Medium Rotation

Latest Episodes:

Omniaudience: “Little Girls,” by Nikita Gale May 28, 2021

A reading of “Little Girls,” Nikita Gale's essay on Tina Turner, Phil Spector, and the prospect of Black performers being heard without being controlled. This bonus episode follows Gale's conversation about Turner—and how the music industry determines whose voices are amplified and whose are silenced—in episode 6. The essay, published by Triple Canopy last year, is read by Kaneza Schaal.

Nikita Gale, an artist who lives in Los Angeles, has often engaged with Turner’s music and biography. In addition to co-hosting Medium Rotation, Gale has worked with Triple Canopy on a residency at the Hammer Museum and a related series of performances and publications. Gale’s recent and upcoming projects include exhibitions at the California African American Museum (Los Angeles) and LAX Art (Los Angeles), a commissioned performance at MoMA PS1 (New York City), and the record and book INFINITE RESOURCES (Aventures, 2021).

Omniaudience: Little Symphonies, with Nikita Gale May 28, 2021

Nikita Gale speaks with Alexander Provan about Tina Turner, Phil Spector, and the prospect of being heard without being controlled. Gale tells the story of the genre-busting song that Turner and Spector, the infamous producer, recorded in 1966, “River Deep—Mountain High”: a commercial failure but a creative breakthrough for Turner, who had previously been defined as an R&B singer and dominated by her abusive husband and bandmate, Ike Turner. Gale, an artist who has often engaged with Turner’s music and biography, talks about the song as a symbol for how the music industry determines whose voices are amplified and whose are silenced. She observes that the segregation of cities in midcentury America was echoed on the airwaves, and the definition of audiences via racial and demographic categories has been upheld by record labels, Spotify, and the Grammys.

Nikita Gale is an artist who lives in Los Angeles. In addition to co-hosting Medium Rotation, Gale has worked with Triple Canopy on a residency at the Hammer Museum and a related series of performances and publications. Gale’s recent and upcoming projects include exhibitions at the California African American Museum (Los Angeles) and LAX Art (Los Angeles), a commissioned performance at MoMA PS1 (New York City), and the record and book INFINITE RESOURCES (Aventures, 2021).

In this episode, Gale draws on her essay “Little Girls,” published by Triple Canopy last year, which describes “River Deep—Mountain High” as the zenith of Spector’s “wall of sound” technique—and as “the sound of being together—or of being packed together, forced together.” (A reading of Gale’s essay by Kaneza Schaal is available as a bonus episode.) Gale connects Turner’s effort to transcend the role of R&B singer, Spector’s desire to defy genre, and her own frustration as a teenager in Atlanta with radio stations that played rap for Black listeners and alt-rock for white ones. With Provan, she speaks about the production and reception of “River Deep—Mountain High” as part of the trajectory from “race records” in the 1920s to “urban contemporary” in the 1970s to the ongoing subsumption of most genres by pop music.

In order of appearance, the music and other recordings played on this episode are: Tina Turner performing in Gimme Shelter (Maysles Films, 1970), directed by David Maysles, Albert Maysles, and Charlotte Zwerin; Tracy Chapman, “Fast Car,” Tracy Chapman (Elektra, 1988); Tyler, the Creator speaking to the press after winning Best Rap Album at the Grammy Awards, 2020; outtakes from the recording of “River Deep—Mountain High,” from Ike & Tina Turner, What You See Is What You Get (Big Fro, 2018); the Ronettes, “Walking in the Rain” (Philles, 1964); Jackie Brenston and his Delta Cats (a.k.a. Ike Turner and his Kings of Rhythm), “Rocket 88” (Chess, 1951); Tina Turner interviewed on “The Late Show with David Letterman,” May 31, 1984; Phil Spector inducting Ike & Tina Turner into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame, 1991; interview with Phil Spector from All You Need Is Love: The Story of Popular Music (London Weekend Television, 1977), directed by Tony Palmer; Brian Gibson, dir., What’s Love Got to Do with It (Touchstone Pictures, 1993).

Medium Rotation is produced by Alexander Provan with Andrew Leland, and edited by Provan with Matt Frassica. Tashi Wada composed the theme music. Matt Mehlan acted as audio engineer and contributed additional music.

Medium Rotation is made possible through generous contributions from the Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts and Nicholas Harteau. This season of Medium Rotation is part of Triple Canopy’s twenty-sixth issue, Two Ears and One Mouth, which receives support from the Stolbun Collection, the Shelley & Donald Rubin Foundation, Agnes Gund, the National Endowment for the Arts, the New York State Council on the Arts, and the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs in partnership with the City Council.

