(New York, May 20, 2021)—The Metropolitan Museum of Art’s Live Arts Department will premiere Sonic Cloisters, a virtual series of commissioned electronic music concerts filmed in the galleries and courtyards of The Met Cloisters, beginning on Thursday, June 3. The first electronic music series at the Museum, Sonic Cloisters features four venerated producers from the diverse musical style commonly referred to as “Techno” music: Seth Troxler and Phil Moffa, appearing as Lost Souls of Saturn; Jlin; and Dubfire.
Each artist or pair of artists will present an exclusive, site-specific production inspired by The Met’s medieval art collection and the singular architecture of the cloisters and gardens. The series is conceived by MetLiveArts in collaboration with Shawn Schwartz, founder of the famed Brooklyn electronic music venues Halcyon and Output. A new performance will digitally premiere every month through August and will be available on The Met’s website and online channels, including Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, and Twitch, where they will remain free and available to stream indefinitely.
“MetLiveArts has always engaged with performance artists who seek out opportunities to challenge themselves,” said Limor Tomer, Lulu C. and Anthony W. Wang General Manager of Live Arts, “and Sonic Cloisters continues that tradition by inviting these brilliant musicians to broaden their artistic influence and creative process, placing art that is centuries old in dialogue with contemporary electronic music. These extraordinary producers and performers all bring their different identities and experiences to their music, a true realization of the progression of Techno as a global art form.”
Schwartz added, “It is profoundly humbling and gratifying to commission work from these celebrated artists in contemporary electronic music knowing that it will be freely available to The Met’s global online audience of art and culture enthusiasts. Through inclusion in a space usually reserved for traditional performing arts, this groundbreaking series by MetLiveArts represents a bold step in the recognition of Techno as an art form by major American institutions. Especially now, in the context of the global pandemic, the juxtaposition of Techno—understood as a reflection of modern urban decay and angst—with art inspired by the plagues of the Dark Ages, seems eerily relevant and darkly poignant.”
Sonic Cloisters explores unexpected parallels between Techno and the art of the Middle Ages. Techno music emerged in Detroit's underground music scene amid the anxiety of the 1980s, and today, the spectrum of Techno music both facilitates communal euphoric experience and creates inner space for peace, reflection, and faith. Much like the medieval art that surrounds each performance, modern Techno expresses present-day anguish, expectation, and celebration, responding to inequity, suffering, and uncertainty with bright innovation and imagination.
“It has been tremendously exciting to see how these creative performers have responded to the evocative spaces and collections of The Met Cloisters,” said C. Griffith Mann, the Michel David-Weill Curator in Charge of the Department of Medieval Art and The Cloisters. “Since the building itself is made up of different architectural elements, the remixing and layering of sounds finds surprising analogies and resonance within the distinct spaces of the Museum, which are drawn from disparate sources, regions, and time periods.”
In conceptualizing their performances, the artists explored major symbols and themes from the collection in consultation with curators from The Met’s Department of Medieval Art and The Cloisters. Each transformed a different space at The Met Cloisters according to their vision. Using mediums and methods from simple dramatic lighting to extended reality technologies, the artists created mesmerizing imagery to accompany the musical performances. The audio was captured live using three-dimensional ambisonic microphones that render the acoustics of the cathedral-like interiors in stunning detail, providing a pure and immersive sound experience.
Performance Schedule, Spring and Summer 2021:
Thursday, June 3, 9 p.m.
Performed in The Fuentidueña Chapel
Lost Souls of Saturn (Seth Troxler and Phil Moffa)
Thursday, July 8, 9 p.m.
Performed in The Romanesque Hall
JLin
Thursday, August 5, 9 p.m.
Performed in Pontaut Chapter House
Dubfire
Note: Performances will be filmed on days when the Museum is regularly closed to the public.
