Fulcrum Festival offers opportunities for discovering the fascinations,
curiosities, and tensions ignited by the integrations of art and science.
For over 20 years, Fulcrum Festival (formerly the AxS Festival) has presented a regional celebration across Greater Los Angeles that foregrounds the union of art and science as a powerful engine of contemporary culture. This year’s edition, Waves Upon Waves, — October 16 – 20, 2024 — coincides with the Getty-led initiative PST ART: Art & Science Collide and offers audiences immersive explorations of vibrations – musical, gravitational, seismic, optical, sensing, among others – fundamental to understanding human perception and experience and highlighting the shifting nature of reality. For more info, visit Fulcrum Festival.
This year’s theme, Waves Upon Waves, creates a framework to explore the mystery, beauty, and immense impact vibrations and waves have on each of us every day. From feminist and post-cyberfeminist artists who live in the vibrant city of Los Angeles, to beams of light emanating from the peak of Mt. Wilson, to immersive installations exploring various waves created from seismic shifts and black holes, The Fulcrum Festival highlights the ways the Los Angeles region, and Pasadena in particular, has a long history as both a nexus of the art world as well as a center for bleeding edge science and technology. While often described as occupying opposite ends of the spectrum, art and science are instead embraced as symbiotic and powerful engines of contemporary culture.
poster design by Tanya Rubbak
Events
October 16 – 20
Metabolic Studio: Sonic Division performances
100 hours starting at 9am and continuing until 1pm
Online audio streaming concert available at Metabolic Studio
FREE
The Metabolic Studio presents a one-hundred-hour live audio broadcast from the site of the motherwell of the Los Angeles River to a silo in Payahuunadu (in the Owens Valley) where the audio will be webcast broadly. Metabolic Studio Sonic Division investigates the means by which sound waves generate physical and biological change and exchange across landscapes. Their practice seeks to activate living systems through vibration and observe how sound has the potential to shift stagnant or stalled energies, mitigate entropy and impact ecological health. Sonic Division also experiments with a range of transmission networks as framework for articulating environmental, cultural and historical narratives by way of live project cams, satellite radio and fm/am broadcasting.
William Basinski (Walter Wlodarczyk)
October 17
William Basinski + Bethan Kellough performances
8:00 pm – 10:30 pm
Fulcrum Arts and Chapman University in partnership with CAP UCLA
The Nimoy, 1262 Westwood Blvd, Los Angeles, CA 90024
Ticketed: $35
Presented in partnership with CAP UCLA and Chapman University, this pair of performances by artists William Basinski and Bethan Kellough sparks a powerful conversation between art and science. In On Time, Out of Time, Basinki creates a one-of-a-kind sonic bed with recordings from the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory (LIGO) that captured billion-year-old sonic impressions made by two colliding black holes. Kellough’s Still the Fragments Move is a new composition that follows the journey of ocean waves from sea to shore. Both pieces explore the profound connection between sound, vibrations, and waveforms with the human body. On Time, Out of Time and Still the Fragments Move are part of Energy Fields: Vibrations of the Pacific. Energy Fields is among more than 70 exhibitions and programs presented as part of PST ART.
Bethan Kellough (Ian Byers-Gamber)
October 18, 7:30 pm – 8:30 pm
October 19, 4:00 pm – 5:30 pm
Ellen Fullman and Theresa Wong: Soundless
Fulcrum Arts and Chapman University in partnership with MOCA
The Geffen Contemporary, 152 N Central Ave, Los Angeles, CA 90012
Ticketed: $12 general, $10 MOCA members
Soundless explores string resonance and its capacity to create a space of connection, empathy, and multiplicity. The spectrally undulating drones of the Long String Instrument combine with rhythms created by Fullman’s unique ‘box bow’ and ‘shoveler’ tools as well as Wong’s performance on cello and electric guitar, which is specialized through four-channel amplification. Together, Fullman and Wong create a work that responds to and is shaped by the industrial architecture of WAREHOUSE. Soundless was commissioned by room40 following the label’s critically acclaimed release of their album, Harbors. Soundless is part of Energy Fields: Vibrations of the Pacific. Energy Fields is among more than 70 exhibitions and programs presented as part of PST ART. Soundless is presented at MOCA as part of Wonmi’s WAREHOUSE Programs founded by Wonmi & Kihong Kwon and Family.
Ellen Fullman and Theresa Wong: Soundless (Andria Lo)
October 20
Virtual Acoustics, Art and Design
1:00 pm – 2:00 pm
Arup SoundLab
900 Wilshire Boulevard, 19th Floor, Los Angeles, CA 90017
FREE
SoundLab art and design projects will be presented along with a vocal performance within a unique virtual space. SoundLab makes deeper use of data, artificial intelligence and machine learning, to extend the ways it can be used, drawing valuable insights from many thousands of completed projects.
