Jennifer Bewerse presents Double Spaces, a multimedia performance reflecting on friendship, how we support and find support in each other, and what we gain when we refuse to avoid the hardest moments of our relationships. Through film, recordings, and intimate ephemera from a decade-long friendship and artistic collaboration with Heather Barnes, the piece becomes a posthumous duet of memory, presence, and enduring connection. The residency allows Jennifer to refine the performance’s structure and experiment with new combinations of text, film, and ephemera to deepen the work’s reflection on how we remember each other and our imagined futures that are never promised. Over the course of its 60-minute continuous performance, audiences sit together in quiet community, witnessing moments of grief, care, and enduring friendship unfold and holding space for private reflection within shared presence. The performance invites audiences to consider how embracing the reality of death can deepen our capacity for connection and intimacy. What happens when we refuse to look away?

Ghost Ensemble presents an evening of recent commissions incorporating just intonation, elemental forces, and Renaissance/Baroque practices, featuring the world premiere of the ensemble’s newest commission from KCM Walker and the Los Angeles premieres of Sarah Davachi’s Ghost Ensemble commission and the latest percussion work from Akari Komura. Developed through close collaboration with the ensemble, Sarah Davachi’s Basso Continuo stretches the Baroque practice of harmonic accompaniment to an extreme duration in a glacial just-intonation counterpoint. Like much of Davachi’s music, the real action happens in the phenomenological experience beyond the notation; her work invites a harmonic listening in between stasis and motion, where the physical bodies of the instruments and resonance of the room are constantly in play with one another. K.C.M. Walker’s Low Dance and Winding Wind, inspired by the Basse Danse and Tourdion dance forms popular at the turn of the sixteenth century, is composed around a just intonation scale that moves from a focus on harmonic consonance to the polyphonic texture of overlapping melodic contours. Drawing on the translation of Tourdion in reference to a twisting or winding motion, Winding Wind is a prolation canon featuring the harp which maintains an ostinato while simultaneously doubling the bass flute, accordion, and contrabass as they play versions of the same melody at different rates. Akari Komura’s voices on the surface invites the performer and listeners into dialogue with the voicelessness of natural elements, imagining sonic landscapes on the surfaces of trees, fire, earth, ore, and water.

a night of varied experimental musics by west coast DIY stalwarts

A messy, hazy, unfurled drone set within the auspices of Oracle Egg. Spiraling inward alone isn't recommended. Organ tones and weird synthesis. Spiraling outward alone is necessary. Volumetric projection and lights on bricks. Spiraling inward together is sometimes desired.

Codes is a collaboration between Kamari Carter and Gladstone Deluxe that features an audio-visual durational performance using data extracted from live police scanner transmissions as material for musical exploration. Deriving from Carter’s research-oriented practice on policing, incarceration, Black aesthetics, and surveillance, and Deluxe’s haptic, Afrological and techno-inspired analog compositions, Codes works towards a synthesis and seeks to elevate the obfuscated. Given our current political climate, policing both of the body and of our country has become heightened to an unprecedented level. As artists of color, they believe it is their responsibility to address the world around them, which has been and will continue to be a driving force both in our artistic and compositional practices.

"Where were you where I was not?”

Steeped in caregiving, end-of-life questions and observations of how a Life lived does not seem to hold onto a sense of linear chronology, we are setting out with the intention of exploring time and space in layered depth over span where at any moment a certain layer could come to the fore while another recedes. During our residency, we will collectively and site-specifically explore the space as a container of layered experience and engagement, underlining the ephemerality and elusiveness of the here and now.

CAROLE KIM - live video installation, sound actions

CARMINA ESCOBAR - extended voice, electronics, sound actions

KATE MORALES - dance actions

PAUL CHAVEZ - sound actions & spatialization

Carole Kim is an interdisciplinary artist with a focus on multimedia installation, video projection, live and telematic performance, drawing and experimental sound. She has experimented extensively with the optical phenomena of video projection in space including intricately hand-made layered projection environments and site-specific video projection onto large scale urban architecture and natural landscapes such as the forest in Norway, the rockscapes in Joshua Tree and the old oak groves in Descanso Gardens. As someone who works extensively with technology, it is where technology meets up with the human, physical, tangible world that interests her most. Kim has a love for creating contexts that invite synergistic collaboration and co-creation.

