Disband (6)

Disband was founded in 1978 by Martha Wilson, Daile Kaplan, and Barbara Ess. Although Kaplan and Ess were members of seminal downtown punk and No Wave bands, Wilson took her lack of musical training as inspiration to formulate this “all-girl conceptual art punk band” in the midst of New York’s No Wave scene. While the group began with standard instruments, they discarded them quickly, focusing on their voices, harmonies, and corporeal percussion (clapping, stomping, etc) as the foundation for witty, humorous, and intellectually biting songs. The lineup was initially fluid, with Daile Kaplan, Barbara Ess, April Gornik, Barbara Kruger, all participating in the early days of the group, along side Martha Wilson. Eventually the line-up shifted to artists Ilona Granet, Donna Henes, Diane Torr, Martha Wilson, and writer Ingrid Sischy. However, the core group consists of Wilson, Henes, Granet and Torr. Disband performed regularly between 1979 and 1982 at exhibition spaces and clubs such as MOMA PS1, The Kitchen, Mudd Club, TR3 (NYC) and nationally at Hallwalls, LAICA, and Chicago’s Museum of Contemporary Art, and art festivals throughout the world (In 1980, they toured Italy with Laurie Anderson, Chris Burden, and others). Disband reunited with Granet, Henes, Torr, and Wilson in 2008 at MoMA PS1’s installation of “WACK! Art and the Feminist Revolution,” and continue to perform internationally (about April Gornik see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/April_Gornik )