Omniaudience: Get Lower, with Jeremy Toussaint-Baptiste May 20, 2021

Jeremy Toussaint-Baptiste joins Nikita Gale and Alexander Provan to speak about bass as a way to repulse people or bring them together, cause aggravation or collective pleasure. Toussaint-Baptiste recounts moments in his life when bass, emanating from a parked car or carnival, has shaken his walls, tested his nerves, and made him feel connected to other people, whether or not he appreciates the music blasting from their subwoofers. Ranging from the soundtrack of his childhood in Baton Rouge to the sonic maelstrom of J’ouvert in Brooklyn, Toussaint-Baptiste describes bass as a means for marginalized people to make an impression on an insensitive world. He listens to chopped-and-screwed cumbia, Ariana Grande, laptop speakers, Nelly, the passage of bass through subway tunnels, and frequencies too low to hear.

Jeremy Toussaint-Baptiste is an artist, composer, and performer living in New York City. His work has recently been exhibited at Interstate Projects (Brooklyn) and Hessel Museum of Art (Annandale-On-Hudson, New York).

In this episode, Toussaint-Baptiste presents a monologue with music and illustrative audio, adapted from a performance that he presented last year at Triple Canopy, where he is currently in residence. In a conversation accompanying the episode, Toussaint-Baptiste elaborates on the uses and abuses of bass—and on how the experiences recounted in his monologue have shaped (and politicized) him as a listener. He speaks about low-frequency sounds as instructing us to, in relating to each other, keep in mind what we can’t see, what we can’t hear, what we don’t know. And he connects his understanding of bass—as forging visceral connections between people without revealing who they are—to the philosopher Eduard Glissant’s “poetics of relation,” which suggests that “each and every identity is extended through a relationship with the Other.”

In order of appearance, the music and other recordings played on this episode are: Najee, “Najee’s Theme,” Najee’s Theme (EMI America, 1986); Nelly feat. Kelly Rowland, “Dilemma,” Nellyville (Universal and Fo’ Reel, 2002); Super Grupo Colombia, “Pájaro Zinzontle,” Super Grupo Colombia: Lo Mejor De Siempre (MultiMusic Mexico, 2000); E.S.G., “Swangin’ and Bangin’,” Ocean of Funk (Perrion Entertainment, 1994); trailer from Ticks, dir. Tony Randel, (USA, 1994); Leonela Guzman, field recording of I-10 near Vassar Street, Houston, Texas, 2021; MC Nero Baby, “I Gotta Lotta Respect,” I Gotta Lotta Respect (NBJ Records, 1996); RidinChevySolo, “2005 Silverado Traffic/Street bass REACTIONS,” video, 2012; FeteTV, “West Indian Day Parade 2018,” video, 2018; Ariana Grande feat. Iggy Azalea, “Problem,” My Everything (Republic, 2014); CHInewsable, “Fireworks on the streets of Crown Heights 6/20/20,” video, 2020; Vybz Kartel, “Go Go Wine,” Kingston Story (Mixpak Records, 2011); Jeremy Toussaint-Baptiste, “LEV AS,” 2021.

Omniaudience: The Dead Can Dance, with Tashi Wada May 13, 2021

Tashi Wada joins Nikita Gale and Alexander Provan to speak about technologies that claim to capture the souls of performers. Wada presents a composition for a “high-resolution player piano” and asks how we discern between human expression and technical perfection, how we listen to virtuosos and machines. He speaks about the pandemic-era vogue for liveness at home, the displacement of pianists by piano rolls (or proprietary software), and the differences between people and marionettes. And, with Gale and Provan, he listens to Conlon Nancarrow, Glenn Gould, Perry Como, advertisements for hi-fi systems, the ghost of Art Tatum, and the stars of Hologram USA Theater.

Tashi Wada is a Los Angeles-based composer and performer who founded and runs the label Saltern. His most recent album, Nue, was released by RVNG Intl. in 2018.

The composition presented on this episode, Table of Visions, was commissioned by Triple Canopy as part of a residency at the Hammer Museum in Los Angeles, and written for the Steinway Spirio, a player piano designed to record and replay live performances. (Triple Canopy recently published an essay about the composition with recordings of two sketches, excerpts of which are played on this episode.) With Gale and Provan, Wada speaks about the history and future of “high-resolution” technologies, which aim to approximate (or supplant) liveness—and, increasingly, are aided by precise records of all that we say, do, and play. They discuss the age-old dream of perfect fidelity as manifest in musical automata, cutting-edge stereos, and holograms of Tupac and Michael Jackson. And they ask how the pursuit of performances that exceed human capabilities change us as listeners as well as laborers.