Carmina Escobar is a Los Angeles-based extreme vocalist, improviser, performer, and sound and intermedia artist whose work explores the boundaries of voice and sound to investigate emotions, politics, alienation, and human connection. Through performances, installations, and video works, she challenges conventions of musicality, gender, queerness, race, language, and communication. As an immigrant, her practice often examines suspended states between worlds, politics, and borders. Her work has been presented internationally and supported by prestigious residencies and awards, including recognition for sound innovation and experimental art. She remains focused on creating thoughtful and boundary-pushing work while staying rooted in the exploratory and collaborative nature of her practice.

Paul Chávez is a Chicano composer, instrumentalist, and sound designer from Southern California, blending his background in architecture and engineering with a focus on sonic textures and acoustical spaces. His work, described as "deliriously original" by the Los Angeles Times, has been presented at leading institutions such as the Guggenheim Museum, the Los Angeles Music Center, REDCAT, the Architecture and Design Museum, and the Grec Festival in Barcelona. Chávez has collaborated with Oguri, Roxanne Steinberg, Cannupa Hanska Luger, Nels Cline, JOJO ABOT, Carole Kim, The Edge, Sarah Elgart, and Morleigh Steinberg. He is also an Interaction Designer at Arup, technical director for Luminex, and an At-Large board member at Fulcrum Arts.

Kate Morales is a dancer, choreographer, and strength and conditioning coach based in Southern California. After graduating from Cal Arts in 2011 with a BFA in Dance and Choreography, she moved to New York City. Her work was presented throughout Brooklyn, Queens, and Manhattan, largely in collaboration with Lara Mahler, a NYU Tisch grad. She became a Certified Personal Trainer and Pilates Mat & Reformer instructor through Mt. San Antonio College, and runs her own personal training business and coaches Crossfit. She currently manages a fitness facility in La Verne, CA serving people over the age of 55. Her daughter attends an arts school in Pomona where she specializes in theatre and dance.

"Where were you where I was not?”

Steeped in caregiving, end-of-life questions and observations of how a Life lived does not seem to hold onto a sense of linear chronology, we are setting out with the intention of exploring time and space in layered depth over span where at any moment a certain layer could come to the fore while another recedes. During our residency, we will collectively and site-specifically explore the space as a container of layered experience and engagement, underlining the ephemerality and elusiveness of the here and now.

CAROLE KIM - live video installation, sound actions

CARMINA ESCOBAR - extended voice, electronics, sound actions

KATE MORALES - dance actions

PAUL CHAVEZ - sound actions & spatialization

Carole Kim is an interdisciplinary artist with a focus on multimedia installation, video projection, live and telematic performance, drawing and experimental sound. She has experimented extensively with the optical phenomena of video projection in space including intricately hand-made layered projection environments and site-specific video projection onto large scale urban architecture and natural landscapes such as the forest in Norway, the rockscapes in Joshua Tree and the old oak groves in Descanso Gardens. As someone who works extensively with technology, it is where technology meets up with the human, physical, tangible world that interests her most. Kim has a love for creating contexts that invite synergistic collaboration and co-creation.

Carmina Escobar is a Los Angeles-based extreme vocalist, improviser, performer, and sound and intermedia artist whose work explores the boundaries of voice and sound to investigate emotions, politics, alienation, and human connection. Through performances, installations, and video works, she challenges conventions of musicality, gender, queerness, race, language, and communication. As an immigrant, her practice often examines suspended states between worlds, politics, and borders. Her work has been presented internationally and supported by prestigious residencies and awards, including recognition for sound innovation and experimental art. She remains focused on creating thoughtful and boundary-pushing work while staying rooted in the exploratory and collaborative nature of her practice.

Paul Chávez is a Chicano composer, instrumentalist, and sound designer from Southern California, blending his background in architecture and engineering with a focus on sonic textures and acoustical spaces. His work, described as "deliriously original" by the Los Angeles Times, has been presented at leading institutions such as the Guggenheim Museum, the Los Angeles Music Center, REDCAT, the Architecture and Design Museum, and the Grec Festival in Barcelona. Chávez has collaborated with Oguri, Roxanne Steinberg, Cannupa Hanska Luger, Nels Cline, JOJO ABOT, Carole Kim, The Edge, Sarah Elgart, and Morleigh Steinberg. He is also an Interaction Designer at Arup, technical director for Luminex, and an At-Large board member at Fulcrum Arts.

