Human Resources
410 Cottage Home St.
Los Angeles, CA 90012
Los Angeles artists Yann Novak, Robert Crouch and Ian Wellman return home from their west coast tour and are joined by Byron Westbrook. Yann Novak will present his new work Slowly Dismantling which reflecting on his formative experiences as a queer youth in middle America and explores these acoustic and social spaces as zones of liberation. Byron Westbrook will present the LA premiere of a new series of compositions for electronics using just intonation and custom tuning systems. Robert Crouch will perform new work inspired by poet Ted Berrigan, that explores the tensions between collective listening and personal reflection. Ian Wellman will be performing segments from his latest offering, Bioaccumulation, and new material comprised of recordings made around Southern California, Sierra Nevada, and Lake Azeui, Haiti.
About the Artists
Yann Novak is a queer interdisciplinary artist and composer based in Los Angeles. His work is guided by his interests in perception, context, movement, and the felt presence of direct experience. Through the use of sound and light, Novak explores how these intangible materials can act as catalysts to focus our awareness on our present location in space and time. Novak’s diverse body of works—audiovisual installations, performances, recording, and prints—ask participants to reclaim the present moment as a political act. His work has been experienced through exhibitions and performance at AB Salon, Brussels; Armory Center for the Arts, Pasadena, California; The Broad, Los Angeles; Commonwealth & Council, Los Angeles; Danspace, New York; de Young Museum, San Francisco; Fylkingen, Stockholm; The Getty Villa, Pacific Palisades, California; Hammer Museum, Los Angeles; The Henry Art Gallery, Seattle; Human Resources, Los Angeles; Iklectik, London; Institute of Modern Art, Brisbane; LACMA, Los Angeles; Mutek Festival, Montreal; Norton Simon Museum, Pasadena, California; SFMoMA, San Francisco; Soundfjord, London; and The Stone, New York, among others.His works have been released by 901 Editions, Dragon’s Eye Recordings, LINE, Room40, and Touch, among others.
Byron Westbrook has been presenting experimental sound work internationally in contemporary music and art venues since 2008. His music releases on Umor Rex, Root Strata, Hands in the Dark and Psychic Troubles take a sculptural approach to electronic composition shaped by visual art studies and a history of working with multi-channel sound installation. Recent projects have included a commission for the Walker Art Center, performances at MaerzMusik Festival, MoMA PS1, Akousma Festival, Desert Daze and residencies with ISSUE Project Room, EMS Stockholm, Civitella Ranieri Foundation and Banff Centre for the Arts. A new cassette/digital release Voice Damage, is out March 2019 on Psychic Troubles Tapes. Westbrook is currently based in Los Angeles.
Robert Crouch is an artist and curator whose work encompasses sound, performance, and technology. As an artist, he locates his work with the intersection of post-phenomenological listening practices, conceptual sound art, and contemporary electronic music. At its core, his work can be understood as a conversation between tonality, context, history and subjectivities. Similarly, Crouch’s curatorial work focuses on the overlapping disciplines of sound, technology, movement, and performance. Crouch is currently the Executive and Artistic Director for Fulcrum Arts and the Artistic Director for the A×S Festival. His works have been published by Dragon’s Eye Recordings, LINE, and Touch, among others.
Taking influence from ethnographic film, bioacoustics, and noise music, Ian Wellman merges real and imagined worlds to create consuming acoustic portraits. His work is created from single tape loops, effect pedals, and field recordings, often focusing on themes based on the environmental collapse. Wellman’s solo efforts have been released on Room 40, Dragon’s Eye Recordings, Touch Radio, and Industrial Coast. Along with Aaron Bartell, he is part of the collaborative listening duo Zzyzxzyzz, which focuses on electromagnetic and other inaudible by ear sound worlds. Ian is an IATSE 695 production sound mixer for film/video by trade. Ian Wellman works and resides in Los Angeles, CA.