Ellen Fullman and Theresa Wong: Soundless (Art Gallery of New South Wales)
EXHIBITIONS
Energy Fields: Vibrations of the Pacific
October 16 – 19
Noon – 5 pm
Co-presented by Fulcrum Arts and Chapman University
Guggenheim Gallery, 315 E Palm Avenue, Orange CA, 92866
The Packing Plant, 350 Cypress Street, Orange CA, 92865
FREE
Energy Fields: Vibrations of The Pacific is an exhibition, publication, and series of public programs co- presented by Fulcrum Arts and Chapman University. Curated by Robert Takahashi Novak and Lawrence English, the exhibition presents a diverse and dynamic collection of works from artists working out of Japan, Australia, Canada, Chile, New Zealand, and the USA. These works explore vibration as a means of deepening understandings of sense, perception, and expanding ways of knowing. The exhibition considers how vibrations, and their resultant waves, influence our planet and ourselves. Energy Fields: Vibrations of the Pacific is among more than 70 exhibitions and programs presented as part of PST ART.
Energy Fields: Vibrations of the Pacific installation view
(Christopher Wormald Photography)
Co-presented by Fulcrum Arts & Chapman University.
September 15, 2024 - January 19th, 2025
In Medias Res: Expanded
October 16 – 20
11 am – 5 pm
SUPERCOLLIDER and FEMMEBIT in partnership with the Torrance Art Museum
Torrance Art Museum, 3320 Civic Center Drive, Torrance, CA 90503
FREE
The exhibition In Medias Res: Expanded celebrates the contributions of feminist and post-cyberfeminist artists who live in the vibrant city of Los Angeles. The artworks in this exhibition reflect today’s digital uprootedness from time-based narratives of the silver screen to invoke liminal spaces of belonging. They challenge conventional definitions of cities and urban identities in relation to mainstream media, geography and land ownership. The artists reinterpret the visual mainstays of Los Angeles from personal, multicultural, dreamlike, queer, decentralized, and other alternative histories to explain Los Angeles far better than Hollywood’s palm-dappled, hegemonic and heteronormative “Barbie”-esque ideations.
Energy Fields: Vibrations of the Pacific installation view (Christopher Wormald Photography) Co-presented by Fulcrum Arts & Chapman University. September 15, 2024 - January 19th, 2025
Liliane Lijn and John Vallerga: Sunstar
October 16 – 20
Daylight hours
Mt. Wilson Observatory
Citywide
FREE
Sunstar, created and owned by artist Liliane Lijn and astrophysicist John Vallerga, is on loan to Mount Wilson Observatory, and beams daily to various sites around the Los Angeles basin — Griffith Observatory, the Rose Bowl, Pasadena City Hall, Memorial Park by the Armory, Elysian Park, the Music Center, wherever there is a view of Mount Wilson. If you have a view of Mount Wilson from where you are, you should be able to see the white-domed tower peeking above the ridgeline. That’s where you’ll find the light — just to the right of the tall broadcast antennae on the mountains above Pasadena. Not everyone can see Sunstar at the same time. The beam is one tiny ray of the Sun that goes through a prism, hits a mirror, and is aimed into town. It finds you. Look up every now and then during the day and see if you can catch the colored ‘star’ shining from atop the white tower!
Evelina Domnitch + Dmitry Gelfand: Orbihedron (D.Gelfand)
Evelina Domnitch + Dmitry Gelfand: Orbihedron
October 17 – 20
Noon – 5pm
Opening reception Oct 16, 7:00 pm – 9:00 pm
Fulcrum Arts, 544 N Fair Oaks Ave, Pasadena CA 91103
FREE
Orbihedron is a major installation by Evelina Domnich and Dmitry Gelfand in collaboration with William Basinski, initially developed in a Fulcrum Incubator residency at LIGO/Caltech in 2016. Domnich and Gelfand create ephemeral artworks using scientific phenomena while creating engaging and visually powerful environments. Orbihedron is a light and material immersive art installation of a quantum hydrodynamic model tracing an orbiting black hole—while a laser projection casts a whirling circular shadow on the water basin’s floor. The Orbihedron installation comprises a single vortex in the middle of a water-filled basin emitting prismatic bursts of rotating light. Like a radiant ergosphere (the region outside of a rotating black hole in which space and time are distorted), the artwork evokes a relativistic and quantum interpretation of gravity. The sculpture is accompanied by a score by William Basinski that were composed using sounds from the LIGO archive.
