has been and remains its performance series. Rather than making programming decisions around tour schedules, Lampo invites selected artists to create and perform new work, and then the organization provides the space, resources, and curatorial support to help them fulfill their vision. Lampo also organizes artist talks, lectures, screenings, and workshops, and publishes written and recorded documents related to its series.

Please note that registration for Lampo programs is required, but does not guarantee entry.  Capacity for this performance is limited. Doors open 30 minutes prior to the performance and seats are available on a first-come, first-serve basis for those registered in advance. Due to the popularity of the Lampo programs, performances quickly reach capacity. No late seating will be permitted. This performance series includes high-volume sounds in close proximity to the audience, ear protection is available upon request.

James Wines discusses the transformative influence of Frederick Kiesler. This presentation is followed by a conversation on Kiesler’s impact and legacy with Wines and Graham Foundation director Sarah Herda.

This discussion builds on Wines’ essay, “Frederick Kiesler: Environmental Visionary,” as published in Frederick Kiesler: Face to Face with the Avant-Garde: Essays on Network and Impact (edited by Peter Bogner and Gerd Zillner, Frederick Kiesler Foundation, Birkhäuser, 2019).

This event is hosted via Zoom and presented in conjunction with the exhibition, Frederick Kiesler: Vision Machines, on view at the Graham Foundation through March 15, 2025. 

James Wines, winner of the 2013 National Design Award for Lifetime Achievement, is the founder of SITE, an environmental arts organization in New York. His visual art, architecture, landscape, and public projects are based on a response to surrounding contexts. He has lectured in fifty-nine countries and contributed essays to publications around the world. Books about Wines include De-Architecture (Rizzoli International, 1987) and Green Architecture (Taschen, 2000). There are 22 monographs and museum catalogues about Wines’ work with SITE which includes 150 projects in eleven countries. Wines has won 25 art and design awards, including the 1995 Chrysler Award for Design Innovation, and is the recipient of grants from the National Endowment for the Arts, Kress Foundation, American Academy in Rome, Guggenheim Foundation, Rockefeller Foundation, Graham Foundation, and Ford Foundation.

Note: This event is virtual (Zoom) and does not include an in-person component.

Image: BEST Notch Building, Retail Store, Sacramento, CA, 1979. Designed by SITE for BEST Products Company, Inc. Copyright James Wines, courtesy SITE

For more information on the exhibition, Frederick Kiesler: Vision Machines, click here.

Join us for the book launch of A Hypothesis of Resistance (Mousse, 2024) with Cally Spooner.

A Hypothesis of Resistance contains five essays on Asynchronicity, Rehearsal, Undetectability, The Present Tense, and Duration. Each attempts to resist the doctrine of “performance,” the symptom of a society, stratified by how we perform​—​economically, socially, digitally. As we become ripe for consumption, caught in an economy of perpetual readiness, basic needs remain unmet and it is increasingly difficult to tell the difference between what is alive and what is dead.

Published by Mousse, 2024
Edited and designed by Will Holder
120 pages / Softcover, open-binding, with dust-jacket

The publication is made possible in part through Spooner's 2024 Graham Foundation Fellowship. This program synthesizes the Foundation's grantmaking and exhibition programs and provides support for the development and production of original and challenging works and the opportunity to present these projects in an exhibition at the Graham’s galleries in Chicago. The Fellowship program extends the legacy of the Foundation’s first awards, made in 1957, and continues the tradition of support to individuals to explore innovative perspectives on spatial practices in design culture.

Cally Spooner is an artist who exhibits performances that unfold across media—through sound, on film, in text, as objects, and as illustrated in drawings or scores. Institutional solo exhibitions include: Graham Foundation, Chicago; O— Overgaden, Copenhagen; Cukrarna, Ljubljana; Kunstraum Leuphana, Lüneburg; Museum Dhondt-Dhaenens, Sint- Martens-Latem; Parrhesiades, London; The Art Institute of Chicago, Chicago; Swiss Institute, New York; Castello di Rivoli Museo d’Arte Contemporanea, Turin; Centre d’Art Contemporain Genève, Geneva; Whitechapel Gallery, London; New Museum, New York and Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam.  Her live performances been staged at, amongst others,Tate Britain and Tate Modern, London; Performa 13, New York; the Centre Pompidou, Paris; Museum M, Leuven; and the Institute of Contemporary Arts (ICA), London. Her work has appeared in recent group exhibitions including at Museion, Bolzano; Palais de Tokyo, Paris and CAPC, Bordeaux (all 2024). Spooner is the author of recent monographs in the form of novellas, scripts, scores, essays: Collapsing in Parts (Mousse Publishing, 2012); Scripts (Slimvolume, 2016); False Tears (Hatje Cantz and Madre Museum, 2020); SWEAT SHAME ETC. (Lenz Press, 2024) and, A Hypothesis of Resistance (Mousse Publishing, 2024). Spooner is British Italian, and lives and works in Turin.

