October 2019

A scaffold supports a projector, a projector-screen, and a flat-screen TV, a bench is provided for you to sit on as you watch the two videos and listen to their soundtracks. One is about twenty minutes long, and the other is ten minutes; they play contiguously, creating novel overlaps each time round. The footage was all filmed over the course of three months in 2019, in and around Los Angeles.

Initially invited to stay at Villa Aurora, under the auspices of Studienstiftung des Deutschen Volkes, the artist then moved in with a friend and Tiffany the Scabies Cat in Lincoln Heights. He put ads on Craigslist, and met more LA residents who were willing to participate in his filming, either as protagonists or interviewees, or sometimes both.

Different textures of freedom might be found on the periphery of the city. This could be the physical periphery, as with dirt bikers who appear in the film, or the social periphery, where the furry subculture exists. Other kinds of animals also inhabit these spaces - hares, racoons, cats, foxes- and their animal freedoms are sometimes cut short by humans, sometimes protected by them. The object of pity becomes a possible vessel for feelings by proxy.

Pianist Genevieve Lee joins members of Brightwork Ensemble to present an evening of music from another place and time. In Saariaho’s enigmatic Mirrors, performers are given a series of musical fragments, to be assembled as desired, breaking down the need for a goal-oriented order. Veronika Krausas Un-Intermezziare inspired by China Miéville’s Un-Lun Dun, is a haunting story of an alternate and parallel universe. George Crumb’s masterpiece Vox Balaenae (Voice of the Whale), for three masked players bathed in blue light, takes the audience on a captivating, mysterious, and timeless journey. Altromondo (Another World), by Kurt Rhode, calls for melodicas, harmonicas, Chinese paper accordions, triangles, and antique cymbals, in addition to a number of preparations inside the piano. We are transported to a place where time is not an arrow – locations are in flux, and the music as “object” never stands still.

Presented by Tuesdays@MonkSpace, Brightwork Ensemble and Villa Aurora