In the world of modern electronic music and sound art, Ultra-red distinguish themselves for their unique blend of political commitment and innovative sound. Rejecting self-satisfied formalism and convenient political posturing, Ultra-red have for over ten years pursued a dynamic exchange between art and political organizing. Collectively, the Los Angeles-based group has produced radio broadcasts, performances, recordings, and installations.
Working within a variety of urban ambiences, Ultra-red have investigated the spaces of public sex (SECOND NATURE, Mille Plateaux 1999), public housing (STRUCTURAL ADJUSTMENTS, Mille Plateaux 2000), resistance to global capital (A16, Fat Cat 2002 as well IMPERIAL BEACH, Accidental 2003), and labor (Ultra-red Play Los Jornaleros del Norte, Public Record 2004). Throughout each of these efforts, Ultra-red have sought to explore acoustic space as enunciative of social relations and to radicalize the conventions of electro-acoustic art.
Founded in 1994 by two AIDS activists, Ultra-red have expanded over the years to include activists and organizers from a variety of social movements both in Los Angeles and abroad. In 2004, on their tenth anniversary, the four members of the group launched a restructuring of Ultra-red into an aesthetic-political organization. The newly reorganized Ultra-red permits a greater diversity of projects and campaigns on a local and international level, with multiple groups and alliances taking up the Ultra-red moniker.
Ultra-red has established partnerships with community-based organizations like the Union de Vecinos in East Los Angeles and, internationally, with Ballymun Women's Resource Centre in Dublin, Ireland and the Germany-based migration and anti-racist network Kanak Attak. In addition to these groups, a number of artists have entered into tactical and provisional alliances with Ultra-red for purposes of specific and on-going cooperation. Some of these artists include Eddie Peel (of Sony Mao and Needle), Elliot Perkins (fka Phonem), Terre Thaemlitz, and others. To offer an outlet for the release of projects to come out of these alliances, in 2004 Ultra-red launched Public Record, a fair-use on-line archive for audio, text, image and video documents.
> www.ultrared.org
> www.publicrec.org
Appearances:
> CTM.09 > PUBLIC RECORD: ULTRA-RED'S SOUND-BASED INQUIRIES
> 2008 > DISK SESSION #18: ULTRA-RED – ANNUAL REPORT
> 2005 > DISK SESSION #04
> 2005 > CTM/TM-SALON > THE TRANSISTORS TOUR
> CTM.03
