Roulette commissions the world premiere of “Double Twilight,” a sonic-poem work by poet and visual artist No Land. Joined by collaborators Oliver Ray, Daniel Carter, Shahzad Ismaily, Miriam Parker, & others, No Land presents a spirit-temple troupe of seekers in various entwining ensembles. Through poetry, sonic travel, & cinematic paintings, this work invokes realms of etheric mystery, compassion-studies, fever-dreams, and outlaw poet histories, and upholds the mercurial imagination as a form of activism. No Land weaves immaterial spirit as the connective, translucent thread between mediums and the hearts of her collaborators. Roulette Intermedium is the reliquary for this exploration, with No Land’s visual and painted works on view, as well as her performance work.
In performance, No Land’s ephemeral, hand-painted scrolls, codex-like-poem documents, and typewritten text fragments are strewn upon her table— which becomes a type of altar as she recites in a trance-like state. Poems are improvised, channeled, and recited in communion with musicians’ sounds as No Land weaves a live, poetical score. Each recitation is unique as the poetry lives in a state of transmutation and amorphous mosaic.
No Land’s work illustrates the mercurial, the mysterious, and the impermanent. Earth matter turns to ether, as the artist seeks contact with another world— more based in spirit than stone. Utilizing fragile, shape shifting materials in her visual works such as dusts, chalk, light, and iridescent metallics, the works express an inner state of seeking & new forms of communicating. No Land’s works are traces and imprints, more than declarations. They are attempts at contact with a divine immateriality. They circumvent the confines of the material world and investigate the artist’s own inner sense of mystery.
Some pieces are prayers. Others are translations, turning the miniature explosions of earthly events into furthered merciful investigations. She shares a birth date with the poet and musician Sun Ra and resonates with the mission of “tuning the planet” through art.
No Land poetry, voice, visuals, cinema, design, guitar
Oliver Ray guitar, electronics
Shahzad Ismaily bass
Daniel Carter winds
Miriam Parker movement
Anne Waldman poetry
Louise Landes Levi poetry
Gabriel Gall keyboards
Tatianna Overton voice
Additional guests TBA
A livestream will be available free of charge at 8pm on the day of the performance and archived for future viewing. Watch below or on YouTube.
No Land is a poet, artist and filmmaker whose work continues in the lineage of the downtown NYC avant garde— honoring an intuitive vow towards creation. Her art evokes reverence for mystery in the forms of her paintings, drawings, poet-performances with musicians, photographic works, and films. Born in NYC & devoted to its histories, she has been guided by spirit encounters with downtown artists, poets, elders and activists. No Land is a 2024-2025 Roulette Commissioned Artist.
Her book publications include: Authentic Artifice (Newest York Press, 2018) and The Velvet Wire with Anne Waldman (Granary Books, 2024) which can be found in the collections of Bennington College, The University at Buffalo’s Poetry Collection, the Beinecke at Yale, the Getty, Ohio State University, Columbia University, University of Minnesota, Stanford, York University, University of Denver, Emory University, NYU, University of Delaware, the Library of Congress, and New York Public Library.
As a poet & vocalist, and often as bandleader, No Land has performed at The Whitney Museum, the William Burroughs Bunker (Giorno Poetry Systems), Rewire Festival, Jazzfest Berlin, Crossing Borders Festival (the Hague), Enclave Festival (Mexico City), Roulette, LaMaMa Galleria (NYC), The Kennedy Center (DC), The Poetry Project, Pioneer Works, Fotografiska NY Museum, & on NYC street corners. In 2024, No Land was a performance artist-in-residence at La Casaforte in Naples, Italy.
No Land has worked internationally at the intersections of music, poetry, and voice— fusing realms of jazz, noise, rock, improvisation, and ancient poetical text. She performs her poem-mosaic- ruminations with different formations of musician collaborators, all of whom are deeply entrenched in historic lineages of the avant garde, jazz, rock, and experimental music communities— Shahzad Ismaily, Luke Stewart (Irreversible Entanglements, Moor Mother), Daniel Carter, Oliver Ray (Patti Smith Group), Joanna Mattrey, Bentley Anderson & others. Her audio collaboration with musician Oliver Ray, “Cremation Piece,” was released as a track on the Fall of America Volume 2 album from the Allen Ginsberg Estate in 2023, alongside works from Philip Glass, Ai Weiwei, and Thurston Moore.
No Land’s poetry-sound performances are often accompanied by displays of her cinema pieces and visual art works.
