“Sonic Gates” is a musical gateway of interactive sound sculptures along the Bay Street corridor designed as an educational sculpture hike for the communities of Staten Island. Developed by interdisciplinary artist Volker Goetze, “Sonic Gates” partners with DB Lampman and Scott Van Campen from Makerspace, sculptor Alassane Drabo, Arthur Sims, Jeremy Munson, and Lina Montoya as well as Rashida Ladn
er-Seward and Sajda Musawwir Ladner from The Universal Temple for the Arts, Christian Penn from Projectivity, Jody Stoll and Adrienne Abbate from Staten Island Partnership for Community Wellness. Renowned artist Sam Samore will act as an artistic consultant and advisor on “Sonic Gates.”
Through public meetings, local communities will advise the artists on preferred locations and designs, enabling their cultural heritage to be reflected in the works.
“Sonic Gates” will open with a multicultural weekend inauguration honoring Staten Island’s cultural diversity with new music, theatre and dance. He has performed and presented his work at Carnegie Hall, the Kennedy Center, Paris Jazz Festival, World Festival of Sacred Music (Los Angeles), Caixa Forum Madrid and the Opera Festival in Munich. His work fuels cross-cultural dialogue, incorporates multiple disciplines and utilizes cutting edge technology. He has been investigating the oral culture of West Africa and its in uences on black culture in America. GRIOT, a feature documentary about the oral music tradition in West Africa, is Volker Goetze’s debut as a film director and has since developed into a multimedia performance documentary. Goetze was invited as a panelist by the Apollo Theater and the New York Foundation for the Arts. Currently he is preparing a 3D sound and 360 video composition about Hart Island, an audiovisual photography and release concert at the Alice Austen and an installation serving as a voice for the homeless. Sam Samore - Artistic Advisor
Long considered one of the pioneers of large-scale conceptual photography in the 1980’s, Sam Samore is well known for his earlier series of photographic work such as “Allegories of Beauty (Incomplete)” and “Situations”. This artist has been exhibiting his work for the past forty years. Prominent monographic exhibitions have been held at De Appel in Amsterdam, P.S.1 MoMA in New York, Casino Luxembourg, and the Kunsthalle Zürich. Samore participated in the 46th Venice Biennale, the Istanbul Bienniale 2007, and the Tirana Biennale 2005. Sam Samore currently lives and works in New York City. Artist Bios:
Alassane Drabo (born in 1968) is a visual artist from Burkina Faso, West Africa. Now, he is living and working in New York City. He studied at Atelier Polyvalent d' Art Plastique. His work has been featured in numerous exhibitions such as: The International Biennial of Contemporary African Art, Dakar, Senegal; Design 21, Felissimo Design House, NYC; Unesco House, Paris, France; The Thamy Myele Foundation for Art in Amsterdam, Holland; Wallonie Bruxselle Center for Art, Paris, France. He is the recipient of several awards including: African Prize for Art, The Art Omi Residency, Gent, NY, and The Arts and Letters Award, Burkina Faso. He has been reviewed in many publications including the Wall Street Journal and featured in the book, Design in Afrique, Published by the Museum Dapper, Paris. He is the founding member of the Association of Friends of Art and the curator of the Stations: a mobile exhibition transit bus. Most recently Drabo has been selected to participate in the New York Foundation for the Arts, Immigrant Artist Program. DB Lampman is known for her unusual large-scale sculptural installations, video and performance art. She received her BFA from Maryland Institute, College of Art in 1994 and her MFA from the School of Visual Arts in 1996. In 2006 she received an Original Work Grant from the Council on the Arts and Humanities of Staten Island. In 2000, she received the prestigious Pollock-Krasner Foundation award for her installation art. Her large scale, kinetic sculptural installations, in which the sculpture or the sculptural environment reacts and responds to the viewer, have been shown at such places as the Tenement Museum in NYC, the Islip Art Museum in Long Island, ARC Gallery in Chicago, and the Federal Building in downtown Manhattan. At the 2003 Kingston Sculpture Biennial, which was curated by Judy Pfaff, DB debuted a new performance entitled, "Ripe," in which she wore an electrified steel harness covered in light bulbs. Her experimental digital video, "Home," has been shown at such venues as the 2003 Brooklyn International Film Festival at the Brooklyn Museum of Art and the Museo D'Arte Contemporanea Roma in Rome as part of the N(ever)land Percorsi al Digital festival. Her more recent projects include a commission from the Richmond County Savings foundation for a public art sculpture that was temporarily installed at the College of Staten Island and an exhibition of a large scale sculpture at Union County College in Cranford, NJ. Lina Montoya, A.K.A. “Ele Eme”, Staten Island-based artist since 2010. A passionate, creative and rising Graphic Artist and Designer, born and raised in Medellín, Colombia. Montoya has an extensive background in Graphic Design, Web, and Advertising and working with several clients and agencies worldwide. During the recent years, because of her community-based creative work, she has been developing her career as Muralist, Teaching Artist, and Community Organizer. She has experience working with public agencies and community based organizations around New York City. She has been working since 2013 on two on-going series of public art: “La Isla Bonita Series”, as a tribute to Staten Island and New York City’s beauty and diversity and “MusiCalls Series”, that intends to beautify as many places as possible along the America from North to South. She founded “La Isla Bonita Summer Festival”, an annual celebration on the North Shore of Staten Island since 2015, and the community group for Faber Pool and Park “Do Me A Faber” established 2016. Jeremy Munson is a sculptor/fabricator who has created and installed many metal and mixed media projects ranging from structural steel, decorative architectural details, to large scale art installations. His technical background in metal fabrication and experience working with a wide variety of artists and fabrication teams fuels his excitement for working on dynamic artistic projects. Apprenticing in the French guild style of fabrication and with artists using various approaches has necessitated flexibility in planning, materials, engineering and problem solving. The fertile artistic environment of NYC and Staten Island continues to happily draw Jeremy into creative endeavors, collaborations and opportunities to produce new work. The sculptor Arthur Simms was born in Kingston, Jamaica in 1961. He emigrated to Brooklyn, New York in 1969. He received his Masters Degree in Fine Arts in 1993 and Bachelor of Arts in 1987 from Brooklyn College. He has exhibited nationally and internationally, including representing the country of Jamaica in the 49th Venice Biennial in 2001. Other venues have included Musée International des Arts Modestes, The Irish Museum of Modern Art, Brooklyn Museum, Neuberger Museum, American Academy of Arts and Letters, MOMA P.S.1, American Academy in Rome, and the Queens Museum. Numerous awards have included the Rome Prize Fellowship, Academy Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, Creative Capital Grant, Guggenheim Fellowship, Louis Comfort Tiffany Award, Residency from the Irish Museum of Modern Art in Dublin, New York Foundation for the Arts Fellowship, Rockefeller Foundation Bellagio Residency Fellowship, Joan Mitchell Foundation Grant and Pollock-Krasner Grant.
