4 Cycles + 1 — 2018
Ft. Mason, San Francisco, CA
Mixed Media: 5 part electronic music composition for two Moog Sub37 synthesizers,
Ritual Performance, and Moving Images
Performance Photos Above: Red Culebra performs 4 Cycles + 1, San Francisco Art Institute—Fort Mason, March 23, 2018. Photos by Marco David / SFAI. This event was the collective’s inaugural performance and was presented in conjunction with the SFAI Visiting Artists and Scholars Lecture Series.
Accelerations across all vectors of society, warfare, and capitalism evoke a byproduct ritual of sexual and sonic violence that lays unresponsive to new age fetishes, magical realism, and the parochial moralities of American politics. This Post-Mexican ceremony is monotony sustained by pragmatism and our baser instincts. 4 Cycles + 1 is a public gathering for acknowledging human ferocity — a self-implicating metaphor for our enduring and determined appetite.
4 Cycles + 1 is a one-hour long performance art work structured by 5 sound invocations composed for two Moog analog synthesizers. The sound invocations are performed from the zenith to the cardinal directions. The latitudinal songs are performed to recognize the rising sun to the east and Venus to the west. The longitudinal songs represent the Americas. A fifth song represents the Zenith itself, which is located at the center of a circle demarcated by the audience. Two projections of moving images are interlinked, and the composition of elements together depict sexual, scientific, and violent themes. As the performance progresses, sounds spiral inward and away from a center of extreme focus and intensity.