The Auricle Sonic Arts Gallery
Showing: 12-5pm, 7-30 August, 2014
Opening: 7 August, 6-8pm
No Mean City sounds short excerpts from texts on urbanism, and literary reflections on the phenomenon of cities in culture, along with recorded instrumental interludes resembling repeated and meaningless fanfares. The texts and other sounds overlap randomly in a jumble of signification, resembling voices in a crowd. The artist invites you to take a moment to reflect on what it means to be part of a city and to ponder on one’s own place in our urban culture.
Bruce Russell is an improvising sound artist, who since 1987 has been a member of the Dead C. This genre-dissolving New Zealand trio mixes rock, electro-acoustics and noise. He has also been active as a solo artist, and directed two independent labels, Xpressway and Corpus Hermeticum. He writes essays and criticism for The Wire, artists’ catalogues, and other publications. In 2010 Bruce Russell published Left-handed blows: writing on sound 1993-2009 (Auckland: Clouds), and in 2012 edited Erewhon calling: experimental sound in New Zealand (Auckland: Audio Foundation/cmr). He is currently studying at RMIT towards a doctorate in sound in the School of Art and is also the President of the Cantabrian Society of Sonic Artists.
