You have three BIOs to choose from:

1. This one speaks to my love of stories and to some life experience inspiring (albeit obliquely) quite a few of my disparate works:

Jon Brumit's earliest activities included building humane rabbit traps from scratch, racing wagons, driving a tractor, shooting at birds, eating fried okra and mowing grass. And although he was diagnosed a near-genius at age eight, he went on to complete a life-size model of a Buck Rogers Flight Craft cockpit made entirely of cardboard and, while in seventh grade, was awarded a second place science fair ribbon for his experimentation with types of music found to be most conducive for plant growth.

His earliest dreams of adulthood were to be a race car driver and an inventor, later accomplishing part of this dream by successfully building a 420 cubic foot electric Sound Sandwich. His first art class was as a senior at his second of three different high schools, where he learned to make chains from construction paper. During his second art class at another school he created videos with a Pixl Vision camera and conducted recreational cough syrup experiments on himself before typing class.

Brumit's first vinyl remix was at age 16 using a Saturday Night Fever Soundtrack, and he was once known to play covers of TV shows on a Baldwin Organ. Although he was raised in a loving and caring home and won several skateboard contests, he later found himself taken into custody for driving a borrowed Chevette through lawns in Georgia while on a Cherry 7-Up run and on another occasion had the good fortune of being punched in the face for shooting off fireworks behind a woman at a gas station in Tennessee.

Jon has composed, conducted, exhibited and or performed as Cat Head Biscuits, Polar Easter Island, Choc Electrique, Boondoggle, Catch and Release, Gown, The Unduane, Jon the Band, Van Boven, Organoff, Sliv & Dulet Enterprises, mattttam-jonnoj, Too Bobs, nprkstra, Everlasting the Way, Brumit, VOMIT, Vol-Mit, DIJON, Van Balgene, Bloom, Neighborhood Public Radio, Von Bunting, The New Bobby Sextet (a solo act with 6 turntables and only BOB records) and occasionally as Jon Brumit. He loves collaborating, making things and listening to a good story.


(photo - moses)

2. This one addresses the need for a more academic bio from time to time. And although I'm quite proud of my various accomplishments, it occassionally embarrasses me to use this one, as it is foremost designed to highlight my worthiness for some types of grants, employment, etc:

I work creatively with interactive social design, structured improvisation and multi-layered interventions. By design, my objects and public performance situations often produce unpredictable results - occasionally humorous, often sonorous, and always highly interpretable.

Since my first gallery exhibition in 1990, I have presented solo and collaborative works widely in the US and abroad at venues including the 2008 Whitney Biennial (as Neighborhood Public Radio), MOCAD (Detroit), SF MOMA, the DeYoung Museum (SF), Chelsea Art Museum (NYC), YBCA (SF), Novi Sad Contemporary Museum (Serbia), Cranbrook Museum of Art (Bloomfield Hills, MI), the Krannert Museum (Urbana Champlain), Kavi Gupta Gallery (Chicago), Borderline Academy / Fadaiat (Tarifa, Spain), Artists Television Access (SF), Lisa Dent Gallery (SF), Homie (Berlin), 0047 (Berlin), IN-F (Tokyo), Fringe Exhibitions (LA), Oakland Art Gallery (Oakland, CA), Steven Wolf Fine Arts (SF), FSK Radio (Hamburg), Southern Exposure (SF), KUDA.org (Novi Sad, Serbia), 21 Grand (Oakland, CA), New Langton Arts (SF), Headlands Center for the Arts (Sausalito, CA) and in Festivals such as ISEA / 01 (San Jose, CA), Version 05 (Chicago), Sonic Fragments (Princeton University), and the Edgetone New Music Summit (Oakland, CA).

