Fulcrum Arts Announces Lineup for 2022 FULCRUM FESTIVAL: DEEP OCEAN/DEEP SPACE, September 15 – 25
This year's program features a robust roster of exhibitions, performances, lectures, screenings, and workshops presented by over a dozen partner organizations.
By: A.A. Cristi Aug. 23, 2022
Fulcrum Arts has announced the 2022 Fulcrum Festival program. For over 20 years, Fulcrum Festival (formerly the AxS Festival) has presented a regional celebration exploring the intersections of art and science across Greater Los Angeles.
This year, Deep Ocean/Deep Space, features a robust roster of exhibitions, performances, lectures, screenings, and workshops presented by over a dozen partner organizations that explore the furthest reaches of space and the depths of the oceans. The Festival will gather communities to revel in the mysteries that surround us and expand what we already know in the worlds of astronomy and oceanography; mirroring one abyss against another, revealing impossible and surprising symmetries.
Festival highlights include; freq_wave (Pacific; Los Angeles) an immersive installation by the pioneering new media and conceptual artist from Sweden, Carl Michael von Hausswolff who will transform the interior of the 100" telescope at Mt. Wilson Observatory with a visual and sound installation, an exhibition at Pitzer College Galleries by Los Angeles based artist Lauren Bon and Metabolic Studio called Bending the River which documents and extends Metabolic Studio's efforts to recast the Los Angeles River as a sustaining life force in the public consciousness, and a collaboration with LACMA Art+Technology Lab and LA Dance Project presenting the work BIGUIDIRIBELA by Mexican artist group MUXX Project exploring the possibility of multiple gender identities in a twenty-first-century context, drawing a line between our origins in deep space to the "Muxe" identity (a third gender of the Zapotec people) as a futuristic, timeless concept.
"We couldn't be more excited about this year's Festival as we welcome highly acclaimed local and International Artists," says Robert Crouch the Executive + Artistic Director of Fulcrum Arts. "Our long standing focus on the profound connections between art and science are celebrated this year by exploring the astounding symmetries of deep oceans and deep space. These explorations are as immediate and relevant to the current climate crisis as they are celestial and otherworldly. The 2022 Fulcrum Festival is an opportunity for a kind of magically critical engagement with our world, with our community and with ourselves."
This year's theme creates a framework to interrogate critical ecological issues as well as explore the vastness and wonder of these scientific frontiers. The Los Angeles region, and Pasadena in particular, has a long history as both a nexus of the art world as well as a center for bleeding edge science and technology. While often described as occupying opposite ends of the spectrum, art and science are instead embraced as symbiotic and powerful engines of contemporary culture.
"The Fulcrum Festival timing couldn't be better as we move closer to the 2024 opening of the next Pacific Standard Time focusing on art and science," remarks Joan Weinstein, director of the Getty Foundation and one of Getty's leaders behind Pacific Standard Time, a region wide collaboration of linked exhibitions and programs among cultural organizations throughout Southern California. "The Fulcrum Festival lineup promises audiences an exciting perspective on the relationship between deep space and deep oceans."
The Fulcrum Festival offers opportunities for discovering the fascinations, curiosities, and tensions ignited by the integrations of art and science. Deep Ocean/Deep Space is presented in partnership with over a dozen arts, science, and cultural organizations including:
18th Street Art Center
Carnegie Observatories
LACMA Art + Tech Lab
L.A. Dance Project
Leonardo/ISAST LASER
Mt. Wilson Observatory
NASA/JPL
Pasadena City College Center for the Arts
Pitzer College Art Galleries
Shumei Arts Council
Side Street Projects
SUPERCOLLIDER
UCLA Art Sci Center
Zebulon
2022 Fulcrum Festival Events
Fulcrum Arts and Zebulon | Opening Celebration and Performances
Thursday, September 15
Free with RSVP (available soon)
Fulcrum Arts and Zebulon kick off the 2022 Fulcrum Festival with an evening of special performances by an international roster of artists, including CM von Hausswolff, Jana Winderen, Jimena Sarno, and Bethan Kellough. All four artists will also be collaborating on the upcoming freq_wave (Pacific; Los Angeles) installation in the 100-inch Hooker telescope at Mt. Wilson Observatory, on view from September 23 to 25, 2022.
Fulcrum Arts and Leonardo/ISAST | Beyond All Measure: The Sea, the Sky, the Horizon of Our Transitional Present
Saturday, September 17
Free with RSVP (available soon)
Gathering an international cadre of artists, scientists, and technologists for presentations and performances, this day-long program of conversations around art and science will focus on dialogues with the wider public that illuminate the complex relationships between oceanic and astronomical exploration. The program commences with a special, advance screening of The Great Refractor, a new video work by artist Andy Graydon, created in collaboration with Irish poet and neuroscientist Laurence O'Dwyer, which charts the undulating terrain of our attempts to understand the world through both scientific and poetic inquiries. "Beyond All Measure" will also feature screenings, talks, and performances by Cassandra Coblentz, Kathie Foley-Meyer, Shoghig Halajian and Ohan Breiding, boredomresearch, and scientists from NASA/JPL. The day will conclude with a performance of Star Choir, a new work in progress by Malik Gaines and The Industry.
