Sound, sculpture, photography, poetry and an unresolved artist book
Gustavo Matamoros, René Barge and Robert Thiele
Bridge Red Studios, Miami
Begun in 2012
Ongoing collaborative project
In 2012, my Frozen Music colleague René Barge and I were invited to create sound works for rooms containing Robert Thiele’s monolithic concrete sculptures at Bridge Red Studios. The surviving project files identify BR: ROOM 2 as completed on April 28, followed by BR: ROOM 1 on May 20.
The project produced two publicly presented installations: BR: ROOM 1, a four-channel work created for the first sculpture room, and BR: ROOM 2, a two-channel work created for a second room.
BR: ROOM 1
Provisional stereo reduction of the four-channel BR: ROOM 1. This working version may be revised. Original version completed May 20, 2012.
Four-channel sound installation
Sound by Gustavo Matamoros and René Barge
Sculpture by Robert Thiele
Bridge Red Studios, Miami
2012
BR: ROOM 2
Provisional audio documentation of the two-channel BR: ROOM 2. This working version may be revised. Original version completed April 28, 2012.
Two-channel sound installation
Sound by Gustavo Matamoros and René Barge
Sculpture by Robert Thiele
Bridge Red Studios, Miami
2012
TOWARD A BOOK
Robert, René and I began discussing a catalog or book with an accompanying CD as a way of extending and documenting the residency. I invited Luis Olazabal to photograph Robert’s sculptures. Once the images entered the project, it became important to include writing, and I immediately thought of Robert Gregory, the imaginative poet with whom I had collaborated many times during the 1990s.
Like cicadas, my supernatural friend Bob Gregory had a habit of disappearing and reappearing in cycles of thirteen or seventeen years. I found him again through our mutual friend Michael Hettich. Bob was excited by the possibility of working together and wrote poems in response to Luis’s photographs of the sculptures by the other Bob—Robert Thiele. He also recorded one of them in his own voice.
LISTEN
In a Time as Sweet as Now (2014)
Written and spoken by Robert Gregory
Created for the Bridge Red Studios project
Subtropics Editions
I always appreciated that unusual sound events found their way into Bob’s poems. I asked him to respond to Luis’s photographs and to see where the images might take him. In a Time as Sweet as Now was the poem he felt most certain about.
AN OPEN PROJECT
Both Robert Gregory and Luis Olazabal have since died. Their contributions remain central to the project, even though the publication for which they were created has not yet taken its final form.
Brook Dorsch of Emerson Dorsch Gallery has expressed interest in publishing the material as an unusual limited-edition artist book or object. Robert Thiele has also considered whether the project might become a more conventional book. The necessary form, timing and circumstances have not yet aligned.
The artist book remains unresolved, but the project is not empty or unrealized. It already includes two publicly presented sound installations, Luis Olazabal’s photographs, Robert Gregory’s poems and recorded voice, and the continuing conversation among the surviving collaborators. Its eventual form remains open.
CONTRIBUTORS
Gustavo Matamoros — sound
René Barge — sound
Robert Thiele — sculpture
Luis Olazabal — photography
Robert Gregory — poetry and voice
Brook Dorsch / Emerson Dorsch Gallery — prospective publisher