Year Long Loop runs continuously from November 19, 4pm until November 20, 4pm

Artist Reception, Saturday November 19, 7-10pm

Doughnuts and coffee will be served for the final 2 hours on Sunday, November 20

About the Video

Recorded between October 2004 and September 2005, Year Long Loop documents the sound and view as experienced from the vantage point of a ridge in the Los Angeles neighborhood of Mt. Washington. Described by Bernard as “a cross between John Cage’s 4’33 and Andy Warhol’s Empire,” the work consists of one 5 minute shot for each hour of the day and is organized by month. The result is a continuous 24 hour loop that cycles through time.

The project was inspired by the mixture of sounds emanating from neighborhoods at the base of Mt. Washington, a small mountain located in Northeast Los Angeles and situated between Glassell Park and Highland Park. The cries of local wildlife such as owls, hawks, crickets and song birds combine with car alarms, gun shots, sirens and ice cream trucks. This ambient soundtrack is occasionally punctuated with television and radio audio which Bernard utilized to ground the video in a specific time and place. Included in the soundtrack are references to the events of 2004-2005 including the presidential debates and the reelection of George Bush, the Indonesian Tsunami, the Iraq war, the Michael Jackson trial verdict and Hurricane Katrina.

The first segment of Year Long Loop, October 2004 (for R.P.) was shown at Margo Leavin Gallery in November 2004 along with a selection of Bernard’s “Bandshell” photographs. In his Artforum review of the exhibition, Jan Tumlir described Bernard’s work as giving way “to an aesthetic that is autonomous, in that it resists translation into words, but is not apolitical….positioning the viewer not to one side or the other so much as right in between: between production and reception, picture and sound, the aesthetic and the social – at the very sites where culture is negotiated.”

About the Artist

Cindy Bernard takes an active interest in instigating social exchange. In the last several years her work has transitioned from photographs and projections exploring cinema, memory, and landscape (including the widely exhibited series Ask the Dust) to projects which focus on sound and music as a part of a visual practice. She is the recipient of numerous grants and fellowships including the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation and most recently a California Community Foundation Fellowship. Her work has been exhibited in museums and galleries in the US, Canada, Mexico, Europe and Japan, and was included in the Whitney and Lyon Biennials. In Los Angeles, Ask the Dust was most recently on view in Collection: The First 30 Years at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles.

In 1999, Bernard founded the experimental music series sound. which later incorporated as a non-profit, The Society for the Activation of Social Space through Art and Sound (SASSAS). She has produced more than 40 concerts for SASSAS, many at the historic Schindler House. The unique blend of architecture, audience and performer at the Schindler House led to her current exploration of sound and music, not as mediums – she does not consider herself a sound artist – but as facilitators for works that incorporate issues of community, class, economics and politics.

In addition to Year Long Loop, recent solo projects include: Silent Key, a mapping of the transitory nature of territorial and political boundaries via Ham Radio QSL cards and The Inquisitive Musician, an adaptation of a 17th century German satire pitting itinerant “beer fiddlers” against the city sanctioned “Kunstpfeifer” in an argument over who has the right to perform. The Inquisitive Musician is presented as a staged read incorporating video and live music and was most recently presented at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art in May 2011.

Year Long Loop is made possible in part by a Center for Cultural Innovation Investing in Artists Grant.