Soundscapes: Alan Poma
Curated by Paulina Lara
Saturday, April 27, 2024
4-6pm

Augustus F. Hawkins Nature Park
5790 Compton Ave., Los Angeles, CA 90011
Los Angeles, CA  90011

Soundscapes, LAND’s programming series dedicated to experimental music and sound-based practices, continues on Saturday, April 27 with The Gold Fish, a performance by multidisciplinary artist Alan Poma curated for LAND by Paulina Lara. The Gold Fish reimagines the birth of a mythical creature from the wetlands adjacent to Lake Titicaca, situated on the border between Bolivia and Peru. Near Lake Titicaca, there are artificial basins called ‘The Fountain of the Incas.’ The man-made agriculture systems stem from indigenous technology that has a landscape that connects various times and cultural traditions. Utilizing field recordings, Alan will capture sound from natural habitats at both dawn and dusk at Augustus F. Hawkins Nature Park. 

The Gold Fish combines music, costumes, singing, and traditional Andean dance from the perspective of Andean Futurism. The composition itself draws inspiration from the sonic communication in wetlands, emphasizing wildlife and urban sounds to underscore the intangible essence of the landscape interaction between the wetlands and the urban environment; these spaces serve as natural and public areas within an urban setting, hosting both wildlife and community members. 

On Saturday, April 27, Alan will play eight field recordings on cassette, rescore, and live mix the works on site at Augustus F. Hawkins Nature Park. 

This performance is made possible in part by a grant from the City of Los Angeles Department of Cultural Affairs.

About Alan Poma

Alan Poma (b 1979, Lima Peru) is a multidisciplinary sound artist, whose work has focused on creating site-specific projects and spectacles. His presentations often integrate performance, video art, visual art, sound art and scientific research, creating productions that provide sensory journeys for viewers. In recent years he has developed a series of live events that reflect an investigation into the futurist Russian Opera Victory Over the Sun (1913), working with an interdisciplinary group of collaborators including anthropologists, historians and physicists. With their input, Poma has raised a close relationship between Russian futurism and Andean culture, drawn from their shared iconographies.While at Delfina Foundation, Poma will further this line of work by researching links between his work and English Vorticism, in addition to developing a new opera inspired by the vorticist play Enemy of the Stars. Alan’s residency results in an exhibition at the Museo Mario Testino (MATE), Lima, in February 2017. 

Poma studied Sciences and Arts of Communications at the Pontificia Universidad Católica del Perú. He has presented Victory Over the Sun in several venues in Peru, including the Goethe Institute (2011), Galería E (star) (2012), MAC Museo de Arte Contemporáneo – Lima (2014), as well as at the Museo Experimental El Eco in Mexico City. Victory Over the Sun won the Best Experimental Film Award granted by the Ministerio de Cultura del Peru (Culture Ministry) (2014). In 2015 he participated in the Nuevo Teatro Musical residency programme organized by the Bienal de Múnich/Festival de Nuevo Teatro Musical in Buenos Aires, Argentina.

About Paulina Lara

Paulina Lara is an independent curator, event producer, art and music consultant born and based in Los Angeles. She specializes in contemporary art and music theory. In 2021 she opened LaPau Gallery in Los Angeles, that created dialogues through interactive and thought-provoking exhibitions of art and its intersections. Her gallery program and exhibitions have been featured and reviewed at Artforum, ArtNews Aperture, Los Angeles Times, Latina Magazine. In 2021 she co-curated an exhibition, We Live Memories of Resistance at Oxy Arts. In 2019 she co-curated an exhibition Liberate the Bar! Queer Nightlife, Activism, and Spacemaking organized in collaboration with ONE Archives at USC Libraries. She is one of the co-curators of the forthcoming (2025) exhibition, Make Amerika Red Again, the first complete survey of James Luna at MOCA Tuscon. She holds a BA in Art History Theory, Criticism and Ethnic Studies from UC San Diego with an emphasis on Latin America Art History and Pre-Colombian Art.