A Gradual Accumulation of Ideas Becomes Truth —

A Gradual Accumulation of Ideas Becomes Truth is a sculpture/listening station produced in collaboration with LA based sculptor Karen Lofgren to coincide with the release of Crouch’s newest CD of the same name. The exhibition was accompanied by projections of Lauren Marsolier’s recent work.

French-born Lauren Marsolier lives and works in Los Angeles. She is the recipient of many awards and her images have been published internationally in such magazines as the British Journal of Photography where she was featured as one of ‘20 photographers to watch in 2013’. Her work was included in the ’31 Women in Art Photography’ 2012 selection by the Humble Art Foundation in NYC, ‘Looking at the Land’ at the RISD Museum of Art and also in the major 2013 London Exhibition ‘Landmark: The Fields of Photography’, curated by William Ewing at the Somerset House.

Recent exhibitions include solo shows at the Houston Center for Photography, Robert Koch Gallery (San Francisco) and Galerie Richard (NY and Paris). Her first monograph ‘Transition’ has recently been published by Kerber Verlag. Last November she was part of a panel discussion about contemporary landscape photography at TATE Modern in London, with fellow artists: Thomas Struth, Penelope Umbrico, Massimo Vitali and Mishka Henner.

Her work is part of many major collections including the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, the Center for Creative Photography and the Phoenix Art Museum.

The five pieces that comprise A Gradual Accumulation of Ideas Becomes Truth originate from a series of long form studio improvisations that were recorded, forgotten, and later edited over the course of a year. Using a modular synthesizer as the primary sound source, complex patches were constructed, recorded, and quickly dismantled, with the intention of using the stereo recordings as the basis for new compositions at a later date. “My work always privileges the act of listening; it is rarely about performance. After I recorded these initial sessions, I forced myself to forget about their construction, to un-learn how I made them, allowing myself the opportunity to experience them as sound objects. It is at that point where my composition process begins.”

This recuperative practice, first explored in Organs (2015, Dragon’s Eye Recordings), was influenced by Crouch’s growing interest in certain archeological spaces. After driving past the “Early Man Site” in the Mojave Desert, he later learned that it was an archeological site with contested historic significance. Despite credible evidence to suggest that there had been no pre-historic human activity at this site, the claims made by the site’s founders have since become a kind of truth, evidenced by county highway signage, literature, and other institutional frames. As much as archeology is a process of recovery, it is also a means of cultural construction. “I began to consider other archeological, historical, and literary “sites,” their relationship to documentation, evidence, and media, and how meaning is produced. By placing my own practice within this frame, I was also able to refigure the act listening as a method of production.”

cover image: Lauren Marsolier, Black Square, 2011. Courtesy of Robert Koch Gallery, San Francisco.

Special thanks to Yann Novak, Richard Chartier, Karen Lofgren, and Marc Kate.

Track Listing:

Hohle Fels
3184 Pullman, Costa Mesa, 1974
Limbo Town (Croatoan)
Bellona (version 0-375-70668-2)
Potbelly Hill