— Photos by Tom Rose

By Tom Rose

With a flashlight in one hand and a bell in the other, 16 performers formed a circle in Union Square last Tuesday night, then commenced their composition, pointing their lights at each other and ringing their bells in seemingly random fashion. Other nights, they stood together collecting breath-water in drinking glasses and serving tea to passers-by, both real and imaginary. And though it may have seemed absurd to many observers, to the artists involved there was more going on.

It’s all part of the Co-Incidence Festival, a week long gathering of experimental musicians started by local Somerville composer/performer Luke Martin and his New York contemporary, Aaron Foster Breilyn . Based at the Washington Street Gallery, Co-Incidence featured eight visiting artists from across the country as well as Austria and Japan. The festival is built on the ideas of co-incidence and social sculpture, and with the understanding that, as Martin puts it, “Everything has the potential to be art.”

With such loose parameters, the actual art produced at first seems absurd, and at times, even non-existent – for instance dragging a branch on the ground or even simply the act of listening were key elements in a few of the week’s compositions.

From left to right: Resident Artist Jochaim Eckl shows Co-Incidence Festival founders Aaron Foster Breilyn and Luke Martin a visual of sculpture during his presentation at the Washington Street Gallery on Saturday.

On both a micro and macro scale, instead of aiming for a desired result, the artwork of the festival hinged on composing an environment in which to experience and participate in art. “You create a situation primed for potential. That’s the idea of the empty form, and that’s the current running through experimental music,” Martin explained.

In fact, to Martin and Foster Breilyn, the entire festival is a work of art, a two-year long and ongoing, though with long rests, composition orchestrated by the two of them. However, in contrast to last year’s more structured schedule, this year’s Co-Incidence Festival featured a more open design in comparison. Instead of a detailed agenda, the artists arrived, convened, then contrived the week’s workshops and performances in collaboration.

Inherent to this design was this year’s Resident Artist all the way from Austria, Joachim Eckl, whose work centers on water and social engineering, and results in pieces such as “Draw the Danube, Build a Bridge”, a simultaneous drawing of 1000 liters of water at 280 points along the Danube river which were frozen into ice and assembled into sculpture. “The [Co-Incidence] festival has this liquid quality, it’s not really solid,” he explained. “The idea is of creating an atmosphere, of creating something like an appearance space for something to happen, where people can be creative and interact in their own way without having to follow a mode or a model or a structure.”

Artists were asked to consider the concepts of a bridge, swarm and social structure in their response to the festivals query for participation. The final roster featured poets, sculptors, musicians, composers and interdisciplinary artists. Once together, the artists were free to mingle, mesh and create together, occupying the empty form created by Martin, Foster Breilyn and Eckl, filling it with content.

For the organizers, it required a leap of faith. “You trust everybody and you hope it works for the best, and it does!” Martin said. “To let go and watch that in action is super powerful. Things that I could never have seen or even hoped for happened,” added Foster Breilyn.

From left to right: Artists Caleb Chase, Kristen Carey and Amy Golden perform a listening piece in Union Square last Tuesday night.

Amy Golden holds a bell still in the beam of a flashlight during a performance in Union Square last Tuesday night.

An instrument from a previous performance hangs in the window of the Washington Street Gallery, now an installation and artifact of this year’s Co-Incidence Festival.

Artists gathered at the Washington Street Art center for a presentation during the Co-Incidence festival on Saturday.

Resident Artist Joachim Eckl stands over his Venus of Willendorf figure during a presentation at the Washington Street Art Gallery on Saturday.

Visiting artist Amy Golden plays her Theremin during the rehearsal of her piece “Amethyst Crystal” at the Washington Street Gallery on Saturday.

Resident artist Joachim Eckl listens intently to the sounds of Union Square during a performance for the Co-Incidence Festival last Tuesday night.

Instruments at her back, a performer rests during Co-Incidence performance last Tuesday night.