LACMA Art + Technology Lab and L.A. Dance Project | BIGUIDIRIBELA
Friday, September 16 & Saturday, September 17
BIGUIDIRIBELA, commissioned by LACMA, is a multimedia performance piece that uses 3D video technologies to explore multiple gender identities in a twenty-first-century context, drawing a line between our origins in deep space to the "Muxe" identity (a third gender of the Zapotec people) as a futuristic, timeless concept. The artists, collectively known as MUXX Project, explore a multitude of universal themes-including the non-binary, the divine feminine, the anti-patriarchal, environmental regeneration, and the argument that the very origins of the world (especially according to Pre-Hispanic cultures) stem from a non-binary divinity-woven together through exploration of the Muxe identity of Oaxaca and of the life of Muxe performer Lukas Avendaño.
Carnegie Observatories | Margaret Wertheim and the Institute for Figuring: Making Space: An Experiential Workshop on Scientific and Mathematical Meanings of Space
Saturday, September 17
Tickets: $45 (includes all materials and lunch)
What is the spatial structure of our Universe? Does our universe have a structure? In this two-part experiential workshop, science writer and artist Margaret Wertheim will discuss the history of Western thinking about space from the Middle Ages through the scientific innovations of Galileo, Newton, and Einstein. Part one will conclude with discussions of 21st-century concepts of "hyperspace" and string theory. In part two, workshop participants will construct paper models of hyperbolic space and explore the properties on non-Euclidean geometry. Suitable for ages 14 and up. No prior mathematical or scientific knowledge is necessary.
Advance reservations are strongly encouraged; same-day registration will be based on space availability. The workshop is limited to 50 participants.
Fulcrum Arts and Mt. Wilson Observatory | Ocean x Space: A Special Evening of Sounds and Stars
Friday, September 23
Tickets: $50-150 (available soon)
Fulcrum Arts and Mt. Wilson Observatory present a very special evening of sonic immersion and star gazing. Artist CM Von Hausswolff will lead a special reinterpretation of freq_wave (Pacific; Los Angeles) with several of the project's collaborating artists reworking their contributions into new, live performances. While enveloped by the artists' real-time compositions, audience members will be able to gaze through the 100-inch Hooker Telescope and gaze upon stars, planets, and other celestial bodies. Due to the unique nature of this experience, tickets will be limited. Performance details and ticketing information are forthcoming.
Side Street Projects | Salim Moore: Water + Color Skill-Share Workshop
Sunday, September 25
Free
Salim Moore and Side Street Projects' teaching artists to explore the fluid world of water-based media for drawing and painting. This experimental project will feature creative applications for pigments and dyestuffs collected from waterways across L.A County. The artists will demonstrate ink-making processes, and instruct visitors on the various methods of drawing with wild inks.
2022 Fulcrum Festival Exhibitions
Fulcrum Arts | freq_wave (Pacific; Los Angeles)
Friday, September 23 - Sunday, September 25
Free
freq_wave (Pacific; Los Angeles) is an immersive installation by pioneering new media and conceptual artist, Carl Michael von Hausswolff, who will transform the interior of the 100-inch Telescope at Mt. Wilson Observatories with a visual and sound installation. freq_wave (Pacific; Los Angeles) comprises twelve individual sound works by twelve artists, each operating within a unique frequency range based on field recordings from the Pacific Ocean and amplified to act as a single, generative sonic zone. Responding to shifting vibrational frequencies within our warming oceans, the work is an urgent call to action that will transport public audiences through a tactile aesthetic experience that forms an intimate connection to nature through art and science. freq_wave is a critical and timely response to planetary crisis wrought by the Anthropocene, the "human era" in which our species has irrevocably transformed the ecology of the planet.
Fulcrum Arts and Pitzer College Art Galleries | Lauren Bon and The Metabolic Studio: Bending the River
Saturday, September 24 - Friday, December 16
Free
Lauren Bon and The Metabolic Studio's infrastructural artwork, Bending the River re-imagines the relationship between Los Angeles and the river that brought it into existence. The Los Angeles River in its current form is a concretized flood control measure that moves waste water from the city directly out to sea. Utilizing the principles of adaptive re-use, the project moves a portion of the LA River water and lifts it to The Metabolic Studio, where it is moved through a native wetland treatment. It will then be distributed to the Los Angeles State Historic Park for irrigation and to build a new spreading ground. This exhibition is the first curation of this ongoing work, which is currently in its third year of construction. This project is being realized at a time of increasing water scarcity and continued droughts, which have depleted major reservoirs and put at risk our fragile ecosystems.
