Democracy Sessions: Day 2

Program

Democracy Session 2: The Dispossessed
A work-in-progress reading of the libretto for a new musical-theatrical-operatic adaptation of Ursula K. Le Guin’s seminal work of science fiction, The Dispossessed: An Ambiguous Utopia, by composer Ted Hearne and librettist Chana Porter. Through Le Guin’s nuanced allegory of individualism vs collectivism, The Dispossessed is a timely exploration of borders, freedom, utopia, and revolution. Featuring musical performances by members of Wild Up, and a conversation with the creative team following the presentation.
- Ted Hearne composer
- Chana Porter librettist
- Christopher Rountree conductor
- Saul Williams and Anisia Uzeyman actors
- Seth Parker Woods cello
- Brian Walsh saxophones
- M.A. Tiesenga saxophones
- Catherine Brookman voice and synthesizer
1pm Reading
2pm Discussion
Democracy Session 3: Harmony Holiday, Ark of Bones/To the Race Industry In Crisis (after Henry Dumas and Frank O'Hara)
How are the current liberal political campaigns gutting Black radical and working-class sensibilities for their life force while betraying the very demographics whose cultural output they appropriate and dilute? Is Blackness itself becoming an asset to the propaganda machine before all else? When it’s not being propagandized, it’s asked to quiet down and wait for the self-actualization that the propaganda made of it precludes.

This work will be an archive, a mythologizing of the acoustics of this process, and an attempt at reverse engineering it or, at the very least, demanding some humility and self-recognition from the hijackers, the insincere, les faux negres.

A recorded version of this new performance will play throughout the weekend.
4 pm Performance
5 pm Conversation with special guests to be announced
Throughout the Weekend
INTERSTITIAL SESSIONS
Pop-up performances and happenings will take place on Saturday, November 9—performances and schedule to be announced.
DEMOCRACY SESSIONS SCOREBOOK
A book of scores from the Wild Up community commemorates the weekend’s themes and programs. With contributions from Harmony Holiday, Raven Chacon, and other artists to be announced.

Details

Location WAREHOUSE at Geffen Contemporary at MOCA
152 North Central Ave, Los Angeles, CA 90012
Date Saturday, November 9, 2024
Times
- 1:00 pm Session 2: Reading
- 2:00 pm Session 2: Discussion
- 4:00 pm Session 3: Performance
- 5:00 pm Session 3: Conversation

About Endless Season

Art in LA has been about freedom and an abundant eschewing of history. With intersecting methods and intentions, humble, aspiring, a city appealing to the aesthete and the mystic in all of her citizens. Here, famous artists are also street-side sign painters, our best restaurants drive or live in strip malls, and our landmarks are geographical before architectural or fleetingly experiential instead of permanent monuments to their own lineages. Here, our religious and secular musics sound the same.

Endless Season gathers around these uniquely West Coast traits. We ask lead artists to question, reinterpret, and challenge the past, modality, and genre. We hold a space of intersectionality and dialogue surrounding every aspect of our work. Together, we will explore the breadth of work and practices, discovering the many shapes of music and ideas in LA today.

Endless Season 2024 - 2025

Endless Season continues internationally and across Los Angeles, as we embark on a year of festivals, residencies, and deep explorations of sound and those close-to-the-heart feelings that draw us toward one another. We begin by bringing the music of Julius Eastman to Germany at Ruhrtriennale. Then, we look toward the future of society with a weekend of democratic music-making with Democracy Sessions at MOCA Warehouse. In 2025, we untether Darkness Sounding, a festival that explores how listening, sound, and music shape our understanding of the world, from LA to congregate in New York around tuning and droves of medieval harmonies at 92NY. And we explore what it means to live life To The Fullest, celebrating selves brimming with unique righteousness, around the music of Julius Eastman and Arthur Russell in a three-month-long festival with the LA Philharmonic and REDCAT and other partners yet to be announced.