Chris Mann: things i’d like to have said
Chris Mann: the use
The Lab, San Francisco, CA
Yale Union, Portland, OR
Chris Mann is really a composer of extreme rhythmic complexities that have deeper meaning than words can ever deliver. —Alvin Lucier
Chris Mann (1949 Australia–2018 New York) was an Australian poet, writer, performer, and improviser specialized in the emerging field of compositional linguistics, which the artist described as "the mechanism whereby you understand what I'm thinking better than I do.” Mann's works for voice were based on complex texts, freely composed to allow a play of wit and humor. He explored the textures and gestures of speech, with its rhythms and qualities of color, pitch, intonation and emphasis. Mann's unique style of reading these incredibly dense, parenthetical texts at a high speed has brought him recognition as a unique performer and recording artist. In 2015, I invited Mann to perform and to publish a book.
On March 26, 2016, at The Lab, in San Francisco, I curated a performance by Mann, where he performed a piece titled “things i’d like to have said.”
With Yale Union, I published a book titled the use (488pp, 4 1/4″ x 6 3/4″, 2016), which is a printed expansion of Man’s web project theuse.info. Accompanying the book was a newly published special edition of postcard sets that celebrate the artist's inspiring work and ideas. The set includes contributions by admirers of Mann’s work Barbara Bloom, Herbet Brün, John Cage, Henri Chopin, Bill Dietz, Jeff Glassman, Tom Hamilton, Hanna Hurtzig, Alvin Lucier, Claire Mandel, Chris Mann, Matthias Osterwold, Vanessa Place, Larry Polansky, and David Watson.
Printed in an edition of 1,000 at Linco Printing, Long Island City, NY. Bound by Gary Robbins at Yale Union. Typeset in Times New Roman by Scott Ponik.
Special thanks to Chris Mann, Barbara Bloom, Dena Beard, Flint Jamison, Scott Ponik and Gary Robbins.
Chris Mann (born 1949) moved to New York in the 1980s and was as an associate of American composers John Cage and Kenneth Gaburo. He collaborated widely with filmmakers and electronic music composers, and performed texts in collaboration with artists such as Gary Hill, Tom Buckner, Robert Rauschenberg, David Dunn, Annea Lockwood, and Larry Polansky. His commissions include Paris Autumn Festival, Australian Biennale, Berlinner Festspiele, Radio France, Ars Electronica, National Public Radio, BBC, Australian Broadcasting Corporation, Harvestworks, and Dance Works, among many others. In 2013, Mann worked with Sepand Ansari to create a website-based project, www.010011.net, in correspondence with the exhibition "As it were … So to speak: A Museum Collection in Dialogue" with Barbara Bloom at the Jewish Museum in New York. Initially loaded with a library of 1,000 texts representing a wide range of disciplines, the site enables users to search for an idea and make rich and ever deeper associations. In contrast to Google, which provides a prepared answer if you ask the right question, 010011.net is a celebration of the question you are trying to learn how to ask.
For more information on Chris Mann please visit his website: theuse.info