“Unusual Companionships” is a curatorial inquiry conceived by Fjolla Hoxha, Dash Che and Suvi Tuominen for the Museum of Impossible Forms, taking place during autumn 2021. The second artist they have invited to perform an unusual companionship in public is Dylan Simon, a multi-disciplinary artist from Napa, California, currently living and working in Nashville, Tennessee. Simon works extensively in his local experimental music scene, playing live and organizing events which break down boundaries between performer and audience, experiment with conceptual participation with the attempt to create an energetic and creative feedback loop by fostering a sense of community through performance.
Fjolla Hoxha and Dylan Simon started their artistic collaboration in 2019, finding common interests in revisiting and reinterpreting the past from various perspectives, affected by their geographies that brought different enriching aspects to their collaborative multi-media artwork.
For his performance at Museum of Impossible Forms, Dylan Simon will be exploring the interaction of spaces with a contemporary model of the classic 1980s ROLAND TR-808 drum machine, the TR-08 that will travel with him all the way from Nashville. The TR-808 is known for its deep, huge bass tones and uncompromising sound. Dylan will explore the sonic capabilities of using only one electronic rhythm instrument and vocals. For this performance he is interested in using intensity, confrontation, power and stark brutal minimalism to create a multilayered experience for the audience.
>> About the artist
Dylan Simon, a multi-disciplinary artist from Napa, California, currently living and working in Nashville, Tennessee. He was first inspired by the hand-drawn poster art of the late 60’s and early 70’s, rooted in Bay Area rock culture, later finding inspiration from poster art traditions in the United States including work for the WPA and Hatch Show Print, he has created hand-lettered logos, drawings and posters for bands and small businesses for almost 20 years. DIY roots are important to his art and as an outcropping of this ethic, working with old footage aligns with his interests and influences, which include William S. Burroughs, Brion Gysin, and their notions of multimedia work and collage.
Simon runs a visual and music studio called Anachronistic Media Workshop that includes a risograph print shop, music imprint and VHS production studio. Everything is created using analog tools as much as possible. This includes assembling print materials and products as well as the distribution - all by hand. He is also the co-founder of TRANCE//FURNACE, a Nashville based multimedia imprint and collective, specializing in industrial culture, transgressive art, electronic music and chaos magick.
>> About Unusual Companionships
“Unusual Companionships” is a curatorial inquiry conceived by Fjolla Hoxha, Dash Che and Suvi Tuominen for the Museum of Impossible Forms. For the three artists, ‘togetherness’, ‘showing up’, and ‘unusual companionships’ are the guiding concepts in their curatorial thinking. These concepts point toward becoming visible and being present together in whatever way possible as an incongruous group with different practices, contradicting ideas and needs. For that, Hoxha, Che and Tuominen focus on curating a program built on performative gestures with the potential to extend to the outside (streets, parks and other public and semi-public spaces of Helsinki) and transgress the bonds that expand from the companionships between the artists and their performative human and other-than-human partners with random and intended audiences.
“Unusual Companionships” are the kind of bonds that spring from the strangeness of certain connections, especially those that can be easily dismissed and go unnoticed, paying attention to artistic practices that are merely visible, mundane, or too intimate –with a special focus on the practices developed throughout the pandemic time.
