Quantum Listening: Sound as Form/Practice

Inspired by composer Pauline Oliveros’ manifesto for listening as activism, Quantum Listening explores the everyday phenomena of the sonic as a realm of healing and radical transformation rooted in musicianship. Through open conversations, screenings, and listening sessions, the series acts as a soundboard that mixes our dialogues and amplifies our curiosities about the world around us.

Join us for an open conversation between Zion Estrada, Josh Kun and Jasper Marsalis.

Zion Estrada (she/her) is an interdisciplinary artist researcher living on Gabrielleno/Tongva Territory. Her work flows between archival assemblage filmmaking, sonic collage production and experiential design. Zion’s experimental collage language in film and sonic works often use layering of field recordings, found sounds and carefully curated sound clips that score a line of discourse that complicate temporality, history and meaning making. Her practice is informed by the palimpsest. She is most interested in the non-verbal and non-human qualities of storytelling in Africa and her diaspora (specifically the Caribbean) and how sounds hold the spirits of the past and the alchemic power to magnetize communities, movement, moods, and healing. She draws on the traditions of Black Trans abolitionists care making, sex worker solidarity, doula presence practices and movement architects love of release. Zion is co-founder and Creative Director of Black Discourse and owner of BZE Consultant LLC. Holds a M.A. ED focused on participatory research practice with language learners and linguistic learning through play.

Josh Kun is a cultural historian, author, curator, and MacArthur Fellow. His books include Audiotopia: Music, Race, and America, The Tide Was Always High: The Music of Latin America in Los Angeles, Songs in the Key of Los Angeles, and others. As a curator and artist, his projects have appeared with Prospect New Orleans, Steve Turner Gallery, Grammy Museum, Getty Foundation, SFMOMA, California African American Museum, the Los Angeles Public Library, and more. He has been the recipient of a Berlin Prize and an American Book Award. He is Vice Provost for the Arts at USC, where he is Professor and Chair of Cross-Cultural Communication in the USC Annenberg School.

Jasper Marsalis (b. 1995 in Los Angeles, CA, US) lives and works in Los Angeles. Working across painting, performance, sculpture, sound and music, Marsalis explores the parallels between the space of painting and performer on stage. As a musician, he performs under the moniker Slauson Malone 1. Upcoming performances include Park Avenue Armory, New York (2024); Bourse du Commerce, Paris (2024); upcoming exhibitions include Villa Medici, Rome (2024); Aspen Art Museum, Aspen (2024).

This program is organized by Justen Leroy, Director of Public Programs and Community Outreach, with Alitzah Oros, Public Programming Associate.