The Nature of Music: Joshua Churchill & John Davis
Joshua Churchill is a San Francisco-based cross-disciplinary artist whose immersive site-specific sound and light work takes the form of both installation and performance, often blurring the line between the two. In performance, Churchill utilizes guitar, various wind and percussive instruments, field recordings, and a myriad of electronics to create waves of resonant drones and pulsing feedback that rise and fall like a dark tide. Churchill has collaborated extensively with filmmakers John Davis and Paul Clipson, and also performs under the moniker Plumes. He has previously performed in experimental drone/metal projects including Sutekh Hexen, Riqis, and Tecumseh. Churchill has been a resident at AIR Krems in Krems an der Donau, Austria, and Djerassi Resident Artists Program in California, and has performed and exhibited extensively throughout the United States and abroad.
Expanding the relationship between moving image and sound through live performance and studio-based projects, John Davis‘s work elicits sensory response through familiar and unexpected uses of traditional media. Often incorporating live performance and collaboration, John alternates as both musician and filmmaker, encouraging improvisation, spontaneity and chance to guide the work. John has performed and exhibited in the US and internationally, most recently at Human Resources in Los Angeles, The San Francisco Cinematheque, Other Cinema, Outsound, The Pacific Film Archive, The Los Angeles County Museum of Art, The San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, The Antimatter Media Art Festival, The Optica Festival, Instants Vidéo Numériques et Poétiques, The Milan Film Festival, The Swedenborg Film Festival, The Alchemy Film And Moving Image Festival, Transmediale, Impakt and Videoex.
This concert took place on July 12, 2018 at the Goldman Theater at the David Brower Center in Berkeley, California.
Event Program
Program Notes
As a performance duo, Joshua Churchill and John Davis operate spontaneously to create densely layered organic and atmospheric works, combining Churchill’s dynamic soundscapes with Davis’ handmade, and often hand processed, 16mm and Super 8 films. For Other Minds, Joshua Churchill and John Davis will present a collaborative performance that engages viewers in meditative and abstract environments, using imagery and sounds are rooted in the environment and its natural rhythms.
Distortions, ghostly reverberations, and ambient notes hang in the air and ethereal chords plunge into darkness before the moving images on screen, adding drama to frames that appear on fire. Fleeting sun shadows move across the film. The two elements together create a simply captivating experience, completely immersing the audience into a land of airy projector light with sounds that fill the space like a weather pattern. — Amanda Mayo, KQED Arts
Joshua Churchill and John Davis’ collaborative work has recently been featured at Dark Sea Cinema in Oakland, The San Francisco Cinematheque Crossroads Festival at SFMOMA, MONO NO AWARE in Brooklyn, and The San Francisco Electronic Music Festival.
Click here to download a PDF copy of the program for The Nature of Music 9 – Joshua Churchill and John Davis.
