MIKE KELLEY
SILVER BALL (LIGHT AND COLOR, MOSTLY)
LANTHANIDES SERIES
2004

Table of the Elements
[Gadolinium] SWC-LP-64
Phono LP, silkscreen
Artwork by Mike Kelley

"Kelley is an avatar of the power and humanity inherent in recognizing the radical impurity of human experience. His art searches out dark and soiled places where defects, fault lines and inadequacies are obvious and routine, and where failure takes on the poignant, fragile, even heartbreaking beauty that accompanies any loss of self."
 Christopher Knight, Los Angeles Times
 
"In a three-decade career, cut off abruptly by his suicide, at 57, last year, Kelley did it all, in terms of genre: performance, painting, drawing, printmaking, sculpture, video, installation, sound art and writing. And he wove together — twisted together — all of that into what amounted to a single conceptual project based on recurrent themes: social class, popular culture, black humor, anti-formalist rigor and, though rarely acknowledged, a moral sense, unshakably skeptical, that ran through everything like a spine."
Holland Carter, New York Times

AS ONE OF THIS COUNTRY'S MOST PROMINENT VISUAL ARTISTS, Mike Kelley (1954-2012) twisted common colloquial forms—like signs, stuffed animals and felt banners — and infused them with the dark psychologies and hidden undercurrents (sexual, metaphysical, and otherwise) of middle-class American culture, assaulting everything that society held dear. From his first rambling performances in the early 1980s, he appealed to a cult audience because his work was too complex, aggressive, and willfully contradictory to be considered mainstream. Yet in the early '90s, his soft sculptures made from filthy thrift store animals garnered international art world attention, landing him a 1993 exhibition at the Whitney Museum (they also appear on the cover of Sonic Youth's classic Dirty album). Kelley had an even deeper background as a sound artist: He was co-founder of the seminal trash-noise collective Destroy All Monsters, whose anti-aesthetic marauded throughout the 1970s with a membership that included artist Jim Shaw, Ron Asheton (Iggy and the Stooges) and Mike Davis (MC5).

The composition "Silver Ball (Light and Color, Mostly)" is one channel from Kelley's eight channel audio sculpture "Silver Ball" (1994). Kelley writes:

“The first section of this text consists of edited brief descriptions of UFOs, focusing on the color of their illumination and their sound emissions, culled from the immense literature on the subject. These fragments were then rewritten into a kind of first person poetic reportage of a continuously present and endlessly morphing UFO sighting. The second section is made up of full quotations and introduces other common themes in Ufology. I read the first part of the text over the soundtrack (an eight channel overlay of various mechanic drones and ambiguous text clusters) composed for the sculpture "Silver Ball" (1994), with quotations from the second section acting as interruptions inserted throughout the talk.

“The version released on record by Table of the Elements consists of a partial reading of the text that was used as one of the audio channels in the Silver Ball. This has been mixed with an ambient recording of the sculpture made at the Rooseum Center for Contemporary Art, Malmo, Sweden in 1997. The patches of digital distortion audible throughout the piece are on the original tape, which was purposely recorded too hot in order to produce a buzzing effect in the Silver Ball —which is basically a large hollow wad of aluminum foil, with speakers embedded in it, suspended from the ceiling."

ARTILLERY

Mike Kelly's Final Interview, with Tulsa Kinney
Part 1
Photographs by Tyler Hubby

ARTILLERY

Mike Kelly's Final Interview, with Tulsa Kinney
Part 2
Photographs by Tyler Hubby

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OWN THE ARCHIVE

(Posted by Within Things, May 18, 2023)

From 1993, US recording label Table of the Elements has staked its claim on a massive enterprise. It intends nothing less than to rewrite the history of American music in the second half of the 20th century. The label’s 150-plus releases are a vital contemporary chronicle, a survey of meaningful eruptions across a broad horizon of improvised, experimental, minimal and outsider sounds.

The label’s carefully cultivated archive now contains over 15,000 CDs and LPs, an impossible quantity to logistically or financially maintain. Rather than “recycle” the majority of these modern sound and design artifacts, Table of the Elements is making them available to the public via Within Things.