About the Artists:
Dubfire
Born in Iran and raised in the United States from the age of 7, Ali “Dubfire” Shirazinia played in bands and at local clubs in the Washington, D.C., area from a young age. He began his career in 1990, working with his childhood friend Sharam Tayebi in the production and DJ duo Deep Dish. The pair earned a Grammy in 2002 and continued to work on independent projects. In 2003, Ali adopted the stage name Dubfire to pursue a solo career producing techno tracks and remixes and produced two top-10 tracks included in Resident Advisor's “100 Most Charted Records of 2007” and was named International DJ Magazine's “Player of the Year in 2008.” He released a retrospective album in 2017, HYBRID—A Decade of Dubfire, and the same year he and collaborator Oliver Huntemann produced the album Retrospectivo 2008–2016 to celebrate eight years of working together. Dubfire continues to work with producers internationally, most recently while developing his “EVOLV” show in 2019.
JLin
Jerrilyn Patton, known by her stage name JLin, was born in Gary, Indiana, in 1987 and continues to live and work in her hometown. Called “one of the most forward-thinking contemporary composers in any genre” (Pitchfork), JLin uses original music to build on a Chicago-footwork style to create thrilling and emotional multidimensional works. Her debut album, Dark Energy (2015), received critical acclaim and was featured on “best of” lists at The New York Times, The Wire, Los Angeles Times, Rolling Stone, The Guardian, and Vogue. JLin’s sophomore album, Black Origami (2017), was included in Pitchfork’s list of “The 200 Best Albums of the 2010s” and Billboard’s “40 Greatest Dance Albums of the Decade.” In 2018, JLin created the soundtrack to choreographer Wayne McGregor’s Autobiography and most recently collaborated with the late artist SOPHIE on a piece, “JSLOIPNIE,” released by Unsound Festival in the compilation Intermission. Other collaborators include William Basinski, Dope Saint Jude, Holly Herndon, and Zora Jones.
Lost Souls of Saturn
Lost Souls of Saturn is a duo made up of Seth Troxler and Phil Moffa. In their work, Lost Souls of Saturn creates immersive and engaging audio-visual performance environments, “fusing music, imagery and storytelling together to create something unique” (i-DMagazine). Their eponymous debut albumwas released on R&S Records in 2019. Lost Souls of Saturn challenges conventions of “format” and embraces vinyl, digital, and immersive technologies, as well as live performance. The duo has worked on projects across a variety of media and contributed to the 2019 exhibition Sweet Harmony: Rave | Todayat London’s Saatchi Gallery. Lost Souls of Saturn is currently working on a second album, recorded at New York’s Holoverse Research Labs, that will be accompanied by a collaborative work bringing together the disparate forms of the graphic novel, augmented reality, and immersive audio
Program Credits:
MetLiveArts programming at The Met Cloisters is supported by Art Mentor Foundation Lucerne.
About MetLiveArts:
The Metropolitan Museum of Art’s Department of Live Arts commissions and presents new works of performance: music, words, movement, sound, and related hybrids. This singular, artistically rigorous body of work furthers The Met’s commitment to living artists, deepens connections between audiences and works of art, and introduces untested modes of performance. The department generates new scholarship and brings renewed relevance to historical art by putting it in conversation with contemporary performance. Live Arts produces the most expansive season of new and large-scale works in any museum-based performance series in the United States.
About The Met Cloisters:
Opened in 1938 as a branch of The Metropolitan Museum of Art, The Met Cloisters is America’s only museum dedicated exclusively to the art and architecture of the Middle Ages. Including a museum and gardens within a single complex, it derives its name from the portions of four medieval cloisters incorporated into a modern museum structure. Not replicating any one particular medieval building type or setting, but rather designed to evoke the architecture of the later Middle Ages, The Met Cloisters creates an integrated and harmonious context in which visitors can experience the rich tradition of medieval artistic production, including metalwork, painting, sculpture, and textiles. By definition, a cloister consists of a covered walkway surrounding a large open courtyard that provides access to other monastic buildings. Similarly, the Museum’s cloisters act as passageways to galleries and gardens; they provide an inviting place for rest and contemplation for visitors, as they often did in their original monastic settings.
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May 20, 2021
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