Raven Chacon's "Music for 13 Paths" Performance
Date: Saturday, April 15, 2023
Time: 10-11AM
Location: Benton Park
Details:
Join us in Benton Park for a performance of Raven Chacon’s “Music for 13 Paths,” a new sound installation. Produced for Counterpublic, this work is comprised of thirteen hand-cut chimes tuned to ring at thirteen-pitch intervals within the 12-note Western musical scale. Shifting the relationship between frequencies across the standard octave, Chacon gestures to possibilities for sounding and listening that transcend conventions in subtle yet subversive ways. Recent studies have suggested that the octave, as an organizing principle long held to be intrinsic to nature and auditory perception among all humans, may in fact be nothing more than a cultural artifact.
To perform Chacon's score and open the project, thirteen performers will be stationed throughout the Benton Park neighborhood and move toward Benton Park to install the work, where it would remain on view for the three-month exhibition. The performers find each other at the top of the tallest hill in Benton Park, where the chimes will be suspended between two trees in the arc that mirrors the shape of the hill below and remain as a beacon for the three month exhibition.
Raven Chacon is a Pulitzer Prize-winning composer, performer, and installation artist from Fort Defiance, Navajo Nation. A recording artist over the span of 22 years, Chacon has appeared on over eighty releases on national and international labels. Chacon has exhibited, performed, or had works performed at LACMA, Vancouver Art Gallery, Haus der Kulturen der Welt, SITE Santa Fe, The Kennedy Center, and more. His artworks are among the collections of the Whitney, the Smithsonian’s American Art Museum, and National Museum of the American Indian, LACMA, and others.
