September 11, 2020: Porest - Live Stream / The Porest Trap
POREST - LIVE STREAM (2020)
Under lockdown, Porest was pleased to announce the first Porest livestream in over a decade. You tuned in for a very special livestream you didn't want to miss a moment of. Now once again for a very limited period, this video will be available to view here for ONE WEEK ONLY from 11 September 2020 (now expired! Find more Porest info below for other works).
THE POREST TRAP
From the Porest album "Flimsy Tomb" - Sucata Tapes (SUC06) 2017
When you’re allowed to walk away from captivity, there’s a fairly good chance you’ll return on your own accord. Porest is trapped inside a claustrophobic radio drama.
Porest is the music and performance outlet of post-American artist and producer Mark Gergis, spanning decades of recordings, performances, radio and video productions. Porest has issued a trail of confounding agitprop sound art, post-globalized hate-pop, diabolical radio dramas, big songs and small songs. Porest’s blatant embezzlement of human syntax and cultural misunderstanding broadcasts vital mixed messages across all fields, forging carefully rearranged realities that both avoid and indulge the inherent trappings of radical art and politics. Live performances integrate Porest’s music, performance and sound into a grand total sum that can’t be unseen. Ongoing collaborations have included: Negativland (USA) Alan Bishop / Sun City Girls (USA), People Like Us (UK) and Aavikko (Finland), among others. Porest has performed and toured worldwide, with albums released on Nashazphone (Cairo), Discrepant (UK), and in the US on the Seeland, Abduction and Resipiscent labels.
In the 1990s and 2000s, Mark was co-founder of the long-running experimental California music and performance collective Mono Pause, as well as its southeast Asian musical offshoot, Neung Phak. In his other life, Mark is an audio-visual archivist and producer for global music releases on the Sublime Frequencies and Sham Palace labels, among others. His works have focused on regional folk-pop music from the Middle East and Southeast Asia, including regional choubi and dabke from Iraq and Syria, as well as documenting the musical outputs of diaspora Asian communities in the United States. Mark introduced the music of Syrian singer Omar Souleyman and his group to western stages, and has worked closely with legendary Turkish musician Erkin Koray on major reissues of his early work. Projects have received support from UK Arts Council, Sound and Music (UK), MACBA (Barcelona) and AFAC. With his current project, Syrian Cassette Archives, Mark aims to restore, preserve, catalog and share his collection of Syrian media from what can be called Syria’s cassette era (1980s-2010), which ended with the onset of the devastating Syrian crisis in 2011.
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POREST - LIVE STREAM (2020)
Under lockdown, Porest was pleased to announce the first Porest livestream in over a decade. You tuned in for a very special livestream you didn't want to miss a moment of. Now once again for a very limited period, this video will be available to view here for ONE WEEK ONLY from 11 September 2020 (now expired! Find more Porest info below for other works).
THE POREST TRAPFrom the Porest album "Flimsy Tomb" - Sucata Tapes (SUC06) 2017
When you’re allowed to walk away from captivity, there’s a fairly good chance you’ll return on your own accord. Porest is trapped inside a claustrophobic radio drama.
Listen to this show:
POREST
Porest is the music and performance outlet of post-American artist and producer Mark Gergis, spanning decades of recordings, performances, radio and video productions. Porest has issued a trail of confounding agitprop sound art, post-globalized hate-pop, diabolical radio dramas, big songs and small songs. Porest’s blatant embezzlement of human syntax and cultural misunderstanding broadcasts vital mixed messages across all fields, forging carefully rearranged realities that both avoid and indulge the inherent trappings of radical art and politics. Live performances integrate Porest’s music, performance and sound into a grand total sum that can’t be unseen. Ongoing collaborations have included: Negativland (USA) Alan Bishop / Sun City Girls (USA), People Like Us (UK) and Aavikko (Finland), among others. Porest has performed and toured worldwide, with albums released on Nashazphone (Cairo), Discrepant (UK), and in the US on the Seeland, Abduction and Resipiscent labels.
In the 1990s and 2000s, Mark was co-founder of the long-running experimental California music and performance collective Mono Pause, as well as its southeast Asian musical offshoot, Neung Phak. In his other life, Mark is an audio-visual archivist and producer for global music releases on the Sublime Frequencies and Sham Palace labels, among others. His works have focused on regional folk-pop music from the Middle East and Southeast Asia, including regional choubi and dabke from Iraq and Syria, as well as documenting the musical outputs of diaspora Asian communities in the United States. Mark introduced the music of Syrian singer Omar Souleyman and his group to western stages, and has worked closely with legendary Turkish musician Erkin Koray on major reissues of his early work. Projects have received support from UK Arts Council, Sound and Music (UK), MACBA (Barcelona) and AFAC. With his current project, Syrian Cassette Archives, Mark aims to restore, preserve, catalog and share his collection of Syrian media from what can be called Syria’s cassette era (1980s-2010), which ended with the onset of the devastating Syrian crisis in 2011.
https://porest.bandcamp.com/