In this episode, Gale, Provan, and Wada speak about Philip Auslander’s Liveness: Performance in a Mediatized Culture (Routledge, 1999); Heinrich von Kleist’s “On the Marionette Theatre,” 1810; and the work of Patrick Feaster, a specialist in the history, culture, and preservation of early sound media. In order of appearance, the music and other recordings played on this episode are: Steinway & Sons, “The Features of the Steinway & Sons SPIRIO | r,” 2019; Glenn Gould playing Bach’s “Contrapunctus IV,” “Glenn Gould on Bach,” Sunday Concert, Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, 1962; Perry Como, “Goodbye, Sue,” (Victor, 1943); Conlon Nancarrow, “Study For Player Piano No. 13” Studies for Piano Player (Other Minds, 1977); “Study For Player Piano No. 42,” Conlon Nancarrow: Studies for Player Piano, Vol. V (Wergo, 2018); a film by RCA that introduces the company’s high-fidelity stereo system, 1957; “Variations on Glenn Gould,” Telescope, Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, 1969.

Omniaudience: The Big Society, with Derica Shields May 06, 2021

Derica Shields joins Nikita Gale and Alexander Provan to speak about the value of listening to Black peoples’ accounts and analyses of their own lives. They discuss Shields’s book-length oral history of Black experiences of the welfare state, “A Heavy Nonpresence,” recently published by Triple Canopy. Shields reflects on her effort to share the stories of Black people who are mistreated and monitored by the state, while also being made to feel that they should be grateful for receiving the assistance to which they’re entitled. Her work shows how, in Britain, liberal nostalgia for the so-called care of the state is premised on not listening to those who receive benefits—and how politicians and journalists enable Black people to be shamed for doing so by upholding the age-old distinction between the deserving and undeserving poor (as if colonialism never happened).

With Gale and Provan, Shields listens to and discusses excerpts from “A Heavy Nonpresence,” which includes accounts of seven Londoners whose lives are entwined with the welfare system. Shields advocates for oral history as a way of enabling marginalized people to be heard—and to hear each other—as well as to mitigate shame and circulate survival strategies. She notes that government assistance for Black people tends to be thought of as contingent on “good behavior,” but observes a recent shift in public opinion and political discourse, due to a reckoning with Britain’s history of colonialism and racism. Rather than act thankful for the rewards of navigating an inhumane bureaucracy, more and more people are saying: “We are here, and the same rights accrue to us.”

Derica Shields is a writer, researcher, and cultural worker living in London. She is the author of the forthcoming book Bad Practice (Book Works, 2021). Her work has been published by Frieze, Flash Art, Cell Project Space, and the New Inquiry, and presented by the Institute for Contemporary Arts (London) and Spectacle Theater (Brooklyn), among other publications and institutions.

With Gale and Provan, Shields speaks about Beverly Bryan, Stella Dadzie and Suzanne Scafe, The Heart of the Race (Virago Press, 1985); Johnnie Tillmon, “Welfare Is a Women’s Issue,” Ms., spring 1972; a video of the Labour MP David Lammy lambasting the British government for deporting immigrants on April 16, 2018; and a newsreel of West Indian workers, including the famed calypso musician Lord Kitchener, arriving in London aboard the SS Empire Windrush in 1948.

Omniaudience: Holy Ghosts, with Harmony Holiday Apr 29, 2021

Harmony Holiday, a writer, dancer, and archivist, joins Nikita Gale and Alexander Provan to speak about Black performers whose songs and struggles reflect the ongoing trauma of the “African holocaust.” They discuss the pressure to pander to white audiences as well as the impulse to seek a form of expression (and of being) that is chosen and not imposed by force. They listen to songs written and recorded by Holiday’s father, the soul singer Jimmy Holiday, as well as to Albert Ayler, Thelonious Monk, Billie Holiday, Amiri Baraka, and Kanye West.

Holiday's essay “The Black Catatonic Scream,” a meditation on Black silence, was published by Triple Canopy last year. Her book of poems on the “African holocaust,” naming, and erasure, Maafa, is being published by Fence Books in 2021. Holiday is currently working on a biography of the singer Abbey Lincoln and a collection of essays, Love Is War for Miles.

In this episode, Holiday, Gale, and Provan speak about Fred Moten’s In the Break: The Aesthetics of the Black Radical Tradition (University of Minnesota Press, 2003); Édouard Glissant’s The Poetics of Relation, trans. Betsy Wing (University of Michigan Press, 1997); the writer and cultural theorist Sylvia Wynter, whose work is the subject of Katherine McKittrick’s Sylvia Wynter: On Being Human as Praxis (Duke University Press, 2014); Mack Hagood’s Hush: Media and Sonic Self-Control (Duke University Press, 2019); Amiri Baraka, the poet, author, and luminary of the Black Arts Movement, about whom Holiday has often written.

