Artist Molly Surno presents We of Me, a performance featuring musician Brian Chase of the Yeah Yeah Yeahs, wherein 20 men perform a choreographed soundscape using hand-crafted musical hair brushes. The performers, arranged in a circle in the center of the Getty's Tram Arrival Plaza, will prepare their hair, generating tones from the various textures amplified through the electric brush-instruments. Surno and Chase mix the sound in real time as it is generated. The distortions result in a meditative, repetitive, layered composition.
Taking its title, We of Me, from Carson McCuller's novel Member of the Wedding, in which the protagonist describes her desire to unify and fantasy to belong, the performance utilizes the sounds and repetitive gestures associated with the intimacy and ritual of grooming to merge the performers and the onlookers into a collective experience. Recalling La Monte Young's projects Dream House and Theater of Eternal Music, as well as sound baths held in Edward Van Tassel's Integratron structure, this composition activates and complicates the physical and emotional effects of sound on the individual and the collective body.
Molly Surno is a Brooklyn-based installation artist who works in film and video, sculpture, sound, and photography. She received her MFA from Columbia University in 2013. Her work has been exhibited internationally at the Essl Museum and the Salzburg Museum of Modern Art. She is also the founder and director of Cinema 16, which pairs contemporary musicians with experimental films. Cinema 16 has been featured at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, The Kitchen, MoMA/PS1, among others.
Date: Friday, July 14, 2017
Time: 6:00–9:00 p.m.
Location: Museum Courtyard
Admission: Free; no ticket required.
Friday Flights is a series of interdisciplinary happenings that brings together a range of Los Angeles-based artists to transform the Getty experience. Held monthly each June, July, and August, Friday Flights invites artists to respond to the Getty's unique architecture and gardens and forge new connections to the collections and exhibitions through music, performance, film, and other creative interventions.