Props for Memory: Day 1
Overview
GALLERY INTERVENTIONS AND LOW-FREQUENCY SOUND TO INSPIRE AUDIENCES THROUGH GENERATIVE EXCHANGE
Props for Memory: Day 1
In conversation with themes in The Broad’s collection exhibition, Joseph Beuys: In Defense of Nature, Props for Memory is a platform for performance, ritual, and participatory experience. The first-floor galleries will set the backdrop for interventions by liberatory fitness project Pony Sweat, Grammy-nominated performer and producer Mads Falcone, and multidisciplinary artist Edgar Fabián Frías. Oculus Hall on the second floor will be home to dronebath, with three hours of uninterrupted live low-frequency sound artists to facilitate a restful journey.
About Props for Memory
In Beuys’s practice, art and activism were intertwined in numerous projects designed to empower everyday people to drive social and political change. He believed that “everyone is an artist,” meaning that all people have creative gifts to shape a better, more sustainable future, regardless of profession or position in life.
Over two consecutive afternoons, Props for Memory invites an unexpected cross-section of local musicians, poets, performers, fitness instructors, spiritual practitioners, and more, to examine the tenets of Beuys’s artistic practice and interpret them in relation to their own work. Props for Memory takes its title from a phrase that Beuys used to describe his work and serves as an opportunity to reflect on his involvement in the Fluxus movement, investigate the potential for an alternative performance paradigm, and inspire audiences through generative exchange. Learn more about Day 2 of Props for Memory here.
L to R clockwise: Mads Falcone photo by Emiko Wilks; photos courtesy of the artist
Tickets include same-day access to The Broad, including Joseph Beuys: In Defense of Nature and our third-floor collection galleries during the event. Come early to see the exhibition or stay late after the event—we’re open until 6 pm on Saturdays.
Gallery interventions are standing room only. We will move together throughout the museum and the path is ADA compliant. Comfortable clothing and footwear are recommended. While Pony Sweat is an aerobic workout, all body types and abilities are welcome to participate to the extent that they are physically able. dronebath audience members may sit or lay on a carpeted floor. Tickets to this event do not include access to Yayoi Kusama’s Infinity Mirror Room—The Souls of Millions of Light Years Away (2013), and must be booked separately.
For information on our current visitor policies, visit Know Before You Go & FAQ. Visitor policies are subject to change.
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Bios
dronebath
dronebath is an electronic sound bath series featuring three hours of uninterrupted, low-frequency atmospheric soundscapes. dronebath proudly showcases a lineup of composers and electronic artists who will guide you to a new portal through a pristine 4-channel Mobius Acoustics Hi-Fi system. This experience merges sound, resonance, and stillness into an immersive, transcendent auditory escape, allowing you to tap into your uninterrupted source. Our ritual bridges the sublime, evoking both awe-inspiring beauty and simultaneously an unsettling sense of the uncanny. We invite you to get comfortable and touch the void.
Curated by Halston Bruce and Garek Druss.
Image courtesy of dronebath
Edgar Fabián Frías
Edgar Fabián Frías is a boundary-breaking multidisciplinary artist based in Los Angeles, with degrees in psychology and studio art and an MFA in art practice from UC Berkeley. Their immersive works blend diverse artistic disciplines, challenging conventional categories. Frías explores resiliency and radical imagination through Indigenous Futurism, spirituality, and queer aesthetics.
Photo courtesy of the artist
Mads Falcone
Mads Falcone (they/them) is a Grammy® Award-nominated performer, producer, and curator building artistic community that challenges conventions. They are a founding member and co-director of Isaura String Quartet and Boss Witch Productions, both based in Los Angeles. Having performed on stages ranging from Carnegie Hall to Coachella, Mads can be heard on recordings for film and television, and has performed and recorded with artists including Billie Eilish, Erykah Badu, Ariana Grande, The Eagles, The Temptations, Angel Olsen, Jóhann Jóhannsson, and more. As a proponent of contemporary chamber music, the Isaura String Quartet has commissioned and premiered over 30 new works for string quartet since their inception in 2013. As a producer, recent work includes collaboration with Charles Gaines, MoMA, Institute of Contemporary Art Miami, The Ford, KarmetiK Orchestra, Times Square Arts, Creative Time, REDCAT, The Broad Museum, Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra, and LACMA. Mads is Community Projects and Operations Manager with UCLA's Center for the Art of Performance, and Faculty in Digital Arts at California Institute of the Arts.
Photo by Emiko Wilks
Pony Sweat
Pony Sweat is a fiercely noncompetitive dance aerobics project created and directed by Emilia Richeson-Valiente. Pony Sweat creates containers for dance ritual and liberatory fitness routines that center anti-perfectionism, play and imagination, emotive self-expression, healing, and music fandom. Since its inception in 2014, Pony Sweat has held weekly classes in northeast LA, created artful and heartfelt aerobics videos, toured to metro and rural parts of the U.S, performed at dozens of punk shows and a few music festivals including Coachella and Just Like Heaven, and has devoted its organizing efforts towards social justice movements through its activism leg, Ponies Against Fascists (P.A.F). Emilia has choreographed and contributed Pony Sweat routines to music videos for Alice Bag, Hayley Williams, and Wallows band. Pony Sweat is a meaningful influence to the mainstream fitness industry’s recent shift toward centering mental health and body-neutrality and is and always will be committed to the fringes of that industry. Pony Sweat is inspired by and dedicates its work to freaks and weirdos always and forever <3.
Photo courtesy of the artist