Kate Morales is a dancer, choreographer, and strength and conditioning coach based in Southern California. After graduating from Cal Arts in 2011 with a BFA in Dance and Choreography, she moved to New York City. Her work was presented throughout Brooklyn, Queens, and Manhattan, largely in collaboration with Lara Mahler, a NYU Tisch grad. She became a Certified Personal Trainer and Pilates Mat & Reformer instructor through Mt. San Antonio College, and runs her own personal training business and coaches Crossfit. She currently manages a fitness facility in La Verne, CA serving people over the age of 55. Her daughter attends an arts school in Pomona where she specializes in theatre and dance.

The spiral worker operates as a connector in a rhizome-like network, gathering and transferring material (corn synth, corn silk, corn husk), unlike tree-like structures that impose order. spiral worker features an expanded corn synth system (Kinetically Operated Randomness Network) built around two touch-controlled aluminum corn ears. This instrument draws from my collaboration with disability communities through Pauline Oliveros' AUMI project. The corn synth's design references the Buchla 158 synthesizer from the 1963 San Francisco Tape Music Center, creating a hybrid modular environment. Through spiral work the piece transforms this system into a sculptural, world-building experience involving multiple performers on electronics, percussion, violin, euphonium, and saxophone. All participants—performers, audience members, and conceptual frameworks—function as interconnected spiral workers within this non-hierarchy.

Techno-Babble Sound Bath is a multimedia performance by Kai-Luen Liang, Gamin, and Menghe Jing for voice clones, live voice, electronics, and traditional Chinese and Korean instruments. Framed as an imagined California sound bath—outer calm, often turbulent within—it explores how labeling and rumination shape perception. A real-time system captures video captions, voice dictation, and text-to-speech, then scrambles the language into sheets of sound. The performers improvise with these streams, turning cascading text into sound-poetry phrases, rhythmic stutters, moments of calm and noise.

Silent Scream is a simultaneous screening of four silent horror films from the 1920s, live-scored by an ensemble of soloists. The films are projected onto different hanging surfaces, dividing the space and housing the performers. Each musician is tasked with providing the score for one of the films without responding to any of the other musicians. The audience is invited to wander the space, mixing the audio and video for themselves, choosing or changing their vantage point as they see fit. Part performance, part installation, part haunted house, Silent Scream tests the flexibility of the relationship between sound, screen, and viewer by experimenting with how material can inform a musician’s improvisation and the different ways a sense of ensemble can be created (or destroyed).

Silent Scream is a simultaneous screening of four silent horror films from the 1920s, live-scored by an ensemble of soloists. The films are projected onto different hanging surfaces, dividing the space and housing the performers. Each musician is tasked with providing the score for one of the films without responding to any of the other musicians. The audience is invited to wander the space, mixing the audio and video for themselves, choosing or changing their vantage point as they see fit. Part performance, part installation, part haunted house, Silent Scream tests the flexibility of the relationship between sound, screen, and viewer by experimenting with how material can inform a musician’s improvisation and the different ways a sense of ensemble can be created (or destroyed).

The INcomplete Cosmicomics is a stand-alone opera by composer/writer Anna Heflin for vocalizing cellist/actor and electronics in which author Italo Calvino’s mystical entity Qfwfq continues his journey. After being stuck in a void for thousands of years with only a cello and a looper, the incongruous and multifaceted Qfwfq comes to life. Upon exiting the void, he faces a choice: he can either explode into existence as all beings or end linear time. Inspired by Calvino’s The Complete Cosmicomics, Heflin’s work is an original creation in which Qfwfq takes the reins of his own narrative. Equipped with a sharp sense of humor and sensuality, Qfwfq ruminates, charms and hypnotizes in his quest to break the loops of life. The work showcases Juilliard-educated cellist Aaron Wolff as Qfwfq, whose acting credits include Danny Gopnik in the Coen brothers’ A Serious Man.

If you haven’t read Calvino, don’t fret. Everyone will be thrown equally into the void in this new non-adaptation.

We'll be playing a series of new works by Ivan Cunningham. Things emerge, hang in the air too long, then leave before they explain themselves. The room keeps changing shape depending on who’s listening. Someone said it sounded like a memory trying to whistle.

The Jeonmonori is an electronic reimagining of the sangmo, a hat with a long, spinning whip made of ribbon attached to its crown, which is worn and played during the sangmonori, a Korean folk tradition where the instrumentalist/performer plays and dances simultaneously with their percussion instrument. I created the jeonmonori by modifying a sangmo hat, replacing the spinning ribbon with a lightweight, mini microphone. While wearing the hat, I move in the middle of four hanging gongs that are amplified with transducers. The act of the mic moving within the amplified gongs creates feedback between the transducers and the mic-ed hat-whip, resonating the gongs, while my position and the speed at which the whip is spinning, among other factors, determines musical variables of feedback such as pitch, rhythm, and dynamics.

