Milwaukee’s loudest Renaissance man, Peter J Woods has spent the last decade and a half keeping his energy flowing through a variety of media—he’s an absurdist, avant-garde playwright, a performance artist, a visual artist, and is probably best known as a harsh-noise wizard. Some might say that musical genre has a limited emotional palette and has its best years behind it, but Woods is having none of that, and his natural theatricality and inventiveness keep his work fresh and challenging. As influenced by John Cage as, say, Merzbow, he’s unafraid of silence, chance, and allowing thoughts to unfold in the spaces between blasts; last year’s cassette release I’ve Told Lies Before pummels, shivers, and crackles with his methodic madness. For this performance, he’ll be debuting a brand-new piece on the theme of white privilege and the construction of whiteness, called “The Privilege of Breath,” which will feature his first use of live video. v
Milwaukee harsh noise artist Peter J Woods confronts white privilege in a multidisciplinary performance
