Organised in 8 “episodes,” Brandon LaBelle's reference monograph guides us through a number of his installation works and scripts from 2003 to 2014, raising questions of space and community, and further, to the direction of the social and its political potential. Three essays and an interview, as well as the recording on CD of a recent live performance, complete the book.
Compiling works and writings from the last 13 years, this comprehensive monograph on American artist, writer and theorist Brandon LaBelle captures the artist's expansive practice. Originally from Los Angeles and currently based in Berlin, LaBelle has been at the forefront of the sound arts since the mid-1990s, developing projects that adopt methods of intervention and spatial practice, that work with voice and modes of address, and that stage scenes of public gathering based on notions of interruption and radical sharing. LaBelle is a highly unique artist and writer, engaged in collaborative and public work, and the monograph documents his diverse activities in a range of international contexts. It includes a CD of a live performance by LaBelle held at Club Transmediale Festival, Berlin, in 2015, essays on the artist by writer Fred Dewey, curator Edit Molnár, and cultural theorist Jeremy Woodruff, along with an interview with the artist by Elena Biserna.

Table of contents

Remembrance of a site brought alive to thinking
Fred Dewey

Restless search for a moment of attention and kindness—and sharing
Edit Molnár

The possible city: Brandon LaBelle's rehearsal for a people's microphone
Jeremy Woodruff

EPISODE 1
Hobo college for itinerant studies
The accident
The embassy project
Hideout for a creole imaginary

EPISODE 2
Media plate
The porcelain workshop
Table talk

EPISODE 3
Sound stage
Proposal to the mayor II
In passing
Rehersal for a people's microphone
Monument (to the wild imagination)

EPISODE 4
Preparations for common recognition
Radio memory
Preparations for a future library
Temporary outpost for an auditory figure
Meditation on a future horizon

EPISODE 5
Language games
Sound writing
Conversation piece
Sound parade

EPISODE 6
Pirate drumming
Phantom music
The sonic body
The rhythm project

EPISODE 7
Learning from seedbed
Event and its double
Motel polytope
Tour guide
Room tone

From the self to the other
Elena Biserna in conversation with Brandon LaBelle

Biographies

Acknowledgements