Props for Memory: Day 2
Overview
GALLERY INTERVENTIONS AND LOW-FREQUENCY SOUND TO INSPIRE AUDIENCES THROUGH GENERATIVE EXCHANGE
Props for Memory: Day 2
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 multi-instrumentalist and composer Patrick Shiroishi, performance artist/clown Claire Woolner, and poet and actor Yazmin Monet Watkins with musician and healer Sasha MaRi. Oculus Hall on the second floor will be home to dronebath, with three hours of live uninterrupted low 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 1 of Props for Memory here.
L to R clockwise: Photos courtesy of the artists; photo by Kristin Cofer; photo courtesy of the artist
Free tickets include same-day access to The Broad, including Joseph Beuys: In Defense of Nature and our third-floor galleries. Come early to see the exhibition or stay late after the event—we’re open until 6 pm on Sundays.
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. 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
Sasha MaRi + Yazmin Monet Watkins
Sasha MaRi is a gifted vocalist, certified sound healer, barber/natural hair stylist from Jacksonville, FL who is well known for her alluring fusion of R&B and Contemporary R&B music. Sasha MaRi has established a space for herself in the music business with her mellow and soulful vocals, enthralling listeners with her moving performances. Sasha MaRi expertly mixes meaningful lyrics with contagious melodies to create music that deeply affects listeners on an emotional level. From Los Angeles to Atlanta all the way to Barcelona, she’s held several residencies at venues from the House of Blues to Universal Studios City Walk to the Hollywood Walk of Fame and had music collaborations with Wyclef Jean. She is a sound healer who provides a variety of services including full chakra alignment, meditation, guided group experience and personal healing sessions. Her vision is to provide restorative healing to inclusive audiences. When she’s not using the power of her voice, Sasha can be found with a pair of clippers in hand making the world fall in love with their natural hair.
Yazmin Monet Watkins is a poet, comedian, screenwriter, actress, educator, organizer, avid roller skater, and adventurer. Touring her intimate yet political poetry at colleges, universities, festivals, museums and institutions around the globe from Obama’s White House to Johannesburg, and empowering students from Harvard to youth prisons, Watkins' body of work weaves art and activism, exploring the intersection of race, gender, sexuality, self-love and all things Black Girl Magic. She has performed at and had commissioned work with prestigious institutions including the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, the California African American Museum, CenterTheatre Group, and Lincoln Center. Her full-length book of poems, A Vessel Born to Float with Andrews McMeel Publishing is available now wherever books are sold. She can be seen on season two of Grand Crew on NBC, Comedy Central and has co-developed and written pilots with Netflix and Comedy Central alongside Lucia Aniello, Paul Downs, and the-all Black female comedy group, Obama’s Other Daughters. Check them out on their Comedy Central show and their Shondaland / iHeartRadio podcast You Down? Watkins has worked on projects with Issa Rae, Neema Barnett, and NumaPerrier, and also opened for the likes of Angela Davis, Nikki Giovanni, Kimberlé Crenshaw, and Roxane Gay among others. She serves as the co-chair of the Arts & Culture committee for Black Lives Matter Los Angeles. Once Beyonce said she liked her hair.
Photo courtesy of the artists
Claire Woolner
Claire Woolner is an award-winning performance artist and clown. Her premiere solo show A Retrospection (directed by Kevin Krieger) was awarded Top of The Fringe (Hollywood Fringe Festival 2023) and toured extensively across the US and the UK (2023-2024) to international acclaim. She has performed and co-created numerous absurdist comedy and clown shows with Cirque du Soleil's John Gilkey (The Vivian Beckley Performing Arts Players, WOM, The Murge, among others); starred in and co-devised Four Larks’ adaptation of Frankenstein commissioned by the Wallis Annenberg (2019); and opened, runs and teaches at the absurdist comedy theater, Public Displays of Altadena (PDA). The New York Times has written of Woolner, "if the performance artist Marina Abramovic were a clown."
Photo courtesy of the artist
Patrick Shiroishi
Patrick Shiroishi is a Japanese-American multi-instrumentalist and composer based in Los Angeles who is perhaps best known for his extensive & incredibly intense work with the saxophone. Over the last decade he has established himself as one of the premier improvising musicians in Los Angeles, playing solo & in numerous collaborative projects. Shiroishi may well be considered a foundational player in the city’s vast musical expanse. He has presented work & performed at the Museum of Contemporary Art, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Natural History Museum, & the International Museum of Surgical Sciences, been commissioned by the LA Phil, & has toured around the world in various solo & band configurations including The Armed, contemporary classical ensemble Wild Up, & Upsilon Acrux.
Photo by Kristin Cofer