Several of these projects were made possible through generous support from the San Jose Public Arts Commission (2008 solo commission for the 'South Bay Talent Center', San Jose), Princeton University (2008 commission for Sonic Fragments), Creative Work Fund (2006-2007 grant for Neighborhood Public Radio's 'Radio Cartography' series), Oakland Arts Council (2007 grant award for 'Gold Record Studio - Live at Laney Flea Market' with Lisa Mezzacappa), Museum of Contemporary Art Detroit (2007 commission for a solo radio-based driving tour of Detroit for Shrinking Cities), ISEA / Zero One Festival Community Domain Commission (2006 commission for an NPR community radio broadcast performance), Meet the Composer (2006 grant for a workshop and performance in Philadelphia's Rotunda), CEC ArtsLink (2005 grant for a Neighborhood Public Radio residency with KUDA.org in Novi Sad, Serbia), Sarajevo Institute for Contemporary Art & Pro.ba (2005 invitation to present NPR at 'Lost In Transition', Sarajevo), the Novi Sad Contemporary Museum (2005 commission for an NPR community broadcast performance event), the Presidio Trust (2004 commission for a sculpture made of recycled materials for the Chrissy Field Center), San Francisco Recycling & Disposal (2002 residency award) and a Poplack Scholarship in Painting (1997 award while at Cranbrook Academy of Art).

Residencies awarded include Headlands Center for the Arts (2007 as Neighborhood Public Radio), City of Hamburg International Residency Program (2006), KUDA.org (2005, Novi Sad, Serbia), Space 538 (2005, Portland , ME) and the Sanitary FIll Corporation (aka the 'SF Dump' 2002).

Interviews, features, reproductions and reviews of these works have appeared in dailies such as the NY Times, LA Times, Women's Wear Daily, USA Today, the SF Chronicle, the Chicago Reader, SF Weekly, the Hamtramck Star, the Oakland Tribune and online at such websites as Artforum.com, BoingBoing, the Associate Press, SF Gate and Yahoo News. Additional publications in monthlies include Artforum, Punk Planet, Wired, Readymade Magazine, Oakland Magazine, 7x7 Magazine, Black Book (for 'Strip Club' with Matt Blake & Enis Sefersah), SMAC's 'DEFUNCT' zine (SMAC / SF MOMA 2004), and on broadcast media such as National Public Radio's Weekend Edition, the Today Show, MSNBC, WNYC's 'Radio Lab', KQED's Spark (SF), NBC's 'Tech Now', Canal Plus (France), and Discovery Channel International.

Furthermore, I have presented or spoken at institutions including School of the Art Institute of Chicago, Cranbrook Academy of Art, Stanford, Princeton, San Jose State University, Museum of Contemporary Art Detroit, New College, University of Delaware, UC Santa Cruz, California College of the Arts, Museum of Contemporary Art Detroit, Cranbrook Academy of Art, Southern Exposure, Richmond Art Center, USF, and a forthcoming presentation with follow NPRers Lee Montgomery and MIchael Trigilio at the Art, Technology, and Culture Colloquium of the Berkeley Center for New Media (UC Berkeley, 2009).

More about my work at www.jonbrumit.com or from recent articles in the New York Times, the Metro Times, the SF Chronicle, or through direct inquiry.



and 3. This one directly responds to my love of lists and is an attempt to render non-linearity and inconclusiveness as or within a raw critical narrative framework:

electronically engineered biopage w/ actionable intelligence
aka thought bubbles of tomorrow imploding today
aka list preceding the new bio with soundtrack

•chattanooga, chicago, detroit, oakland, san francisco
•solar corn video synthesizers
•power structures, mechanisms of control, monocultures, propaganda
•social design, strangerisms
•container studio
•amplified feedback through snare drums and cymbals
•polyphony
•delectable failure nuggets, formerly chocolate-covered
•exploring risk, dissonance, sustainability, public art, failure
•interventionism, creative resistance, collaboration, sound, transmission arts
•beautiful terrible noise
•action as performance
•making things, talking to people, asking questions
•grits taste test, radio billboards, monsanto's workshop, global warming hut,

note 1: birds, mustard, and mayonnaise = offense
note 2: while trapped in amsterdam in 06, i struggled (and eventually gave up trying) to burn my electric guitar, lost my journal, received two free brooks saddles, bought a pair of new socks, repeatedly escaped from weed mountain on a flat black single speed coaster brake delivery / bike-camping bike and then realized that, although i don't know how BRUMIT is translated, 'VAN BOVEN' means both 'from above' and 'from upstairs' ...
note 3: earplugs in public, but not during shows: so many vibrations

also see: www.jonbrumit.com , www.neighborhoodpublicradio.org , www.goldrecordstudio.com , www.slivanddulet.com , www.edgetonerecords.com



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