Weston Olencki and Jennifer Torrence perform BATTERY, Olencki’s new long-form work for massed marching percussion. The setup assembles the component parts of a traditional drumline, including a large collection of snares, tenors, and bass drums, two pairs of feedback-induced crash cymbals, and an array of robotic woodblocks.

BATTERY draws upon both musicians’ early experiences and education within the ubiquitous American marching band. BATTERY imagines an alternative drum culture pushed to its algorithmic limits, using electromechanical attachments, intertwined feedback loops, and multichannel synthesis to reanimate source material from the rudiments, virtuosity, and athletic bravado of the drumline, forging new connections between musicians, listeners, and the instruments themselves.

Weston Olencki (b.1992; Spartanburg, SC) is a musician, composer, and sound artist based in Berlin. Their recent music deals with the nonlinear relationships between experimental sound, geography, historicity, and (mostly American) musical traditions. They have presented work at the Borealis Festival, Issue Project Room, REDCAT, Donaueschinger Musiktage, Ghent Jazz Festival, Philharmonie Luxembourg, Black Mountain College, Musica Nova Helsinki, the American Academy in Rome, Roulette Intermedium, and Frequency Festival, among other festivals and venues. Residencies include CalArts, Columbia University, Harvard University, New York University, Northwestern University, Princeton University, Stanford University, and the University of Huddersfield. In 2016, they were awarded the Kranichsteiner Musikpreis by the Internationales Musikinstitut Darmstadt. Olencki is an active member of RAGE Thormbones, Apparat, and the Harmonic Space Orchestra, and performs regularly as a soloist and ensemble member on low brass instruments, winds, banjo, organs, and various electronic media. Olencki last performed for Lampo in March 2023, when they premiered It lays in heaven the topmost stone.

Jennifer Torrence (b.1986; Dalton, GA) is a percussionist and performer, curator, and artistic researcher based in Oslo. Much of her work is built upon extended collaborative processes with composers and artists from various experimental practices. Collaborators include Øyvind Torvund, Clara Iannotta, Kari Watson, Jo David Lysne, Jessie Marino, Sara Glojnaric, Ase Brunborg Lie, Martin Hirsti-Kvam, Kelley Sheehan, Fredrik Storsveen, Janne-Camilla Lyster, Sam Salem, Weston Olencki, and Natali Abrahamsen Garner. She has also worked with the Alpaca Ensemble, Aksiom, BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra, and Norwegian Radio Orchestra. In addition to solo and collaborative projects, she is a member of the Norwegian trio, Pinquins. Torrence is an associate professor of percussion at the Norwegian Academy of Music, a percussion tutor at the Darmstadt Summer Course, a former curator at nyMusikk, a former artistic research fellow at the Norwegian Academy of Music, and a past Fulbright scholar. She also studied at Oberlin Conservatory, University of California San Diego, and the Guildhall School of Music and Drama in London.

Lampo, established in 1997, supports artists working in new music, experimental sound, and other interdisciplinary practices. The Chicago-based organization's core activity has been and remains its performance series. Rather than making programming decisions around tour schedules, Lampo invites selected artists to create and perform new work, and then the organization provides the space, resources, and curatorial support to help them fulfill their vision. Lampo also organizes artist talks, lectures, screenings, and workshops, and publishes written and recorded documents related to its series.

Please note that registration for Lampo programs is required, but does not guarantee entry.  Capacity for this performance is limited. Doors open 30 minutes prior to the performance and seats are available on a first-come, first-serve basis for those registered in advance. Due to the popularity of the Lampo programs, performances quickly reach capacity. No late seating is permitted. This performance series includes high-volume sounds in close proximity to the audience, ear protection is available upon request.

This event received additional support from the American-Scandinavian Foundation and equipment provided by the Woodruff High School Marching Cadets in Woodruff, SC.