Thingamajigs Performance Group and Stephen Ratcliff - “window”

Bimodal Press is pleased to announce "window" by Thingamajigs Performance Group and Stephen Ratcliffe! For download and more release info please visit our Bandcamp page.

This is the first digital release by the collective documenting one of their 14-hour performances on September 4, 2022 in the San Francisco Exploratorium’s Kanbar Forum. This edition is an excerpt of this performance with a total run time of 97:27.

About TPG:

TPG seeks to break new ground in durational performance, alternate tuning, group and open compositional formats, interdisciplinary and inter-cultural collaboration, and site work. Formed by Thingamajigs founders Edward Schocker and Dylan Bolles as a laboratory for these ideas. Since 2008 they have called in many artists to advance the inquiry, performing all over the world in festivals, independent galleries, former factories, and open fields, commissioning and premiering new works from ensemble members and revered collaborators. They have written about their work for scholarly journals, and have formed side projects that recast their ideas as a just-intoned psychedelic rock trio, a handheld miniature of electroacoustic phenomena, and myriad solo outings.

A Beloved Collaboration with Stephen Ratcliffe

TPG’s collaboration with Stephen Ratcliffe is a touchstone for their nearly 20-year practice, creating large scale durational works based on Stephen’s 1,000 poem cycles.

The formula is simple: Stephen writes a poem every day for 1,000 days. TPG convenes to hear Stephen read them out in one go, interpreting the spoken text as score. After learning that starting at the “concert hour” of 8pm the performance would continue past dawn the next day, TPG started matching performances to dawn and dusk, showing up in likely and unlikely spaces where audiences could come with intention and by accident.

Dylan Bolles (reeds, rocks, voice, water)
Kevin Corcoran (percussion)
Wayne Grim (contrabass and electronics)
Cheryl E. Leonard (natural world instruments)
Megan Nicely (movement)
Suki O’Kane (percussion and electronics)
Stephen Ratcliffe (voice, poetry)
paige starling sorvillo (movement)
Edward Schocker (reeds, glass, and percussion)

Recording by Michael Zelner, Mastered by Wayne Grim

Photography by Stephen Ratcliffe

https://www.thingamajigs.org/programs/tpg

Bimodal Press, 2025, BMPD001 Official release date: September 4th, 2025