Lisa Lipton — Rhythm of Numbers

Drawing on conceptual art, percussive practice and structural cinema, Lisa Lipton cross-references “beats per minute” with “frames per second” to test ways of spatializing time. Her method is both telescopic, indexing practically imperceptible minutiae, and contingent, each proposal accommodating an exercise of the body’s movements.

At the centre of the inquiry is drumming, as materiality, technique and cultural component. Works like Jam-sync and 98, 99, 100 (Singles, Triples, Doubles) log sound’s gravity onto units that organize perception. There is also an interest in who is drumming, in the communities and lineages that define the discipline. Revisiting Ian Murray’s 1973 work Keeping on Top of the Top Song, in which a drummer performs the first ten seconds of each of the decade’s top 100 songs, Lipton’s 16 mm film These Rhythms extends this thinking to the cultural hierarchies and representational absences embedded in systems of ranking. What is recorded is important because it becomes what is remembered.