Catherine Christer Hennix (also known as C.C. Hennix, born 1948) is a Swedish musician, poet, philosopher, mathematician and visual artist. As a musician, she has worked with figures such as Pandit Pran Nath, La Monte Young, and Henry Flynt. Several of her archival recordings have been released in the 21st century, most prominently The Electric Harpsichord (2010). Hennix was affiliated with MIT's AI Lab in the late 1970s and was later employed as research professor of mathematics at SUNY New Paltz; she also worked with mathematician Alexander Esenin-Volpin.[1]
Catherine Christer Hennix | |
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![]() Hennix at Sonic Acts lecture in 2012 | |
Born | 1948 Stockholm, Sweden |
Occupation | Mathematician, musician, philosopher, visual artist, poet |
Movement | Ultraintuitionism, minimalism |
Musical career | |
Years active | Late 1960s – present |
Labels | Locust, Blank Forms, Empty, Die Schachtel, Important |
Musical artist |
Catherine Christer Hennix grew up in a musical environment; her mother was a jazz composer who frequently invited well-known American jazz musicians such as Idrees Sulieman and Eric Dolphy around the house, and she saw John Coltrane and others perform.[2] Hennix took up drums and performed with her brother. Later, Hennix studied with Stockhausen and was among the pioneers in Sweden experimenting with main-frame computer generated composite sound wave forms in the late 1960s.[2] She studied bio-chemistry and then linguistics at university before settling on mathematical logic and philosophy.[2]
In the 1970s, she connected with Fluxus artists Dick Higgins and Allison Knowles in New York, and began collaborative relationships with figures such as La Monte Young and Henry Flynt.[3] She pursued studies with raga master Pandit Pran Nath[3] and led the just intonation live-electronic ensembles Hilbert Hotel and The Deontic Miracle. At the urging of Nath, she also pursued a career as a professor of mathematics and computer science, and assistant to and coauthor with Alexander Esenin-Volpin for which she was given the Centenary Prize Fellow Award by the Clay Mathematics Institute in 2000.[4] She was affiliated with MIT's AI Lab in the late 1970s and was later employed as research professor of mathematics at SUNY New Paltz. In the 1990s, she relocated to Paris to study psychoanalysis with students of Jacques Lacan.
Hennix's interest in drone music is crossed with her interests in jazz, Arabic music, Sufi Islamic art, and blues elements. In the 1970s and 1980s, she played with musicians such as Arthur Russell and Arthur Rhames.[3] She also performed in Flynt's group Dharma Warriors. Archival recordings such as The Electric Harpsichord (2010) and Selected Early Keyboard Works (2018) saw release in the 21st century. In recent years, she has performed with her group the Chora(s)san Time-Court Mirage. In 2019, many of her writings were published in the two-volume collection Poësy Matters and Other Matters.
Releases credited to Hennix and her various groups.
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