In order of appearance, the music and other recordings played on this episode are: Sonny Sharrock, “Black Woman” (feat. Linda Sharrock), Black Woman (Vortex Records, 1969); a concert by Kanye West as part of his Saint Pablo Tour, 2016; West’s “Father Stretch My Hands, Pt. 1,” The Life of Pablo (Def Jam, 2016); Jimmy Holiday, “We Got a Good Thing Goin’,” Turning Point (Minit, 1966); Ray Charles, “Somebody Ought to Write a Book About It” (ABC Records, 1967); Thelonious Monk, “You Took the Words Right Out of My Heart,” Thelonious Alone in San Francisco (Riverside, 1959), James Brown, “The Payback,” The Payback (Polydor, 1973); Billie Holiday and Her Orchestra, “A Sailboat in the Moonlight” (Vocalion, 1937); Amiri Baraka reading “Black Art” on Sonny Murray’s Sonny’s Time Now (Jihad Productions, 1965); Albert Ayler, “Ghosts (Variation 2),” Spiritual Unity (ESP-Disk, 1964); an advertisement for Beats by Dre headphones featuring Colin Kaepernick, 2013. The title of this episode is taken from Albert Ayler’s Holy Ghost: Rare and Unissued Recordings (1962–70) (Revenant Records, 2004).

Medium Rotation is produced by Alexander Provan with Andrew Leland, and edited by Provan with Matt Frassica. Tashi Wada composed the theme music. Matt Mehlan acted as the audio engineer and contributed additional music.

Omniaudience: Twenty Thousand Bodies Can’t Be Wrong, with Nikita Gale and Alexander Provan Apr 23, 2021

Nikita Gale, an artist, and Alexander Provan, Triple Canopy’s editor, are the hosts of Medium Rotation. In the first episode, they ask who we are—and what we can do—as listeners, members of an audience, and bodies in concert (or in conflict). They introduce the first season of the podcast, Omniaudience, by speaking about the revelation of arena concerts, the performance of listening by CEOs and self-help gurus, and how the demand to be heard manifests in protest and property violence. And they listen to MC Hammer, Van Halen, Pauline Oliveros, Kimberly Jones, and the Los Angeles Board of Police Commissioners.

Provan and Gale have been collaborating for several years on work related to the politics of listening, which has involved a residency at the Hammer Museum as well as a series of publications, performances, and conversations as part of Triple Canopy’s twenty-sixth issue, Two Ears and One Mouth. In his essay for the issue “The Great Equalizer,” Provan writes about the relationship between speaking and listening, especially in the wake of the coronavirus pandemic.

In this episode, Gale and Provan speak about the composer Pauline Oliveros, whose writing and teaching are available via the Center for Deep Listening. In order of appearance, the music and other recordings played on this episode are: a concert by MC Hammer, 1991; a concert by Van Halen, 1995; a master class by Pauline Oliveros, 2012; a hearing by the Los Angeles Board of Police Commissioners, 2020; and a video of the author Kimberly Jones by the filmmaker David Jones, 2020.

Nikita Gale is an artist who lives in Los Angeles. In addition to co-hosting Omniaudience, Gale has worked with Triple Canopy on a residency at the Hammer Museum and a related series of performances and publications. Gale’s essay “Little Girls” was published by Triple Canopy last year. Gale’s current and upcoming projects include exhibitions at the California African American Museum (Los Angeles) and LAX Art (Los Angeles), as well as the record and book INFINITE RESOURCES (Aventures, 2021).

Alexander Provan is the editor of Triple Canopy. He is the recipient of a Creative Capital | Andy Warhol Foundation Arts Writers Grant and has been a fellow at the Vera List Center for Art and Politics. His writing has appeared in the Nation, n+1, Art in America, Artforum, Frieze, and in several exhibition catalogues. His work has been presented at the 14th Istanbul Biennial, Museum Tinguely (Basel), 12th Bienal de Cuenca (Ecuador), New Museum (New York), Kunsthall Oslo, and Hessel Museum of Art (Annandale-on-Hudson, New York), among other venues. His LP Measuring Device with Organs was published by Triple Canopy in 2018.

Introducing Medium Rotation Apr 20, 2021

A trailer for Medium Rotation by Alexander Provan, the editor of Triple Canopy and, along with Nikita Gale, host of the podcast. Why listen? That’s the question posed in the first season of the podcast, Omniaudience. The answer: we become who we are—and relate to one another as individuals and members of a body politic—through listening. But we live in a society that seems antithetical to listening, and set up to suppress the voices of those who have, historically, struggled to be heard. Omniaudience is a six-episode experiment in listening as well as an argument against the conflation of freedom and speech, an antidote to communication for the sake of outputting data and distraction (which isn’t to say you shouldn’t listen while cooking or cleaning).

Our TOPPODCAST Picks

Follow Us

Stay Connected

Related Podcasts

Links

Stay Connected