Begin Anywhere explores the life and work of the late electro-acoustic composer and SFU professor Martin Bartlett (1939-1993). Bartlett’s groundbreaking practice made tremendous impacts in the fields of computer-performer interactivity, experimental tunings, and analogue and computer-driven synthesizer creation. Unlike that of his mentors and colleagues such as John Cage, Pauline Oliveros, or David Tudor, however, Bartlett’s work remains largely unexamined.
Bartlett was a pivotal figure in Vancouver’s artistic and cultural landscape and his influence extended across experimental music, artist-run culture, and arts education. He was one of the first openly gay composers of his generation. As a co-founder of the Western Front, he helped establish the collaborative, interdisciplinary ethos that has shaped Vancouver’s contemporary art scene. His founding of the Vancouver Community Gamelan and introduction of Indonesian musical traditions to SFU’s School for the Contemporary Arts brought non-Western musical traditions directly into the academic environment, encouraging a model of learning grounded in embodied practice, cross-cultural exchange, and community participation. He was an intrepid sailor, traveller, and cook, and these interests also permeated his artistic practice.
Begin Anywhere brings together materials that span the breadth of Bartlett’s professional life, from his MA thesis at Mills College in California (1968) to the last compositions completed before his death from AIDS-related complications in 1993. The exhibition includes Bartlett’s unique hand-built analogue modular synthesizer (dubbed the “Black Box”) and his rare Buchla 400 synthesizer, along with a series of scores, drawings, notes, photographs, and other ephemera, as well as a recent filmic portrait of Bartlett by Glasgow-based artist Luke Fowler.
“One of the unique qualities of music,” Bartlett argued in a 1972 Canada Council grant report, “is that it doesn’t hang around, taking up space. The moment passes, the forms dissolve, the energy is released and sound sinks back into silence.” Bartlett’s commitment to live performance and community activity meant that that his work is more transient than that of others. He was not precious about his legacy, but fiercely passionate about the democratizing potential of improvisation within the then-new electronic musical frontiers. Revealing Bartlett’s expansive and restless mind, his resistance to the restrictions of Western music conventions, and his commitments to the possibility of radical access to music creation, Begin Anywhere opens a window to this composer and educator’s profound resonance in our contemporary moment.
Curated by Charles Colburne, María Estrada Piñera, and Blqees Zuhair, with curatorial guidance from David MacWilliam
Organized in partnership with SFU Special Collections and Rare Books
Generously supported by Coleen and Howard Nemtin and Friends of the Gibson
