New York-based curator and writer Mark Beasley presents a listening-session and brief history of vocalisation and Extended Vocal Technique from female pioneers Patty Waters, Cathy Berberian and Joan La Barbara; Grindcore and the Death Growl to the current re-examination of voice as material in the work of Florian Hecker, Stine Motland and C. Spencer Yeh.

Mark Beasley is a curator, writer, and artist based in New York. He is currently curator at Performa, and programmed and commissioned a series of vocal concerts and artists’ projects for Performa 13. From October 13, 2013 to February 14, 2014 he organized a performance program in conjunction with the retrospective exhibition of Mike Kelley at MoMA PS1, New York, including Michael Smith and Blowfly, X-TG and Kim Gordon, and Jutta Koether. His recent curatorial projects with the Performa biennial include Frances Stark and Mark Leckey’sPut A Song In Your Thing at Abrons Theater; Robert Ashley’s That Morning Thing at the Kitchen; Mike Kelley’s Day is Done at Judson Church; Arto Lindsay’s Somewhere I Read; and the experimental music festival, co-curated with Mike Kelley, A Fantastic World Superimposed on Reality.

As a curator with the public art organization Creative Time he curated Plot09: This World & Nearer Ones; Hey Hey Glossolalia: Exhibiting the Voice, and Javier Tellez’s critically acclaimed film A Letter on the Blind. In 2011, he established the Malcolm McLaren Award with Young Kim for Performa, presented by Lou Reed to Ragnar Kjartansson. He has written for a number of periodicals including Frieze, Art Forum, The Serving Library, and contributed to many artist catalogues. He is currently a Fine Art PhD candidate at Reading University, U.K., and his first LP with the group Big Legs will be released in 2014 on the London- and Amsterdam-based Junior Aspirin Records.

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