Carmina Escobar: Feast of Beams, Keepers of Light

Sat., Aug. 10, 2019
Doors at 6:30pm | Show at 7pm
Lighthouse Point / Surfing Museum
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Feast of Beams, Keepers of Light is an evening of performances and processions guided by vocalist and composer Carmina Escobar, Indexical’s 2019 Artist-in-Residence. Join us on August 10th from 7:00-8:30pm at Lighthouse Point Park on West Cliff Drive where the performances and processionals will converge. Escobar explores the lighthouse as a beacon that brings Santa Cruz’s diverse sub-communities together to form a holistic sense of communitas. The event is free and open to the public.

Map of Feast of Beams

Still seeking interested surfers and cyclists especially to join a critical-mass ride (cyclists) and choreographed paddle-out (surfers)! Sign up here:

The processionals will be led by visiting and local artists including: experimental guitarist and composer Josh Gerowitz, vocalist and composer Micaela Tobin (AKA White Boy Scream), scholar and musician Gabriel Saloman Mindel, dancer Paola Escobar, legendary local street performer The Great Morgani, multi-instrumentalist and composer K.C.M. Walker, and composer and co-curator Laura Steenberge.

Escobar’s vision is to perform together with artists and community members that represent a microcosm of Santa Cruz, bringing individuals together in a convergence of land, air, and sea. Indexical and Escobar have partnered with local organizations including the Bike Church, Bike Santa Cruz County, and volunteers from Brown Girl Surf to realize this vision. At sunset, everyone will gather at the Lighthouse to perform a new work composed by Escobar that includes all of the day’s participants.

The title Feast of Beams, Keepers of Light refers to Escobar’s fascination with the lighthouse and all it symbolizes. Escobar states: “At the heart of the headland a pole irradiates invisible beacons that treads the path to each other to experience the thresholds of our complex human relationships.” The lighthouse is a metaphor of the light within each person and symbolizes the relationship of people with the land.

Curators Laura Steenberge and Madison Heying explain how Escobar creates “large-scale, kaleidoscopic works that bring together diverse and seemingly autonomous performers, artists, and local organizations in delightful and unexpected ways, activating public space and creating a dynamic vision of community.”

Feast of Beams, Keepers of Light will feature the work of local and visiting artists including Micaela Tobin (LA), Josh Gerowitz (LA),Paola Escobar (LA), Madison Heying (SCZ), Laura Steenberge (SCZ), Gabriel Saloman (SCZ), and KCM Walker (SCZ).

Audiences are invited as listeners throughout the day, and as participants for drop-in sound and fabric workshops. A full schedule of events and locations will be announced in July. Indexical is seeking interested surfers, bicyclists, vocalists and dancers of all levels to get involved as performers. To participate, please visit bit.ly/feastofbeams (https://bit.ly/feastofbeams) and sign up.

Feast of Beams, Keepers of Light is made possible with support from the City of Santa Cruz Arts Commission and an anonymous donor.

Santa Cruz City Arts

Carmina Escobar
Carmina Escobar is an experimental vocalist, improviser, and sound and intermedia artist. Her practice—comprising installation, performance, and multimedia projects—focuses on sound, the voice, and the body, and their interrelations with physical, social, present, and memory spaces.

Escobar has developed a range of vocal techniques that she applies to her creative practice and also to investigations of radical ideas and concepts regarding the voice. Having emigrated from Mexico to live and work in Los Angeles, key to her practice is the exploration of interstitial states of being—suspensions between worlds, between politics, and at borders. In 2019, she received a Foundation for Contemporary Arts Emergency Grant to present Mami in the exhibition Cantos Comunes/Common Chants at The Blockhouse in Havana, Cuba. This participatory and process-oriented piece was developed in the days leading up to the performance. Escobar used the idea of Mami Wata—a water deity venerated in West, Central, and Southern Africa—as an expression of diaspora, and to reference ideas of fertility and togetherness.

She 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; Machine Project, Los Angeles; MATA festival, New York; REDCAT, Los Angeles; and World Dada Fair, San Francisco, among others.

In 2016, Escobar received the Young Creators grant from the National Fund for Culture and Arts, Mexico and a grant from the National Center for the Arts, Mexico. Escobar completed an M.F.A. with a specialization in Voice Arts at California Institute of the Arts, where she is a professor.

Carmina Escobar is Indexical’s inaugural Summer/Fall 2019 Artist-in-Residence, and this is the first of three events she will engage in throughout the year. Escobar is an internationally active performer and creative artist, and has been teaching voice lessons and workshops for the past 16 years across the Mexico, USA, Europe, and Latin America. Currently she is a VoiceArts faculty member at CalArts where she facilitates experimental voice workshops, forums, contemporary repertoire, technique and performance practice as well as individual voice lessons.

Carmina Escobar: Feast of Beams, Keepers of Light

Sat., Aug. 10, 2019
Doors at 6:30pm | Show at 7pm
Lighthouse Point / Surfing Museum
Add to Calendar
Free
RSVP

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