A shared evening of new work, Resonant Architecture highlights artists working directly with the voice. All classically trained vocalists, these artists have chosen to experiment, often in extreme ways, pushing the limits and scope of vocal expression. The invitation asks each artist to harness the natural resonance of WAREHOUSE to create work in duet with the building.
Los Angeles based artists, Carmina Escobar (b. 1981, Mexico City), Sharon Chohi Kim (b. 1987 Anaheim), and Jasmine Orpilla (b. New York City), will each present a new site-specific piece.
Sharon Chohi Kim, Fiber
Jasmine Orpilla, ARSENAL: Agannad ka ti Ulom
Carmina Escobar, Systems of Resonance, noisy body songs
Sharon Chohi Kim, Fiber
Fiber is a series of vocal textures and movement gestures that explores play, communication, and interdependence of animals, plants, land and water. By peering into the idea of sentience in nonhuman beings, the performance decentralizes human existence on Earth, offering solace within this perspective.
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channels
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we’ve just discovered whales have language
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Pando forest mourns
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earth quakes dogs shake
rest
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waterbodies
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we are
Created, Composed and Choreographed by Sharon Chohi Kim
Performed by Mikaela Elson, Sara Sinclair Gomez, Sharon Chohi Kim, Kathryn Shuman
Movement Direction by Chantael Takeuchi
Special Thanks to Joshua Ballinger, FCCLA and Nick McPhail
Jasmine Orpilla, ARSENAL: Agannad ka ti Ulom
ARSENAL is constructed using site specific vocal transmutations that tune into the metals found and “sounded” in MOCA’s WAREHOUSE and the metaphorical shrapnel historically and spiritually embedded in an "American head." Calling on Carlos Bulosan, Jose Rizal, Leona Florentino, and Audre Lorde for their psychic take upon liberation and the cultivation of rage, Orpilla's composition sings an extreme litany of hyper-lingual warnings coded within Filipino songs of sacrifice.
ARSENAL includes thematic hints towards Orpilla's upcoming operatic work, Orasyon.
ARSENAL is performed live in simultaneous Ilocano, French, German, Spanish, Ilonggo, Tagalog, and more.
Original sound, site-specific audio field recordings, and music composed and produced by Jasmine Orpilla (2024).
Attire by Mang Abel T'Abra, Bangued, Abra Philippines.
Carmina Escobar, Systems of Resonance, noisy body songs
A body scouring and transferring sound oscillations in space Systems of Resonance, noisy body songs explores the phenomenon of resonance as an intricate conversation of movement, light, and matched vibrations.
Created and Performed by Carmina Escobar
Costume design by PATRIA
Sharon Chohi Kim’s work as a performing artist and composer includes immersive experimental opera, performance art, improvisation, electronic sound art and site-specific space activation through movement and voice. In her practice of improvisation, she explores human and non-human states of being, enthusiastically discovering new ways in which her voice can sound. Chohi has performed with the LA Philharmonic, Industry Opera, Long Beach Opera, MOCA, the Broad Museum, LA Master Chorale, the Getty Center, in tunnels, mountains, gardens, and in water.
Jasmine Orpilla is a transdisciplinary Ilokana/x-American multi-voiced performance artist and multilingual operatic composer of experiential installations carved by her lifelong study and ongoing practices of Filipino combat systems, folk dance, mythology, indigenous and ancient music of the Philippines. Orpilla simultaneously wields each role in the creation process: vocalist, composer, dancer, musician, installation artist, sound producer and writer in order to exemplify an independent economy of care that prioritizes compassionately sourcing from/for the support of Indigenous Pilipino artisans' living practices throughout the diaspora. Based on in-depth ethical research centering the inherited and lived experience of the systemically silenced, Orpilla’s art is committed to further honoring the complex intersectionality of the Fil-Am body in full agency.
Orpilla is the recipient of the 2023 Creative Capital award, Wild Futures for her upcoming solo work Orasyon, and of the 2022/2023 City of Los Angeles Individual Master Artist Project grant and has performed at Hau Hebbel am Ufer Berlin, REDCAT, the Hammer Museum, LACMA, LA Philharmonic and he Ford Theatre, Centre Pompidou, Paris, to name a few.
Carmina Escobar (1981, Mexico City) is an extreme vocalist, improviser, and sound and intermedia artist based in Los Angeles, CA. Escobar investigates and expresses emotions, politics, states of alienation, and the possibilities of interpersonal connection through voice performances, installations, and film/video pieces that seek to challenge our understandings of musicality, gender, queerness, race, the spoken word, and the foundations of human communication. As an immigrant from Mexico, the key to her practice is exploring interstitial states of being—suspensions between worlds/politics/borders. She has presented her work in various countries at esteemed festivals and venues. She has been an artist in residence at several institutions and has received numerous awards for her projects. Carmina is also a co-founder of the LIMINAR ensemble and the radical/experimental pedagogical voice hub HOWL SPACE, and she is currently a faculty member of the VoiceArt program at CalArts and founder and co-director of Boss Witch Productions, an artistic production company focused on intermedia works within natural landscapes and unconventional venues.
Wonmi’s WAREHOUSE Programs is organized by Alex Sloane, Associate Curator, and is produced by Amelia Charter, Producer of Performance and Programs with Michele Huizar, Programming Assistant, The Museum of Contemporary Art Los Angeles.
Wonmi's WAREHOUSE Programs is founded by Wonmi & Kihong Kwon and Family.
Performances at MOCA are supported by the MOCA Fund for Performance with generous funding provided by Betsy Greenberg.