18th Street Projects | Halina Kliem and Daniel Rothman: The Ballona/Waachnga Project
Thursday, September 22
Free
The Ballona/Waachnga Project is a long durational, multistage work that, through a variety of media, brings together the fantasy and science of the Ballona Wetlands, Los Angeles's last remaining wetland. On the occasion of the 2022 Fulcrum Festival, the project takes the form of a meditation based on the soundscape of
24 continuous hours-midnight to midnight-juxtaposed with asynchronous visuals over a season of drought. It is installed in the "Kitchen Lab," a place of domesticated chemistry, at 18th Street Art Center's Airport Campus, where the sound and images of the freshwater marsh contrast with those of the Lab's corrugated steel hangar. The greater project will evolve over time as the repository of recorded soundscapes and visual imagery grow.
Mt. Wilson Observatory | Liliane Lijn and John Vallerga: Sunstar
Thursday, September 15 - Sunday, September 25
Free
Sunstar is an art/science collaboration of Liliane Lijn and astrophysicist John Vallerga. An array of six prisms, Sunstar takes incoming sunlight and refracts it, bending the light and spreading it into a spectrum-all the colors of the rainbow. It is mounted near the top of the Observatory's 150-foot Solar Telescope Tower. With motion controls, it can be remotely directed to project the spectrum to a specific point in the Los Angeles basin. An observer below will see an intense point of light in a single wavelength, shining like a brilliant, colored jewel from the ridgeline of Mount Wilson, some fifty-eight thousand feet above in the San Gabriel Mountains.
Pasadena City College Center for the Arts | Liam Young: Planet City
Exhibition: August 29 - October 1
Artist talk: Thursday, September 22
Free
Planet City is a multidisciplinary, speculative video installation that imagines a single city for all ten billion people of Earth, during era when humans have surrendered the world to a global-scaled wilderness and the collective return of stolen lands. Like ecosystems that form around hydrothermal vents-which may have housed the origins of life-and isolated deep space colonies-which may be humanity's future-the hypothetical megalopolis of Planet City models what the architecture and culture of all humanity may look like if condensed into a single location. The video's narrative follows a continuous, daily festival procession of dancing though the enormous city on a 365-day loop. Director and Architect Liam Young will present a live performance and screening of Planet City on September 22.
Shumei Arts Council | Yuko Kimura: Cosmic Collages
Exhibition: September 3 - October 15
Reception: Sunday, September 18
Free
The Shumei Arts Council of America presents the collaged, printed works of Japanese artist Yuko Kimura. Inspired by Japanese boro garments, which are patched together from worn fragments of indigo cloth, and by her grandmother's habit of saving fabric scraps to patch together into new garments for her family, Kimura brings together various print-media, combining contemporary and traditional printmaking techniques from Japan and the West-including etching, aquatint, and monotype-with indigo-dyeing methods that reference the sea, the night sky, and the universe beyond. The resulting, richly layered and textured works on paper invite the slow, gentle contemplation of archetypal themes such as time, decay, and renewal. Kimura advances these themes in Cosmic Collages, which features recent work that pairs the artist's own handmade washi paper with old, worm-eaten pages from printed, antique Japanese books. Organized by Japanese art historian and independent curator Meher McArthur.
SUPERCOLLIDER | FEELERS
Exhibition: September 15 - September 25
Reception: Saturday, September 24
Free
How might sensing and thinking with vegetal, animal, and other multispecies intelligences reconfigure our planetary relations? Through video, painting, kinetic sculpture, site-specific installation, VR, and film, FEELERS proposes expanded sensoria, complicating our understanding of feeling, sensing, and knowing. Affirming a plurality of sensemaking, the exhibited artworks adopt deliberate and exploratory methods that re-orient
humans in relation to more-than-human beings, complicate notions of intelligence, and re-introduce perspectives outside of our own. In doing so, they generate new possibilities for respecting and connecting with multispecies understandings. Featuring artworks by: Berfin Ataman, Paige Emery, Andy Graydon, Byron Kim, Maya Livio, Laure Michelon, Shuruq Tramontini, and Elly Stormer Vadseth, with a satellite installation by Paige Emery at Mt. Wilson Observatory.
UCLA | Victoria Vesna and UCLA Art|Sci Collective: [Alien] Star Dust Meets Plankton
Friday, September 23
Free
[Alien] Star Dust Meets Plankton is an iteration of ALIEN STAR DUST: Signal to Noise, a multi-faceted and multi-disciplinary project that originally premiered March 10, 2020 in Vienna at the meteorite gallery of the Natural History Museum. This research-based art project invites viewers to gain an intimate understanding of the importance and complexity of dust and microbes. Projections of plankton on the northern side of UCLA's campus will be happening in parallel to projections of meteorites exploding on the campus's southern side. Audiences are invited to make the walk from one side of the campus to the other while listening on their phones to the binaural sounds of explosions of the cosmos mixed with the underwater noises. This sensorial experience will also be available online as a collective meditation. Curated by Anuradha Vikram and produced by Victoria Vesna in collaboration with the UCLA Art|Sci Collective: James Gimzewski, Paul Geluso, Ivana Dama, Clinton Van Arman, Alfred Vendl, Martina Froeschl, and John Brumley.
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