P R O G R A M

Detonation Patterns

Seven Landscape

Multi-instrumentalists Andrew Anderson and Erich Barganier join forces to premiere two new multimedia works by Barganier.

Detonation Patterns’ score, projected behind the musicians during the first half of the performance, takes direct inspiration from Russian and American munition strikes in the Middle East and Ukraine between 2005 - 2023. In order to create this work, Barganier ran military imaging of blast damage at various strike locations through a generative graphics patch Barganier coded in TouchDesigner. Anderson and Barganier then reinterpret this data through noisemakers, broken instruments, and more.

Seven Landscapes is an audiovisual meditation on the fleeting nature of digital temporary autonomous zones. The work blends live electronic musical improvisation with datamoshed corporate stock footage, deconstructed video game assets disintegrating in real time, and a generative fixed media score derived from mining AI for malfunctioning code.

Special thanks to Richard An and r.a.s.p. for equipment used to realize this program.

P R O G R A M

Shaking* by Erich Barganier

The Wonderland Series by Anna Heflin

Violinist Shannon Reilly presents two dramatic multimedia works, exploring her identity through simultaneous live performance, filmed media, singing, and acting. Reilly’s career launched with Anna Heflin’s 2019 solo opera The Wonderland Series, a “viscerally expressive fever dream” (ROC City News) which she’s performed in her professorship at UB SUNY, for Rochester’s Fringe Festival, and for MATA Presents in NYC. In this west-coast premiere, Shannon examines the mysterious background and Biblical obsessions of Wonderland and its author, alongside the world premiere of Erich Barganier’s Shaking. Shannon’s most recent commission examines growing up in modern Christianity and how it shaped her identity, demanding she reimmerse herself in the inherently performative world of an American church service as a conscious interloper. Shannon will follow her performance with an interactive discussion on the performer-composer relationship and building collaboration.

THE TRAGEDY OF THE MACHO MAN is an absurdist and grotesque performance of the song “Macho Man” by the Village People at an extremely slow rate. Each section of the song takes on different stylistic properties from more ambient to harsh noise. Accompanying the musical performance are synchronized videos that project different aspects of toxic masculinity and its relationship to popular culture, violence and authoritarianism.

Nothing Here is Entirely Foreign is a performance of ceremony, movement and sound centered on the persimmon. Drawing from matrilineal stories and inherited gestures, the piece traces the quiet transmissions of culture through food, language, and care. Rooted in Korean and Japanese familial histories, it explores how ancestral memory lives in the body, what ripens across generations, and the sensual, corporeal rituals of everyday life. The performance weaves personal and collective memory, offering a tender meditation on diaspora, intimacy, and the sensory imprint of love passed down.

Hyper Terrains is a multi sensory experience revealing the artist’s connection between the vastness of the glacial Nunavut landscape, their transitioning journey, and its accompanying suicidal ideations. This hybrid performance/installation environment uncovers the brutality of both states while offering methods to cope and eventually bloom in a new way. Incorporating scientific data, field recordings, voice-memo diary entries, and a fragrance installation, these physical and emotional landscapes are expressed as a collection of chamber ensemble pieces. Together, we contemplate sonic expansiveness, glacial endlessness, material insufficiency, and physical transformation.

If you’re in crisis or need someone to talk to, the 988 Lifeline is available 24/7. You can call or text 988, or chat with a trained crisis counselor at 988lifeline.org ♡

Fluxmata is an installation opera moving through birth, growth, end of life, decomposition, and rebirth; reclaiming dirt and grime, rejecting shame, and returning otherness outwards. Fluxmata will feed itself and watch it grow, hold it and feel it die, and ultimately ooze back into the womb from which it came.

Oracle Egg presents Mattie Barbier in residency and concert with new works for trombone and prepared bass trumpet ~ exploring the acoustic irrationality of instruments and their shifting relationships to acoustic space through alternative playing methodologies and psychoacoustic phenomenon.

Student and Faculty members form the CalArts school of music and dance come together in a project researching the connection between movement and sound. During the one week residency at Oracle Egg in Los Angeles the team of artists will indulge in exploring and experimenting with the spatial possibilities of the venue, and how to decentralize the performance space, and the relation of the performers to the audience. The media of sound and movement will meet through improvisatory practices, informing, and deconstructing each other's acquired patterns. The week-long exploration will culminate in a performance on Saturday, May 10th.

