Phill Niblock, Minimalist Composer and Intermedia
Rina Sherman
HD, couleurs, 64 min, 2014
VOICES, Meetings With Remarkable People
A cineportrait of Phill Niblock, American composer, pioneer of drone music, essentially creating music through the slow accumulation of sustained microtones obtained from reprocessing acoustic instruments, filmmaker and director of avant-garde music foundation Experimental Intermedia in NYC, who has since the 60s been developing a multidisciplinary body of work, mostly performed by himself, with Minimalist music, conceptual art and structural cinema, systematic art and politics. Recognized as one of the greatest experimental composers of our time, he was awarded the John Cage Prize in 2014 and his work has been shown around the world: The Museum of Modern Art, the Centre Pompidou, Akademie der Kunste, Berlin, Carpenter Center for the Visual Arts at Harvard.
Phill Niblock has been making music and intermedia performances since the ’60s that have been shown around the world (The Museum of Modern Art, The Wadsworth Atheneum, the Kitchen, the Paris Autumn Festival, Akademie der Kunste, Berlin, Carpenter Center for the Visual Arts at Harvard).. Since 1985, he has been the director of the Experimental Intermedia Foundation in New York, where he has produced Music and Intermedia presentations since 1975 and he is the curator of EI’s XI Record label.
Phill Niblock is an intermedia artist using music, film, photography, video and computers. He was born in Indiana in 1933. Since the mid-60’s he has been making music and intermedia performances which have been shown at numerous venues around the world. Since 1985, he has been the director of the Experimental Intermedia Foundation in New York – www.experimentalintermedia.org – where he has been an artist/member since 1968. He is the producer of Music and Intermedia presentations at EI since 1973 and the curator of EI’s XI Records label. Phill Niblock’s music is available on the XI, Moikai, Mode, Matiere Memoire, Room 40, and Touch labels. DVDs of films and music are available on the Extreme label and Von Archive. He is a retired professor of film, video and photography at The College of Staten Island, the City University of New York. In 2014, he was the recipient of the prestigious John Cage Award from the Foundation for Contemporary Arts.
