Sed (Thirst)

Friday, May 7, 2021 to Sunday, May 30, 2021

Dorian Wood and Carmina Escobar: Sed (Thirst)

Dorian Wood and Carmina Escobar. Sed (Thirst) (2021).

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Commissioned by REDCAT for WE RISE 2021

Sed (Thirst), is presented as part of Art Rise, a series of over fifteen outdoor art installations in and around Downtown Los Angeles, commissioned especially for WE RISE—an initiative of the Los Angeles County Department of Mental Health that encourages wellbeing and healing through art, connection, community engagement, and creative expression. For more information and to see a complete Art Rise map, please visit werise.la.

Sed, commissioned by REDCAT, is a series of sixteen sound works by artists Dorian Wood and Carmina Escobar that connect and engage the various Art Rise sites across Los Angeles. Each composition starts as a vocal drone of sustained sounds and notes sung by Wood and Escobar before a specially-programmed algorithm, created in collaboration with Juan Sebastián Lach, triggers other vocal gestures recorded by the pair, creating an emergent sound piece. Sed, the Spanish word for thirst, includes an original video installation on view at REDCAT. Intercutting footage of Wood and Escobar performing with images of faces, locations, and community, the work is viewable daily after dusk from the street at REDCAT.

The interactive map below reflects the Art Rise sites for which the artists have created the sixteen sound works that comprise Sed(Thirst). Click to play a randomly assigned track. You can listen to the complete sixteen sound works using the Soundcloud player below.

REDCAT · Vaso 1 // composed by Dorian Wood and Carmina Escobar in collaboration with Juan Sebastián Lach

ABOUT THE ARTISTS

Dorian Wood’s work has been showcased in concert halls and performance spaces around the world, including at institutions like The Broad (Los Angeles), REDCAT (Los Angeles), Museo Nacional Del Prado (Madrid), the City Hall of Madrid and Teatro de la Ciudad Esperanza Iris (Mexico City). From 2019 to 2020, Wood completed several successful tours throughout Europe, Mexico and the U.S. with their chamber orchestra tribute to Chavela Vargas, XAVELA LUX AETERNA. Wood is a recipient of the Creative Capital Award (2020) and the Art Matters Foundation grant (2020), and a past artist-in residence at Building Bridges Art Exchange, Santa Monica, California (2020), Etopia, Centro de Arte y Tecnologia, under the FUGA program, Zaragoza, Spain (2019) and MASS Gallery, Austin, Texas (2017). Wood has released over a dozen recordings, among them the albums BOLKA (Independent, 2007); Brutus (Independent, 2010); Rattle Rattle (Atonal Industries, 2013); Down, The Dirty Roof (Atonal Industries, 2013), XALÁ (Atonal Industries, 2017), ARDOR (Independent, 2020) and REACTOR (Independent, 2020).

Carmina Escobar has presented her work in Cuba, Europe, Mexico, and the United States including at Borealis Festival, Bergen, Norway; Cuban Art Factory, Havana; CTM Festival, Berlin; and New Music Encounters + International Music Festival, Brno, Czech Republic. Her work FIESTA PERPETUA! a communitas ritual of manifestation (2018) was included in Pacific Standard Time: LA/LA, Los Angeles. Her work has also been presented at the MexiCali Biennial, Pasadena/Mexicali; Machine Project, Los Angeles; MATA festival, New York; REDCAT, Los Angeles; MACO, Oaxaca; The Kitchen, NY; and World Dada Fair, San Francisco, among others. Carmina received the 2020 FCA Artist award in Music/Sound, and the NPN 2020 Creation Fund Artists with the project SHAMANA DE CABARET. Escobar is a Co-founder of BossWitch, an artistic production company focused on the interconnection of experimental/interdisciplinary/intermedia works within natural landscapes.

This work is part of Art Rise, a series of over fifteen outdoor art installations in and around Downtown Los Angeles, commissioned especially for WE RISE—an initiative of the Los Angeles County Department of Mental Health that encourages wellbeing and healing through art, connection, community engagement, and creative expression. For more information and to see a complete Art Rise map, please visit werise.la.