Various disciplines, including walking, listening, teaching, improvisation, performance, recording, and composition, inform Norman W. Long’s practice. This approach engages audiences on memory, place, ecology, race, culture, value, silence, and the imperceptible. Long’s work is deeply influenced by the interdisciplinary practices and ideologies of 1970s artists, musicians, critics, and designers, mainly drawing from Rosalind Krauss’ seminal article “Sculpture in the Expanded Field” and the theoretical framework of acoustic ecology developed by R. Murray Schafer.
The sonic landscapes in Long’s oeuvre find inspiration in Black music genres such as house and techno, ‘free jazz,’ Great Black Music, Herbie Hancock’s Mwandishi, Pauline Oliveros, King Tubby, Dub, as well as the experimental sounds of artists operating between and outside traditional genre boundaries. Long’s strategies for improvisation and composition are informed by Samuel R. Delany’s palimpsest text “Plague Journal” from the novel “Dhalgren” (Science Fiction) and “Atlantis: Three Tales” (Fiction), along with Mark Bradford’s artistic process as observed in his 2011 survey at the Museum of Contemporary Art: Chicago, which emphasizes collecting, collaging, scraping, and pasting materials sourced from his community in Los Angeles.
Norman Long received the 3Arts Award in 2011, the 3Arts Djerassi Artists Residency Fellowship in 2014, and the BOLT Artist in Residence at the Chicago Artists Coalition in 2014-2015. He was also honored with the 3Arts Fellowship at AS220’s Artist in Residence program in Providence, RI, in 2017, the 3Arts Fellowship at the Camargo Foundation in Cassis, France in 2024 and the ThreeWalls RaD Lab Fellowship for 2017-2018. His role as Guest Composer at EMS Elektronmusikstudion in Stockholm, Sweden, was made feasible, in part, by the City of Chicago’s DCASE grant. Norman will be an artist in residence at the Hyde Park Art Center in 2025.
Norman has performed and toured with Angel Bat Dawid and the Brothahood, and collaborated with a diverse range of artists, including the Ali/Harris/Long/McKenna group, Spectralina, Jeb Bishop, Todd Carter, John Daniel, Xris Espinoza, Ben Lamar Gay, Carol Genetti, Damon Locks, Tatsuya Nakatani, Joe Namy, Cristal Sabbagh, Mai Sugimoto, and Sara Zalek. His compositions have been released on various labels, including Hausu Mountain, Reserve Matinee, LINE, Rural Situationism, and Room40, with his latest solo release, “Calumet in Dub,” available on Blorpus Editions.
In 2023, Norman’s multi-channel sound installations were exhibited at the Glass Curtain Gallery and the Ford Environmental Community Center in Chicago, IL, with generous support from Columbia College Chicago and ThreeWalls Gallery. Additionally, he has released two albums, “Calumet in Dub” (on Blorpus Editions) and “Re-membering Re-Presencing” (on Rural Situationism). Norman’s current iteration of Calumet in Dub is at Illinois State University’s University Galleries in Normal, IL.