From rich bundles of obscure recordings, exclusive printed material, and limited quantity “holy grails,” Within Things is excited to help connect this important archive to the public. We’re very honored to collaborate with a label that helped define a path and inspire what we do, long before our store even existed.

Click the image above to be taken directly to the Table of the Elements section on our site, and stay posted for the announcement of limited offerings via our newsletter.

~~o0o~~

"The supremacy of Table of the Elements as an unwavering outpost of ultra-experimental strains can be attributed to its concomitant adherence to valiance. Most of the Table of the Elements catalog has no broad commercial appeal, and many of its projects are risky ventures, even with respect to the experimental marketplace. Yet, this philosophy of risk works because everybody associated with the label feels like they're doing important work releasing important records, and they're willing to go for broke to make it happen.”

—Pitchfork

"The music made and cultivated by such artists as Tony Conrad, Captain Beefheart, John Fahey, Cecil Taylor, Rhys Chatham, Charlie Feathers, Dock Boggs, Jim O’Rourke, Faust, Derek Bailey, Thurston Moore and Lee Ranaldo of Sonic Youth, Keiji Haino, Arnold Dreyblatt, Charley Patton, Harry Smith, and scores more, is at once among the most radical and deeply rooted of the 20th century, transcending time and place through the agency of the vibrating string, the resonance of the drone, the terrifying beauty of electric amplification, the hypnotic power of repetition, and the revelatory genius of cranky individualism. 

"How does someone begin to represent that in a visual manner? The trick involves some old-fashioned alchemy. Everyday commodity has to be constructed as both miniature museum and theater. No longer a mere object, it now becomes a site in which one can endlessly indulge a sense of wonder, love and, yes, obsession. It’s not often that someone can cast an influence on a broader design aesthetic — think Blue Note in the 1960s, with its hip Reid Miles album covers — but as this sizable body of work took shape, that’s exactly what happened.”

—Steve Dollar

“The hallmarks of this New Archivism [are] beautiful and innovative packaging, elaborate and idiosyncratic liner notes, rare and obscure recordings ... Working with graphic designers such as the Grammy-winning Susan Archie, [the label] produced a collection that combines varied textures, lavish finishes, and period details with art from the era of the original source recordings. Their treatment of Robert Longo’s late 1970s photographs for Rhys Chatham’s releases could, for instance, measure up to what’s on view at most contemporary art centers. In addition to its archival endeavor, TotE also releases the new work of its avant-garde heroes and their devotees. TotE’s active support of the work of sonic pioneers ensures that theirs are living traditions – not ossified museum objects.”

—Art Papers

Tony Conrad: Completely In the Present
A Film by Tyler Hubby

"Hubby's film captures Conrad in all his facets ... broadly as a man determined to make 'abstract art funny, happy, energetic, joyful.' Conrad lived long enough to see his early recordings, barely or never released, get the reissue and the attention they deserve. ... [Completely In the Present] is a sharp, sweet, eloquent documentary about the merriest, most artistically expansive minimalist on record. His work and his life asserted the importance of listening for the sounds nobody else has heard."

—Chicago Tribune

“Joyous, exhilarating, and transformative, Tyler Hubby’s documentary is essential viewing for anyone involved in the history of music and visual art.”

—Artforum

"Conrad was 100 percent badass. Without Tyler Hubby’s documentary and Table of the Elements ... one of the great stories of American music and art might have gone underappreciated.”

—Henry Rollins

All contents ©2024 Table of the Elements ®2024 Table of the Elements Archive. All Rights Reserved. Related media from the Table of the Elements Archive published courtesy the estate of Tony Conrad.

Since 1993, Table of the Elements has staked its claim on a massive enterprise. It intends nothing less than to rewrite the history of American music in the second half of the 20th century -- and beyond. The label’s 150-plus releases are a vital contemporary chronicle, a survey of meaningful eruptions across a broad horizon of improvised, experimental, minimal and outsider sounds.

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