Satellite 4: Lucie Vítková and Voice Training (Jaclyn Miller)

Join us at Bar Laika for the fourth edition of Satellite, featuring Lucie Vítková, and Voice Training (Jaclyn Miller). Both artists are associated with the label Bánh Mì Verlag. 

Lucie Vítková is a composer, improviser, and performer (accordion, hichiriki, synthesizer, voice, and tap dance) from the Czech Republic. Her compositions focus on sonification (compositions based on abstract models derived from physical objects). In her improvisation practice, Vítková explores characteristics of discrete spaces through the interaction between sound and movement. Recently, she has been delving into the social-political aspects of music in relation to everyday life, and in reusing trash to build sonic costumes. For her Satellite performance, Vítková will be presenting two pieces, one of them being “Music Domestic,” a work initially released by Bánh Mì Verlag on cassette. In this piece, Vítková plays and records everyday objects such as a vacuum cleaner, fan, shower, toilet, kettle, and washing machine. For this specific iteration, she will be using a vacuum cleaner. 

In 2017 Vítková was nominated to the Herb Alpert Awards in Arts in the category of Music, and was a resident artist at Roulette in 2018. She has put together two ensembles—the NYC Constellation Ensemble (focused on music behavior) and the OPERA Ensemble (for singing instrumentalists). During her 2017 Mentor/Protégé Residency in Tokyo, she studied hichiriki with Hitomi Nakamura and has been a member of the Columbia University Gagaku Ensemble. As an accordion player, she collaborated with the New York-based TAK Ensemble, S.E.M. ensemble, String Noise, Du.0, Argento Ensemble, CU Raaga, Ghost Ensemble, and Wet. 

Jaclyn Miller works at the imaginary intersections of poetics, game theory, and sound synthesis. Recording under the moniker Voice Training, she has presented sound pieces at Issue Project Room, Bridget Donahue Gallery, Alyssa Davis Gallery, and Commend NYC. 

For her appearance at Bar Laika, Miller will be presenting an iteration of “Hyper-articulate,” a piece originally conceived for Pennies From Heaven, a series at Control Synthesizers & Electronic Devices organized by Bánh Mì Verlag. This piece seeks to sonically re-inventory a panoramic culture of self-expression native to white middle class terms of queer visibility in an era where representation has become far more complex. Decades of dissenting voices are institutionally canonized and subsequently exploited for profit, while any attempts at grassroots gestures are mined for their social capital. The florescent psychedelia of a Milk makeup ad efface the wounded echo of Marsha P. Johnson—eclipsing a history that is readily tangible but still lost. 

Miller will be sampling parts of The Gentrification of the Mind: Witness to a Lost Imagination (2012), a text by Sarah Schulman where she delves into the unexamined trauma of the AIDS epidemic and its effect on the internalized values of dominant culture. How do we begin to reconcile or even represent this collective trauma? What alternatives have been silenced or lost?

Satellite is a monthly experimental music series curated by Sanna Almajedi.

5 USD cover at the door.

For more information, contact laika [​at​] e-flux.com.