Starlight Suite is a collection of short compositions employing custom hand tracking and wearable technology. Through gestural motion and piano performance, Celes navigates through a complex harmonic landscape. Condensed microtonal clusters open up to wide consonances as starlight falls to earth.

Theatre of Only Possible Haecceities is a textile-driven installation that creates an immersive, decorative environment for inextricably sonic-visual events. Maximally stretchy, synthetic fabric transforms the venue into a parabolically warped room, functioning simultaneously as a monochromatic stage, a curtain, and a lens. Theatre of Only Possible Haecceities marries live performances of micro chamber compositions & solo improvisations with discrete material events– modulating fabric layers, traveling clusters of color, large cascading paint streams, and unfurling plastic wraps. Choreographed manipulations of brightly-colored and found objects will animate melodic passages, noise, shifts in instrumentation, and game-like performance.

𝘛𝘩𝘦 𝘕𝘰𝘳𝘮𝘢𝘭𝘪𝘻𝘢𝘵𝘪𝘰𝘯 𝘰𝘧 𝘋𝘦𝘷𝘪𝘢𝘯𝘤𝘦 𝘪𝘴 𝘢 𝘴𝘰𝘤𝘪𝘰𝘭𝘰𝘨𝘪𝘤𝘢𝘭 𝘵𝘩𝘦𝘰𝘳𝘺 𝘥𝘦𝘷𝘦𝘭𝘰𝘱𝘦𝘥 𝘣𝘺 𝘋𝘪𝘢𝘯𝘦 𝘝𝘢𝘶𝘨𝘩𝘢𝘯 𝘵𝘩𝘢𝘵 𝘦𝘹𝘢𝘮𝘪𝘯𝘦𝘴 𝘤𝘰𝘮𝘱𝘭𝘦𝘹 𝘴𝘺𝘴𝘵𝘦𝘮𝘴 𝘧𝘢𝘪𝘭𝘶𝘳𝘦. 𝘞𝘩𝘦𝘯 𝘶𝘯𝘴𝘢𝘧𝘦 𝘰𝘳 𝘶𝘯𝘸𝘢𝘯𝘵𝘦𝘥 𝘱𝘳𝘢𝘤𝘵𝘪𝘤𝘦𝘴 𝘢𝘳𝘦 𝘢𝘭𝘭𝘰𝘸𝘦𝘥 𝘵𝘰 𝘤𝘰𝘯𝘵𝘪𝘯𝘶𝘦 𝘸𝘪𝘵𝘩𝘰𝘶𝘵 𝘳𝘦𝘱𝘦𝘳𝘤𝘶𝘴𝘴𝘪𝘰𝘯𝘴 𝘰𝘳 𝘤𝘰𝘯𝘴𝘦𝘲𝘶𝘦𝘯𝘤𝘦𝘴, 𝘵𝘩𝘰𝘴𝘦 𝘣𝘦𝘩𝘢𝘷𝘪𝘰𝘳𝘴 𝘣𝘦𝘤𝘰𝘮𝘦 𝘴𝘵𝘢𝘯𝘥𝘢𝘳𝘥𝘪𝘻𝘦𝘥. 𝘔𝘢𝘴𝘰𝘯’𝘴 𝘱𝘪𝘦𝘤𝘦 𝘦𝘯𝘤𝘰𝘶𝘳𝘢𝘨𝘦𝘴 𝘵𝘩𝘪𝘴 𝘤𝘰𝘮𝘱𝘭𝘦𝘹 𝘴𝘺𝘴𝘵𝘦𝘮 𝘧𝘢𝘪𝘭𝘶𝘳𝘦 𝘢𝘴 𝘢𝘯 𝘰𝘤𝘵𝘦𝘵 𝘱𝘭𝘢𝘺𝘴 𝘩𝘪𝘴 𝘮𝘰𝘥𝘶𝘭𝘢𝘳 𝘮𝘶𝘴𝘪𝘤 𝘢𝘯𝘥 𝘴𝘭𝘰𝘸𝘭𝘺 𝘧𝘢𝘭𝘭𝘴 𝘢𝘱𝘢𝘳𝘵.

Featuring:

Matt LeVeque - percussion

Nicki Chen - viola

Grace Dashnaw - cello

Ivan Cunningham - saxophone

Brody Scott - saxophone / clarinet

Jo Bagay - trumpet / flugelhorn

Nev Wendell - trumpet