About — John P. Hastings

John P. Hastings is an artist and musician focused on exploring the environment, communities, and humanity. He works across media, using performance, video, installation, photography, and sound recording. He also likes to read books.

Geography and research form a large part of his artistic practice. Specific sites become a starting point to engage in a dialog between peoples as well as the landscape we live. The historical record emerges as a place to question ourselves, the ideas that have been passed down to us, and how we can function with the weight of those histories upon us. Trained as a musician and composer, Hastings uses sound and audio as major through lines in all his works, along with a diverse array of media.

His collection, The Former World, was previewed by The Industry and wildUp in Los Angeles, CA as part of their FIRST TAKE Series in 2017. The work, based on the writings of John McPhee and Robert Smithson, utilizes video, audio recordings, live performers, and electronically manipulated roadside debris, to engage with how humans see the environment and how that environment records our presence.

Cloudsplitter, an outdoor performance work for brass ensemble, used the story of radical abolitionist John Brown to draw parallels between our current era and some of the most consequential in our nation’s history. A Civil War-era march and an 18th Century hymn are recast and re-composed to create the musical materials for the performance with the costumes and movements of the performers functioning as visual corollaries to these themes.

He has had performances at a variety of venues and festivals including the Hammer Museum (Los Angeles, CA), REDCAT (Los Angeles, CA), Issue Project Room (Brooklyn, NY), Center for New Music (San Francisco, CA), Roulette Intermedium (Brooklyn, NY), Festival of New American Music (Sacramento, CA,) Other Minds Festival 17 (San Francisco, CA), Itinerant Interludes (Berlin, Germany), Make Music New York (New York, NY), the LUMEN Festival (Staten Island, NY), and many more.

His compositions have been featured on the releases minimal music (2016) and chamber music (2009), and releases on Absence of Wax and compost & height. Book releases include, john p. hastings : scores & drawings 2010, published by Middlepress in 2010, and The Former World published by Pickled Peach Press in 2022.

He is an active performer, playing a variety of instruments in productions by Object Collection, and hitting the stage at rock venues with Wormburner, amongst others.

Hastings earned his MFA degree from the California Institute of the Arts where he studied with Sara Roberts, Mark Trayle, Michael Pisaro, & Ulrich Krieger. He is a cofounder of the Experimental Music Yearbook, a web based music journal. He lives in New York, NY with his wife and son.

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