C. Spencer Yeh

The Renaissance Society

Bond Chapel
1025 East 58th Street
Chicago, Illinois 60637

C. Spencer Yeh premieres Solo Voice I–X, performed live for the first time and presented in its entirety.

Solo Voice I–X is Yeh’s new all-voice record. “[His] practice has its most obvious precedents in the sound poetry scene of the ’60s and ’70s—recalling an outlier group like the Four Horsemen, at their most raw and a-verbal, as much as the circles and canons forged around post-Lettrist France—as well as in figures like Joan La Barbara.” (Primary Information)

If Yeh used “studio techniques to fold the temporality of performance in on itself,” as Primary Information writes of the production process, removing the breaths and letting his vocalizations run together, then here he doubles back, as he performs his edited composition in real time.

C. Spencer Yeh (b.1975, Taipei, Taiwan) is recognized for his interdisciplinary activities and collaborations as an artist, composer and improviser, and for his music project Burning Star Core. Recent presentations of work include The Companion at the Liverpool Biennial, Modern Mondays at MoMA, In Tones From Light to Dark at Performa 13, Excursus IV at the ICA Philadelphia, Kinomuzeum at Museum of Modern Art in Warsaw, the Pérez Art Museum in Miami, Electronic Arts Intermix N.Y.C., the Contemporary Arts Museum Houston, and a Jerome Foundation Commission from Roulette Intermedium. Yeh also collaborated with Triple Canopy for their contribution to the Whitney Biennial in 2014. Recent recorded works include Ambient (with Robert Piotrowicz), 1975 (as C. Spencer Yeh), Transitions (as CS Yeh), and Wake Up Awesome, a collaboration with Okkyung Lee and Lasse Marhaug on the Software label. Primary Information will publish Solo Voice I–X in 2015.

Yeh also works as a programmer and trailer editor for Spectacle Theater in Brooklyn, and recently co-organized Spectacle’s residency as part of the Museum of Arts and Design’s “NYC Makers: A MAD Biennial.” Beginning in 2015, his video works will be distributed by Electronic Arts Intermix. He is also a contributing editor to BOMB magazine. Yeh studied film at Northwestern University, lived in Cincinnati for many years, and is now Brooklyn-based.

C. Spencer Yeh first appeared at Lampo in January 2007, performing Two Mouths Breathe as One (from behind a wall at the Renaissance Society) and Amplified Violin. In May 2009 he joined Michael Johnsen in a duo improvisation. He returned in November 2012 to perform live with new video work created for Lampo and other videos including Baby Birds, Eclipse, Scrub Study and IMVIS.

Presented in partnership with the Renaissance Society