Energy Fields: Vibrations of the Pacific installation view (Christopher Wormald Photography) Co-presented by Fulcrum Arts & Chapman University. September 15, 2024 - January 19th, 2025
Sara Rara: Drifts
October 17 – 20
11 am – 3 pm
Opening reception Oct 17, 6:00 pm – 8:00 pm
Pasadena City College
V-Gallery, 1570 E. Colorado Blvd., Pasadena, CA 91106
FREE
Drifts is a research-driven exhibition of new video and sound works that visit life on the periphery of the northern polar ice cap and connected ecologies, within the International Territory of Svalbard. The materials for the works assembled in Drift were gathered in August 2024 during an expedition through the sea ice that rotates around the geographic north pole: Untitled (Pack Ice) (2024), surveys the crumbling pack ice, captured by drifting within the edges of Earth’s northern polar ice cap, filmed at 92 degrees north, 8 degrees from the geographic north pole. Untitled (Radio Silence) (2024) locates spaces where human transmissions are missing from the electromagnetic spectrum. Lost or absorbed, filtered by rock, ocean, and the expanse of tundra, radio silences are rare to find on the planet Earth, making space for other signals to become legible.
Energy Fields: Vibrations of the Pacific installation view (Christopher Wormald Photography) Co-presented by Fulcrum Arts & Chapman University. September 15, 2024 - January 19th, 2025
Stephen Nowlin + Rebeca Mendez: Of Sea and Sky
October 19 – 20
1:00 pm – 5:00 pm
Mt. Wilson Observatory
100 Mt Wilson Circle Rd, Mount Wilson, CA 91203
FREE
Of Sea and Sky is a two-person exhibition of work examining human-to-nature relationships by artists Rebeca Méndez and Stephen Nowlin. Installed in the 100-inch telescope dome at Mount Wilson Observatory, Of Sea and Sky includes an immersive video work by Méndez projected within the dome and large-scale print works by Nowlin displayed along sections of the dome floor encircling the massive telescope. Of Sea and Sky connects themes of truth-seeking, space cosmology and Earth ecology, as well as sensitivities to the diverse histories of human and animal knowledge-gathering and relations.
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About the Fulcrum Festival
The Fulcrum Festival (formerly the A×S Festival) is a regional celebration of art and science, based in Los Angeles County and extending to surrounding Southern California communities. Beginning in 2003 Fulcrum Arts has produced the Festival as a citywide, interdisciplinary cultural initiative that embraces and promotes Pasadena’s unique cultural and intellectual assets, distinguishing the city as a place where ideas and creativity abound: the City of Art and Science. Partnering with area arts and science institutions on this biennial event, the festival leverages Pasadena’s local economy and cultural tourism, its regional and national identity, and the extent of citizen engagement.
In the spring of 1999, five Pasadena institutions collaborated on Radical Past: Contemporary Art & Music in Pasadena, 1960- 1974, inaugurating a festival series which capitalized on the remarkable artistic depth of these institutions, as well as their collaborative spirit, and establishing the cross-town shuttle concept which became ArtNight Pasadena. The success of Radical Past prompted the partners to imagine a second festival in early 2001, this time exploring our place in the cosmos and titled The Universe: A Convergence of Art, Music and Science. From that point forward, art and science have been at the heart of these collaborations, reflecting Pasadena’s distinction in the two disciplines.
In 2003, Pasadena Arts Council (now Fulcrum Arts) was asked to act as the organizing agency for the third festival in the series, The Tender Land, initiating PAC’s role as coordinator, then producer of the festival. In 2004, the series was named Art and Ideas, and in 2011 it was rebranded as A×S (ak-sis) to reflect the nexus of art and science, and further rebranded in 2022 as the Fulcrum Festival.
- 1999: Radical Past: Contemporary Art & Music in Pasadena, 1960-1974 told the story of how contemporary art came to Southern California in the 1960s.
- 2001: The Universe: A Convergence of Art, Music, and Science explored humankind’s understanding of its place in the universe.
- 2004: The Tender Land was a meditation on the timeless fragile complexity of the natural world.
- 2007: Skin investigated culture, race, biology, and architecture.
- 2009: Origins recognized the bicentennial of Darwin’s birth and explored the origins of creativity and questions about evolution, faith and the universe.
- 2011: Fire and Water explored the epic natural forces that have shaped the physical and psychic landscape of this region.
- 2014: Curiosity celebrated the JPL-built Mars rover and examined the interplay between human curiosity, scientific investigation and artistic risk-taking.
- 2018: City as Wunderkammer embraced the model of the “wunderkammer,” or “cabinet of curiosities.” City as Wunderkammer expands this model to embrace arts and culture on a civic scale and reimagines the city as its own cabinet of curiosities.
- 2022: Deep Ocean/Deep Space looked above (to the furthest reaches of space) and below (to the depths of the oceans) to revel in the mysteries of mirroring one abyss against another.
