Sound + Vision Live: Fan Letters, Maria Chavez & Kendall Williams

Fan Letters is a collaboration between musician Dylan Neely and video artist Alex Nathanson that creates intricate live performances with a combination of sound, video, computer programming, and handmade electronic instruments. Their work employs a variety of aesthetic and conceptual approaches, oscillating between noise and chamber music, from experimental cinema to Saturday morning cartoons, and complex political negotiations to schoolyard games. Performances combine traditional instruments, such as the violin and video projector, with experimental controllers (including bicycle wheels and flashlights).

Maria Chavez makes subtle and otherworldly use of vinyl records and turntables, live-crafting eerie, found-sound collages that Marcel Duchamp, Christian Marclay, or DJ Spinderella herself could all love. Chavez uses an assortment of utterly original DJ techniques: placing handfuls of rocks on her decks, playing stacks of broken records at once, and violently bouncing the tone arm, to name a few. After a decade of refusing to make a studio document of her wild live performances, Chavez will finally release an album this year on the Software label.

Kendall Williams is a master and true student of the steel pan. A graduate of NYU and current doctoral candidate at Princeton, Williams fearlessly expands the known capabilities of Trinidad’s national instrument. He is a composer, performer, and the current director of Brooklyn’s Crossfire Steel Orchestra.

Fan Letters and Kendall Williams will be collaborating live on a number of new pieces at the Film Society. Maria Chavez will provide original pre-recorded audio for Fan Letters' animations, which the duo will manipulate live. Additionally, Fan Letters will present a selection of their own audio-visual work.