New and Experimental Music,
Art & Technolgy
Episode 07: Creating a “Haiku” Theatre with Dr. Daniel Medina
In this episode, we present Daniel Medina—a poet, painter, musician, public schoolteacher, and ordained minister with the United Church of Christ. American Pop Haiku and the Beat Generation influenced his poetry. Medina shares that writing and performing haiku has helped him express his artistic brokenness. His poetry, music, and paintings form an endless palette of words, sounds, and colors, used as dreamcatchers to transform memory into matter and to incarnate lived experiences within his work.
He is the author of Kigo: Four Seasons in Haiku.
Medina reflects on building self-esteem, cultivating authenticity as an artist, and exploring what it means to be a better human being.
Daniel is also the founder of Atomic Theatre, a Miami-based electronica/avant-garde jazz ensemble. This eclectic group draws inspiration from the indeterminacy of John Cage, early UK alternative music (Joy Division, Siouxsie and the Banshees, The Cure, New Order, and The Psychedelic Furs), John Cale and the early Velvet Underground, as well as the works of Sun Ra, Milford Graves, Don Cherry, John Coltrane, Miles Davis, Dark Jazz, Cabaret Voltaire, and 80s Miami Freestyle. The ensemble’s creative philosophy is further shaped by DADA, world music, and the writings of Jack Kerouac, Hermann Hesse, Yann Martel, Edgar Allan Poe, Flannery O’Connor, Miguel de Unamuno, Ludwig Wittgenstein, and American Transcendentalism.
Daniel’s book recommendations to our listeners include:
Space is the Place: The Lives and Times of Sun Ra by John Szwed
Cosmic Scholar: The Life and Times of Harry Smith by John Szwed
Where the Heart Beats John Cage, Zen Buddhism, and the Inner Life of Artists by Kay Larson;
The Bride and the Bachelors by Calvin Tomkins;
Piet Mondrian: A Life by Hans Janssen;
Memoirs of A Dada Drummer by Richard Huelsenbeck;
Girl in a Band: A Memoir by Kim Gordon
To contact Daniel: dmedinacc@gmail.com
Find more about Daniel Medina and Atomic Theatre
