An investigation of dubplate decay and the tactile relationship to the disc.
For over two decades, New York-based artist and composer Marina Rosenfeld has pioneered a specific language for
turntable music, based on an ever-expanding collection of dub plates she creates.
The dubplate is a one-off, hand-cut record. Each dubplate can be made to contain any array of sounds decided on by its creator. For Rosenfeld, her discovery of the dubplate in the late 1990s was a pivotal moment, when she recognised the material instability of the medium as critical tool for performance and composition.
On Index, the investigation of this materiality is paramount. The physical intimacy that colors the relation between the hand and the plate is revealed through a very particular reading of the turntable, one which sits in parallel to the more recognised ways in which that technology has been deployed as a performative tool.
This edition features a series of live recordings and related materials that trace the development of Rosenfeld's tactile approach and her shifting collection of sound materials. The recordings are published alongside a book featuring extensive archival documentation, photography and a long-form conversation between Marina Rosenfeld and
Lawrence English.
Marina Rosenfeld is a composer and artist based in Brooklyn, NY. Her works explore acoustic architectures and experimental forms of participation and sociality in sound installation and performance.
In 1993 she mounted her first all-woman
Sheer frost orchestra as a studentat CalArts in Los Angeles. Subsequent works in the 90s and aughts explored the staging of sound in complex sites, with attention to perception and the (female) body. In the late nineties she also began to create dub plates, developing an improvisational practice as a turntablist with a distinctive palette of sounds drawn from her studio practice. From 2008, with
Teenage Lontano, she turned her attention increasingly to the diffusion of the voice within complex systems, with works for choir and the notable collaboration
P.A./HARD LOVE with Annette Henry, aka Warrior Queen. Her music has continued to experiment in the areas of performance and notation, staging and concept, and in recent works, image and object.
Rosenfeld has collaborated with a core group of artists and interpreters, especially
Okkyung Lee, Marino Formenti, George Lewis,
Christian Marclay, Greg Fox,
Eli Keszler, and
Ben Vida. Between 2004 and 2008, she performed frequently with the Merce Cunningham Dance Company, and in recent years, created scores for choreographers Ralph Lemon (
Scaffold Room, 2014-2015) and
Maria Hassabi (
PLASTIC, 2016,
STAGED?, 2017, and
STAGING, 2017-2018).
Rosenfeld's work has been presented by the Park Avenue Armory, the Museum of Modern Art, the Kitchen, the Whitney and Guggenheim museums, the Fondacion
Serralves, Western Australia's Midlands Railway Workshops, and festivals and institutions throughout Europe, the US, Canada and Australia. She has mounted solo exhibitionsat
Portikus Frankfurt, the Artist's Institute and, upcoming in 2021, at Kunsthaus Baselland in Basel, Switzerland. Her work has been included in two Whitney biennials, two PERFORMA biennials, the Montreal Biennial, Liverpool Biennial, and international surveys such "Every Time A Ear Di Soun" ( for Documenta14), and Tasmania's "Dark Mofo" in 2019. In the contemporary music field, she has created works for the Holland, Borealis, Wien Modern, Time:Spans, Maerz Musik, Vancouver, Pro Musica Nova, Donaueschingen, Musica Strasbourg and Ultima festivals, among many others.
Rosenfeld has been the co-chair of the MFA in Music/Sound at Bard College since 2007, and has been a visiting professor in sound, sculpture and performance at Cooper Union, Harvard, Yale School of Art, and Brooklyn College.
