New Paltz: organizing and listening
New Paltz, NY
Concert organizing, WFNP jazz programming, exhibitions and experimental-music activity while studying at SUNY New Paltz.
Music / Social practice
Follow 2 connections →
Matthew Mottel / work, people, places, histories
An active archive
Music / archives / temporary architecture / participation · 1999—present
I research cultural histories and create inter-media environments for these extant forms. My father’s photographs, a geodesic dome, the history of the keytar, children’s drawings: source materials for new activity. I come to this work as a musician, making decisions in real time.
New York / Newburgh / elsewhere 1999—2026
01 / A source archive
Syeus Mottel’s CHARAS photographs, 1972–7302 / A cultural geography
The Steve Circuit, 2020 · Otomo / Mottel03 / A shared score
Parents in the Avant Garde, Watermill, 2026
Syeus Mottel’s CHARAS photographs, 1972–7302 / A cultural geographyThe Steve Circuit, 2020 · Otomo / Mottel03 / A shared scoreParents in the Avant Garde, Watermill, 2026A working chronology
Read by year ↓1999
2003
Talibam!
New York / international
Keyboards and drums with Kevin Shea. More than two decades of improvisation, composition, recordings and international touring.
Music
Follow 3 connections →2010
Osmotic Imagination / ISSUE residency
Brooklyn, NY
An ISSUE Project Room residency begins an extended investigation of archival photographs through music, performance and intermedia work.
Music / Archive
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Syeus Mottel Media Archive
New York / Newburgh
Direction, digitization and activation of Syeus Mottel’s photographs, recordings and documents. The archive becomes material for exhibitions, films and other people’s work.
Archive / Social practice
Follow 3 connections →2017
CHARAS / Social Imagination
Lower East Side / beyond
Syeus’s photographs, CHARAS / El Bohío, oral histories and contemporary dome building enter a continuing public conversation.
Archive / Architecture / Social practice / Music
Follow 3 connections →2018
CHARAS Is Alive on Spaceship Earth
Loisaida Center, New York
An intermedia installation and public programme: photographs, assemblages, dome construction, sound, video and conversations.
Archive / Architecture / Social practice / Music
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The Image Is a Seed
mhPROJECTnyc, New York
Fourteen days of public archiving and performance. Each projected photograph becomes an invitation to respond.
Archive / Music / Social practice
Follow 4 connections →2019
The Image Is a Seed / Tokyo
Mumei Art Space, Tokyo
The archive and performance project is presented at Mumei Art Space.
Archive / Music / Social practice
Follow 2 connections →Sonic Receptacles
Salzburg, Austria
Sounding objects, instruments and public actions test the distance between an object, its location and what it plays.
Music / Architecture
Follow 2 connections →Geodesic Sonic Receptacle Sound System
Portable / public space
A portable dome and distributed sound system make a concert venue that other people can use.
Music / Architecture / Social practice
Follow 3 connections →2020
The Steve Circuit
Lower Manhattan / online
With Yuko Otomo, tracing Steve Dalachinsky’s daily routes through artists, venues, poems, collages and recordings.
Archive / Music
Follow 3 connections →Making the Geodesic Scene / HABITAT
Salisbury, Maryland
Dome building, an artist lecture and live performance in the context of HABITAT at Salisbury University Art Galleries.
Architecture / Music / Social practice / Archive
Follow 2 connections →2021
Talibam! / A year in Moers
Moers, Germany
Matt Mottel and Kevin Shea as the festival’s two Improvisers in Residence: rehearsals, broadcasts, recordings and visiting musicians.
Music / Social practice / Architecture
Follow 4 connections →
burnt truth
Gallery Gundula Gruber, Vienna
The keytar, the work of touring, and a gallery assembled as a band. An invented eighteenth-century touring story sits alongside instrument research.
Music / Archive
Follow 3 connections →The Image Is a Seed / Roulette
Roulette Intermedium, Brooklyn
Keyboards, electronics, video and Syeus’s photographic archive become material for new composition.
Music / Archive
Follow 2 connections →2022
Parents in the Avant Garde
New York / Hudson Valley / beyond
Nicole Lattuca and Matt Mottel make work with children and parents. Drawings become scores; the people making them can play alongside the musicians.
Social practice / Music / Architecture
Follow 4 connections →Social Practice CUNY
CUNY / New York
Fellowship connecting public art, collaborative performance, teaching and cultural organizing.
Social practice / Archive
Follow 2 connections →2023
The Steve Circuit (Projected Redux)
ISSUE Project Room, Brooklyn
A projected return to the collaboration with Yuko Otomo and the materials connected to Steve Dalachinsky.
Archive / Music
Follow 2 connections →Fun on the One
Newburgh, NY
An Awesome Newburgh-supported, three-day low-power FM and public recording studio in a vacant Broadway storefront.
Social practice / Music
Follow 2 connections →2024
The Stone residency
The Stone at The New School, New York
A four-night music residency: original composition, ensemble improvisation, collaborative performance and a PAG / Scribble Scores programme.
Music / Social practice
Follow 3 connections →Safe Harbors Radio
Newburgh, NY
Co-founder and public-programme / media-studio lead. A former theater box office becomes a community radio and podcast platform.
Social practice / Music
Follow 2 connections →2025
PAG / Catskill Art Space
Livingston Manor, NY
Weekly Scribble Scores sessions: loud and quiet, melody and dissonance, musical maps, earth, rain and wind.
Social practice / Music
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PAG / Downing Park and Newburgh
Newburgh, NY
Geodesic dome building and public programmes with Chapman Steamer Arts / Arts in the Park.
Architecture / Social practice / Music
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PAG / Soon Is Now Festival
Long Dock Park, Beacon, NY
A dome, natural pigments, drawings and an all-ages ensemble. Space music born from the crayon galaxy.
Architecture / Social practice / Music
Follow 3 connections →2026
The Image Is a Seed / ISSUE
ISSUE Project Room, Brooklyn
Three audiovisual compositions bring archival recordings, photography, live performance, sound and digital media into dialogue.
Music / Archive
Follow 3 connections →The Image Is a Seed: Student Addition
CUNY / New York
Students take up historical source material and produce work from their own positions.
Archive / Social practice
Follow 2 connections →PAG / The Watermill Center
Water Mill, NY
Shared scores and instruments in conversation with Upside Down Zebra and the Rhoda Kellogg child-art collection.
Social practice / Music
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PAG / Yale Scribble Scores
Yale Schwarzman Center, New Haven
CCAM Fest: Fluxus. Paper on the floor; marks, instruments and a room of people deciding how to play.
Social practice / Music
Follow 3 connections →Dates keep different kinds of time: a single performance, a residency, a collaboration that is still going.