PITTSBURGH, PA.- As of September 30 at the Miller Institute of Contemporary Art, Impossible Music brings together sounds, scores, sculptures, video, and live performances to extend discourses on conceptual and experimental music and explore its intersections across different art forms. Marking the first joint curatorial collaboration of curator Candice Hopkins and artist, composer Raven Chacon, with curator, researcher, Stavia Grimani, the interdisciplinary group exhibition features work by boundary-defying composers, artists, and collectives including Terry Adkins, Black Quantum Futurism, Benvenuto Chavajay, Nikita Gale, Sarah Hennies, Tom Johnson, Conlon Nancarrow, Aki Onda, Christine Sun Kim, and Spencer C. Yeh. The exhibition also features a potlatch record listening station to make audible those songs rendered illegal under the “potlatch bans” which outlawed Native North American ceremonies in the United States and Canada. Shown together, the songs, scores, and artworks in the exhibition address the complexity of music as well as moments in human history that led to the creation of new sounds, including the sound of resistance. On view through December 10, the exhibition is complemented by live performances that occur throughout its run that began with an opening performance by Aki Onda "Spirits Known and Unknown" featuring Eyvind Kang.

“Bridging the gaps between music, art, and history, Impossible Music represents the cross-collaboration, artistic innovation, and open dialogue that we foster here at Miller ICA. It is incredibly exciting to be working with Raven and Candice on this exhibition, which marks their first curatorial collaboration to date,” said Elizabeth Chodos, Director of the Miller ICA.

Featuring works by ten composers and artists from the early 20th century to the present day, alongside archival material, including songs that were illegal at certain moments in time, Impossible Music brings the history of music to the fore, highlighting both the musical and artistic vanguard who pushed the medium forward into new and experimental forms as well as the often-challenging moments that spawned these innovations. These innovators include Conlon Nancarrow—the composer who utilized automatic player pianos to compose scores too complex for the human hand—and Nikita Gale, whose installation DRRRUMMERRRRRR (2019 – present) combines water and drums to explore how music can generate commentary on climate change. The exhibition also foregrounds the conceptual approach to sound of artists such as Terry Adkins, whose Darkwater Record (2003 – 2008) plays with sound and silence, through the inaudibility of sociologist W.E.B. Du Bois’s transformative 1960 address, “Socialism and the American Negro,” and Christine Sun Kim, who, through her use of charcoal, radically challenges modes of listening and transcribing sound.

“By grappling with the limitations of music—those encountered both through creating and receiving—we were also able to examine the solutions and innovations that grow from challenges such as artistic repression and isolation, specifically the possibilities of technique and virtuosity in the increasingly digital world,” said Chacon.

Hopkins added, “We realized that music doesn’t have to center the human. The concept of ‘impossible music’ not only breaks conventions, definitions, or assumptions of music, but also of instrumentation. That’s what people will hear and see in the exhibition. We hope audiences come away with an expanded definition of the idea of music.”

Coinciding with the exhibition are additional live performances by Bugallo-Williams Piano Duo (Amy Williams and Helena Bugallo) performing the compositions of Conlon Nancarrow; composer and percussionist, Sarah Hennies; and the collective Black Quantum Futurism. Conversations between the curators and participating artists will be compiled and printed into free booklets, inspired by Fluxus artist, printer, and composer Dick Higgins’ Great Bear Pamphlets, which will be released at the midpoint of the exhibition. Additional programming and performance details will be unveiled in the coming weeks.

The Miller Institute for Contemporary Art (Miller ICA) is a dynamic forum for knowledge creation, artistic discovery, interdisciplinary research, and exchange. Through its special exhibitions, commissions, publications, and public programs, Miller ICA advances the work of innovative contemporary artists—including both established and emerging practitioners, as well as graduate and undergraduate students—at pivotal moments in their trajectories. The museum makes meaning in real time and seeks to activate, inform, and inspire audiences by spotlighting urgent issues through the lens of contemporary art and culture. Free and open to the public, the Miller ICA has become a cultural anchor in Pittsburgh and throughout the broader arts community since first being established in 2000 as part of Carnegie Mellon University’s College of Fine Arts.

Miller Institute of Contemporary Art
Impossible Music
September 29th, 2023 - December 10th, 2023