Ballroom Marfa participated in No Soul For Sale: A Festival of Independents at X-Initiative, New York. The festival brought together thirty-eight of the most exciting, creative, and respected not-for-profit centers, alternative institutions, artists’ collectives, and independent enterprises from around the world.

At No Soul For Sale, Ballroom showcased Kaffe Matthews’ Sonic Bed_Marfa, an artwork that had originally been commissioned for The Marfa Sessions in 2008. The piece is one in a series of purpose built portable venues which plays music, and acts as a sonic and social experiment for exploring our perception of sound. Visitors are invited to lie in the bed, and experience a unique composition by the artist, as the sound moves up and down and around their bodies via a twelve channel sound system hidden within the structure. As part of Matthews’ ongoing research laboratory, Music For Bodies, Sonic Bed_Marfa plays music to feel rather than just listen to.

Sonic Bed_London was the first bed in the series, with the subsequent beds specific to Shanghai, Taipei, Quebec, and Scotland through the use of locally sourced materials, fabrics, labor, and sounds. Sonic Bed_Marfa was made primarily of locally weathered plywood, marked and colored over years by the sun and wind as it stood sealing empty windows in vacant houses in the town. Its music, “Yellow,” was made by the artist transforming and synthesizing tones of light which she played, processed, and drew around the bed whilst lying in it.

Sonic Bed_Marfa was located on the third floor of X during No Soul For Sale, within an open-plan installation designed as an exercise in coexistence. “Participating organizations will exhibit alongside each other without partitions or walls. As on the set of the legendary Lars von Trier’s movie Dogville, participants will be assigned spaces that are only marked on the floor, creating a map of an imaginary city of art, where distances and hierarchies are abolished.”

See pictures from the event on Artforum.net.

For more information on Kaffe Matthews: musicforbodies.net

For more information on The Marfa Sessions: themarfasessions.wordpress.com