Her art was recently commissioned for the cover of Anne Waldman’s Bard, Kinetic book (Coffee House Press, 2023). In 2018, No Land released Authentic Artifice, an art-book of poetry and photographs, published by Newest York. Her photojournalistic work has appeared in the Whitney Museum, Brooklyn Rail, The Village Voice, at Fotografiska NY Museum, Photo Saint- German (Paris) and in publications by Bill Moyers, Levy Gorvy Gallery, and diSonare. Her cinema work has premiered at The Poetry Project (NYC), Harvard University, Zebra Poetry Film Festival Berlin (2020), the John Giorno Foundation, The Woodberry Poetry Room, & elsewhere.
She has taught and guest lectured at The New School, Rutgers University, University of New Haven, Naropa University, in Mexican prisons, NYC public schools & at No Land’s experimental art school for young artists.
No Land has curated performances, gatherings and poetry readings of her artist peers & communities since 2009 in NYC.
Oliver Ray is a poet, musician, and composer. In 2024, his spoken word opera WOOLGATHERING premiered at Baryshnikov Arts in NYC and received the NY Times Critic’s Pick. Most recently his work has appeared in the Brooklyn Rail and on the Fall of America vol 2, A Musical Tribute to Allen Ginsberg. He is the author of the Substack Rimbaud’s Lost Papers. In 2024 he received a grant from the Peter S. Reed Foundation. He lives between Brooklyn and Tucson, AZ.
Miriam Parker creates durational films and site-specific, movable sonic sculptures that explore new modes of freedom and reimagine space through dance, visual art, and architecture. Influenced by her background in dance, Buddhism, and free jazz, she views space as a choreographic element that shapes and is shaped by movement, fostering immersive environments that challenge perceptions of ethics and freedom. Rooted in her vibrant East Village community, her work seeks to animate static spaces and transform ideas into living, evolving experiences
Shahzad Ismaily is a Brooklyn-based multi-instrumentalist, producer, composer, and engineer. Born in Harrisburg, PA, to Pakistani immigrant parents, he was diagnosed with ectodermal dysplasia—a rare genetic disorder that has profoundly impacted Ismaily’s ability to listen, endure, compose and collaborate.
Since moving to New York City in 2000, Ismaily has been a seminal member of the music community. Exploring improvisation, tonal shifts, and rhythmic movement, the Grammy-nominated artist has collaborated with numerous national and international musicians. His work spans a wide array of instruments—from electric bass, guitar, drums, percussion to synthesizers and various sound-makers gathered throughout life’s travels.
He has also collaborated on sound installations, performance art and dance pieces, such as the Oscar-nominated and Sundance award-winning Frozen River, and Ragnar Kjartansson’s installation, The Visitors. Described by The New York Times as the “Musician’s favorite Musician”, he has recorded and performed with a diverse crew of artmakers and avante-garde musicians which includes: Arooj Aftab, Sam Amidon, Laurie Anderson, Bonnie “Prince” Billy, Guillermo E. Brown, Nels Cline, Anthony Coleman, Bryce Dessner, Ceramic Dog, Bob Dylan, Marianne Faithfull, Faun Fables, Feist, Ben Frost, Ganavya, Milford Graves, Keiji Haino, Graham Haynes, Shelley Hirsch, Jolie Holland, Lonnie Holley, JFDR, Vijay Iyer, Eyvind Kang, Laleh Khorramian, Merope, Butch Morris, Dustin O’Halloran, Yoko Ono “Plastic Ono Band”, Beth Orton, Lou Reed, Marc Ribot, Damien Rice, Secret Chiefs 3, Colin Stetson, Laura Veirs, and Love In Exile.
Daniel Carter is an American experimental saxophone, flute, clarinet, and trumpet player active mainly in New York City since the early 1970s. One of the legendary masters of creative music. Born in Wilkinsburg, Pennsylvania in 1945. Carter is a prolific performer and has recorded or performed with William Parker, Federico Ughi, DJ Logic, Thurston Moore, Yo La Tengo, Sun Ra, Cecil Taylor, scientist/musician Matthew Putman, Patrick Holmes, Sabir Mateen, Cooper-Moore, Sam Rivers, David S. Ware, Yoko Ono, Medesky Martin and Wood, and Jaco Pastorius among others. He is a member of the cooperative free jazz groups TEST and Other Dimensions In Music.
