Mash Ups: a collaborative art series by photographer Muema Lombe and painter Lorie Caval.
DEFINITION OF A MASH UP: In music, “A mashup (also mash up and mash-up) is a song or composition created by blending two or more songs, usually by overlaying the vocal track of one song seamlessly over the music track of another. In full swing at the end of the 20th century, mashups have been described positively as "ultimate post-modern pop song[s]" or "'culture jamming in its purest form'"
In web development, a mashup is a Web application that combines data from one or more sources into a single integrated tool. An example of a mashup is the use of cartographic data from Google Maps to add location information to real estate data, thereby creating a new and distinct Web service that was not originally provided by either source.
- From Wikipedia
Cultural critic and legal commentator Siva Vaidhyanathan has commented that "The most interesting and entertaining phenomenon of … "mashes" - new compositions created by combining the rhythm tracks of one song and the vocal tracks of another." Noting that mashups have a rich history he observes that "It is merely the latest incarnation of a widely shared, deeply embedded cultural habit of cultural recombination across time and space."
- From Wikipedia
In the Mash Ups series of works, Nightlife documentarian Muema has mashed his photography together with Lorie Caval’s painting. The result is a completely new version of each of the works.
BACKSTORY: While attending Miami’s M3 conference earlier this decade, Muema discovered The Grey Album. The Grey Album is a mashup album by Danger Mouse, released in 2004. It uses an a cappella version of rapper Jay-Z's The Black Album and couples it with instrumentals created from a multitude of unauthorized samples from The Beatles' LP The Beatles (more commonly known as The White Album). The Grey Album gained notoriety due to the response by EMI in attempting to halt its distribution. This served as the catalyst for the collaboration between Muema and Lorie. The thought: why not take photographs that capture the energy of an event and have them accented, highlighted and further expounded upon by etching and painting. The Mash Ups series was born. |
In the mid-90s, Lorie Caval was a columnist and Nightlife Reporter for the cutting-edge magazine Paper, and then as staff writer/editor for various other New York City lifestyle and entertainment publications. During that time, Lorie co-founded Pro Deuce Entertainment with Eric "EMan" Clark, conceptualizing, producing and publicizing underground nightclub events. Most notable of their events was Bang The Party, an underground house music, art, dance party that ran on a weekly basis for over six years (1997-2003) and spawned various projects such as the compilation album; Bang The Party: Volume One (released on Jellybean Recordings/Sony).
Lorie is also a songwriter and spoken-word writer/recording artist. Her writing credits include the single, "I Am the Road" with E-Man and Markus Enochson (released on Masters At Work Records) and her spoken-word releases include "He Broke My Heart," "Sexy" and "Tongue Twisted" (released on Liberate Music), to name a few.
Lorie is also a self-taught visual artist. Her paintings have been included in group exhibitions with the Melting Pot NYC artist collective, the Bronx Academy of Art and Dance (BAAD) annual BAAD-Ass Women Festival 2005, at the Miracles on 104th Street Festival 2005 (in conjunction with Melting Pot NYC, El Museo del Barrio and the Museum of the City of New York) and in 2005 alongside Pablo Caviedes with the exhibit, Symbols of Ourselves, presented by Art For Change at Carlitos Cafe y Galleria. |
Muema, is a self-taught photographer who has lived in Kenya, Paris, Moscow and now resides in New York City. His photos have appeared in TimeOut New York, Vibe, Billboard and New York magazines. His photo essay “House Music is American Music – House Dance is American Dance” can be found in the Bulletin of the Society for American Music (Vol 321, Winter 2006). His work can also be found in the book MUSIC IN AMERICA, by Adelaida Reyes (Oxford Univ. Press, 2005) and on the album “Bang the Party, Vol. 1” on Jellybean Records.
Muema's work embraces a number of subjects. He began his photographic career documenting parade culture throughout the world and creating memorable images of underground dance music scene. Since then Muema has explored close up portraiture presenting us intimate photographs of village habitats of his homeland: Kenya, as well as letting us into the kinky world of European love-paraders. Muema's photo essays from Africa, Italy, Holland, Hungary, Germany, France and Switzerland have one thing in common: they let you see things you might have not seen before, through an acute eye of both an experienced photographer and a voyeur.
His work has been exhibited as part of a solo exhibition at Multi-Kulti in New York City’s Greenwich Village (2001), as part of a group exhibition at Dancers for Dancers in Brooklyn, New York (2006) and as part of The B-Sides Exhibition (2009). |
|
|
|
|
