Interview with Grey Gersten, curating The Stone, May 2009
by Adam Schatz
For our first installment of "Know Your Curator," we're featuring Grey Gersten, guitarist and filmmaker, who's assembled a great line-up for The Stone this May. We'll be reviewing a few of the shows, and as a bonus for you all, we're featuring a mix Grey assembled of all the performers this month in the pop-out music player, so feel free to check that out while you read. Aside from curating the shows, Grey will also be performing a fair amount, in some truly eclectic groups. Grey was kind enough to take a minute to answer a few questions about his approach, mentality, and love for "Let's Paint." Click HERE! to see the full line-up for May '09 at The Stone.
1. Let's start with the basics. What brought you to New York and drove you to become involved with so many great players?
I've always been fascinated with movies that take place in a dystopian future. The metropolis is usually portrayed as filthy and over-saturated...once cutting edge technology has become totally obsolete and is used for very primal behavior. When I first started visiting New York, it really felt like I was in one of those movies and that illusion allowed me to get in touch with my own super powers.
2. The biography on your website states that your work "explores the phenomena of transcendental occurrences, often provoked by man's complex relationship with time, technology, and spirituality." What. Does. That. MEAN?
Whoa. There. Dude. The leap from Question 1 to Question 2 was wayyyyy harsh. Transcendence can be defined as "existing apart from and not subject to the limitations of the material universe". I'm interested in the circumstances that induce metaphysical experiences, not because I think they're holistic or enlightening. These paranormal states have always been apart of our culture but technology has changed the way we encounter them. Music is historically inseparable from these types of mystical experiences. To ignore how transcendence has evolved in our society would be to make irrelevant music and there's already plenty of that.
3. How did you approach and deal with the task of curating an entire month of shows at the Stone, two shows a night?
I started last year by making a huge list of different artists, musicians and film-makers that I thought would create unique performances specifically for the series. It's impossible to plan anything like this because there are so many uncontrollable factors constantly shifting. At times it felt like a gigantic three dimensional Rubik's Cube! I would reach to adjust it and the blocks would morph into crazy micro Rubik layers. John Kilduff's "Lets Paint" videos were a source of constant motivation. His ability to multi-task and remain flexible is very inspiring.
4. Is there a running theme for the month?
I think it would have been difficult to maintain interest in a specific musical theme for an entire month. You would have to broaden the theme to avoid redundancy, and then it wouldn't be a theme so much as a crutch. Also, themes can be exclusive and I really wanted this series to expose new people to the artists involved. I tried to blur genre lines and imply similarities between certain types of music that are rarely grouped together. Hopefully this will encourage the audience to explore something outside of their comfort zone.
5. Come June 1st , where do your sights lie? What's the next project?
It's been a wonderful opportunity to organize a project of this magnitude and I really appreciate everyone that helped me put this together. There's a lot of smaller unrelated projects I have been neglecting because I haven't had much time. After I work through that cycle, I may be in the mood to do something curatorial again. It could be interesting to present artists in a series of recordings as opposed to live performances.
