For Immediate Release

Contact:
City Art Director Joel Long: joeltlong@yahoo.com

City Art Presents an Evening of Art and Words with Lance Olsen, Michael Mejia, with Video by Andi Olsen and composer Karen Power

Salt Lake Public Library Main Branch
210 East 400 South
Salt Lake City UT 84111

Wednesday March 22nd, 7:00—8:00 P.M.
 
            Join us March 22nd at the Salt Lake City Public Library for an evening of art and words, of artful words, featuring Michael Mejia reading from his novel-in-progress, TOKYO; and a special screening of a collaborative work by writer Lance Olsen, video artist Andi Olsen, and Irish composer/sound artist Karen Power, which is based on Lance's forthcoming novel, DREAMLIVES OF DEBRIS (Dzanc Books, April 2017) as part of the City Art Reading Series. 
 
MICHAEL MEJIA is the author of the novel Forgetfulness (FC2). His fiction and nonfiction have appeared in many journals and anthologies, including Notre Dame Review, AGNI, DIAGRAM, Angels of the Americlypse, and My Mother She Killed Me, My Father He Ate Me. He has received a Literature Fellowship in Prose from the NEA and a grant from the Ludwig Vogelstein Foundation. Editor-in-chief of Western Humanities Review and co-founding editor of Ninebark Press, he teaches creative writing at the University of Utah.

LANCE OLSEN is author of more than 20 books of and about innovative writing, including the novel Dreamlives of Debris, forthcoming from Dzanc this April. His short stories, essays, and reviews have appeared in hundreds of journals and anthologies, such as Conjunctions, Black Warrior Review, Fiction International, Village Voice, BOMB, McSweeney’s and Best American Non-Required Reading. A Guggenheim, Berlin Prize, D.A.A.D. Artist-in-Berlin Residency, N.E.A. Fellowship, and Pushcart Prize recipient, as well as a Fulbright Scholar, he teaches experimental narrative theory and practice at the University of Utah and serves as chair of the Board of Directors at the independent press Fiction Collective Two, currently in its 43rd year making fiction making trouble.

ANDI OLSEN’s most recent project is a collaboration with Lance Olsen: There’s No Place Like Time. A multimodal novel you can walk through, it takes the form of a real retrospective of videos dedicated to the career of an artist who never existed. An interplay of videos, texts, objects, & interventions, the installation explores the relationship between the visual & the verbal as it redefines the page, the novel, & gallery space, while thematically investigating the problematics of identity construction & historical knowledge. Her ongoing project, Hideous Beauty, is a Cabinet of Wonders composed of short videos, assemblages, & collage texts exploring the idea of monstrosity & the generative possibilities inherent in the processes of decay. Olsen’s videos have been exhibited in such venues as the American Visionary Art Museum (Baltimore) & Greenhouse Berlin (Germany), & have screened at the Los Angeles International Short Film Festival, Mütter Museum (Philadelphia), Revolving Museum (Lowell), & at literary and artistic events in Banff, Cologne, Münich, Paris, Rouen, Szeged, Warsaw, & across the United States. Her art has been exhibited & published around the country & abroad.

KAREN POWER is an Irish composer, educator, improviser and academic who writes primarily for acoustic and electroacoustic forces. In 2009 she completed a PhD in acoustic and electroacoustic composition at SARC (Sonic Arts Research Centre), Belfast, with Prof. Michael Alcorn. Throughout her PhD, Karen’s works focused on the commonalities and individualities of both acoustic and electroacoustic composition aiming to develop a more integrated language, which acknowledges and utilizes such strengths. Recently Karen has spent time in residency at The Arctic Circle, The Banff Centre, Canada, The Guesthouse, Ireland, UCDavis, California, USA and in 2015/16 be artist in Berlin through a DAAD Award. She has been composer in Residence with Galway Music Residency Program and Music Generation. Karen has written pieces for Bozzini Quator, Alarm Will Sound, SCAW, Carin Levine, ConTempo, the Ulster Orchestra, RTE Symphony Orchestra, Kate Ellis, Mmm Trio and Quiet Music Ensemble. She has been awarded national and international awards and honorary mentions for her work and has represented Ireland internationally on a number of occasions. Karen’s installation work and her recent interest in field recordings has taken her music across many genres and art mediums including: video, dance, film, painting, sculpture and glass. This cross-arts approach has enabled some of her more open-time music to be presented in spaces like galleries, parks, warehouses and houses, which offer audiences choice in how and when we listen. Last year Karen developed her first radio art work, which was premiered live to air on RTE Lyric fm. This piece hearspace has since travelled the world and has been heard on radio stations from Australia to Germany.
 
Most featured readings are followed by an open reading.
 
The event is free and open to the public.  City Art is sponsored by the Utah Arts Council, the Salt Lake City Arts Council, Zoo, Arts, and Parks, X-mission, and audience donations. 
 
 
 
 
 
 
Joel Long