REVIEW: THE WIRE’s Kurt Gottschalk Reviews STREAMFEST 2020 Streaming Music and Video Festival

January 7, 2021

So elated to have been one of the featured commissioned collaborations as video artist/filmmaker with composer Ty Citerman! And for this incandescent review in The Wire – “The world’s greatest print and online music magazine” – for New Music USA-supported record label Infrequent Seams‘ highly acclaimed STREAMFEST festival debut. The Wire writes, “Online platforms trigger imaginative responses to lockdown conditions from artists around the world at the Infrequent Seams Streaming Festival […] One of the upsides of the well-curated streaming music festivals is that the setting allows for presentations that wouldn’t fit easily into the typical physical festival format. Visual components get to exist on their own, rather than as an addition to the stage presentation.”

“Online platforms trigger imaginative responses to lockdown conditions from artists around the world at the Infrequent Seams Streaming Festival.” – Kurt Gottschalk, The Wire

The festival – supported by New Music USA as well as Rhizome DC, The Brick and many other venues around the nation and world, is hailed by The Wire for its innovative inclusion of video live-streaming, “Without seeing the performers, the music and film are freed to become their own small world.” (Kurt Gottschalk)

Infrequent Seams is dedicated to presenting creative voices with a prominent focus on promoting diversity and a community mindset oriented towards mutual affinity for experimental practices. The French philosopher Gilles Deleuze referred to the concept of The Fold to show how identities are not discrete, but are in fact parts of a continuous whole. Difference is a fold in a fabric that does not actually separate identities, but simply allows them to be expressed in a unique way.

Infrequent Seams (IS) was created to present creative artistic expressions in such a way that differences can be understood as unique expressions of a shared reality. Our wrinkles and folds give us unique characteristics that nonetheless allow for us to maintain our unity across divisions that may only seem significant. The seams are in fact an illusion, and we celebrate diversity in creative expression.

James Ilgenfritz started this organization in 2008 as a concert series at a Senegalese restaurant in the Clinton Hill neighborhood of Brooklyn. Over the years Infrequent Seams (IS) became a record label and is now expanding again, as we begin to support artists directly through commissions, print publications, virtual festivals, and more.