Anne Waldman, a major force as poet and founder in contemporary poetry, is the author most recently of Archivist Scissors (Staircase 2025), Bard Kinetic (2023) a memoir with poetry, essays, interviews, co-editor with Emma Gomis of New Weathers: Poetics from the Naropa Archive (2022) and also the author of the radical Trickster Feminism, Penguin (2018). She also published Punch in the Gut of A Star, a cinematic bilingual poem in English & Catalan with Emma Gomis in 2022 and the script for Ed Bowes film of the same title. The Grammy-nominated Burroughs-ian opera Black Lodge with music by David T. Little and libretto by Waldman premiered at Opera Philadelphia in 2022. Patti Smith has called Waldman’s album SCIAMACHY (with cover art by Pat Steir, 2020): “Exquisitely potent, a psychic shield for our times.” Waldman has published over 60 + books of poetry, including the 1,000 page feminist epic “The Iovis Trilogy: Colors The Mechanism of Concealment which won the PEN Center Literary Award for poetry. She is one the founders and a former Director of The Poetry Project at St Marks Church In-the-Bowery and a founder of the Kerouac School at Naropa University in Boulder, CO where she is the Artistic Director of the annual Summer Writing Program. This summer’s theme (June 2025) is “The Living Thread”. Forthcoming: MESOPOTOPIA, Penguin, August 2025. The film about Anne Waldman OUTRIDER directed by Alystyre Julian, and produced by Tamaas Foundation, and executive producer Martin Scorsese premiered at Anthology Film Archive in April 2025 and will be traveling the world.
Gabriel Gall is a bird of prey found in woodlands and forests, characterized by a lack of ear tufts and a passion for music & filmmaking. They are a nocturnal hunter, relying on exceptional vision and hearing to locate prey, typically rodents, small mammals, and sometimes birds, insects, and even amphibians. Gabriel lives and works in New York City.
Tatianna Overton/.tatio (she/her) is a Brooklyn based vocalist originally from Queens, New York. She has been singing professionally for over 15 years and has studied voice the majority of her life. She performs regularly with various church/sacred, new music, jazz and contemporary ensembles as well as performing solo sets of her own music. Tatianna is excited to be exploring more interdisciplinary mediums of expression, but through all of her work, music and artistry, she is on a mission to make beautiful experiences and music accessible to everyone, hoping to spread love and inspire others to think a little bit more about their impact and place in this world
Louise Landes Levi is a poet, translator, musician, and performer whose travels have charted an elaborate constellation of mystic and cosmic pathways. A founding member of Daniel (Abdul Hayye) Moore’s Floating Lotus Magic Opera Company, she participated—from 1967 to 1969, alongside Terry Riley and Angus Maclise—in multidisciplinary drama inspired by Artaud’s research with the Tarahumara, the Balinese Gamelan, Tibetan monastic ritual, and Indian dance. Following studies at Mills College with sarangi master Pandit Ram Narayan, Levi traveled alone from Paris through Turkey, Iran, Afghanistan, and Pakistan to reach northern India for research into its musical and poetic tradition. There, she studied with Sri Annapurna Devi and Ustad Abdul Majid Khan, later becoming Ali Ak Bar Khan’s pupil at the Basel Conservatory of Music and in California. Completing her journey in her birthplace of New York, Levi studied with La Monte Young and Marian Zazeela, monitoring their Dream House into the 21st century. Levi has translated the work of Henri Michaux and Indian mystic Mira Bai (whose Sweet On My Lips La Monte Young wrote the introduction for) and is responsible for the first English translation of Rene Daumal’s Rasa, or, Knowledge of the Self: Essays on Indian Aesthetics (New Directions, 1982). She has published over a dozen books of her own poetry, most recently Crazy Louise (or la Conversazione Sacra), a series of poems examining sexual trauma from the perspective of an initiate, delineating an oriental interpretation of lunacy to reclaim the notion of the feminine hysterical from its subordinate and abusive occidental role. Levi’s introverted lifestyle and reverence for musical tradition and attainment have left comparatively little space for musical dissemination, but the last decade has seen the reappearance of works from the ‘80s in addition to several contemporary releases featuring contributions from her friends, the late Ira Cohen and Catherine Christer Hennix. Whether alone or with accompaniment, Levi’s elegiac sarangi, bells, and flute exude the feeling of otherworldly, indeed forgotten ritual. Her invocation & interpretive sense of raga, in these recordings, overlaid with spoken and sung poetry, invoke threshold experience, railing against mono culture with a sincerity & presence as sardonic or mournful as it is devotional. —ADRIAN REV, for Blank Forms
