Score for Here
Jimena Sarno
May 7, 2022 – August 31, 2022
LA State Historic Park
Score for Here, a new artist commission from Jimena Sarno, is a site-specific sonic experience using modified field recordings and samples composed through geolocation. The piece invites Los Angeles State Historic Park visitors to compose sound in real time as they navigate the park, and will be available through a free downloadable phone app.
A graphic score based on the park’s blueprint–designed paths, landscaping, open spaces–designates each sound element’s triggering zone while each visitor’s navigation of the site functions as a compositional principle. The sound will seamlessly change as visitors walk across pathways, wander under specific trees, climb on top of boulders, and traverse the hills and valleys of the landscape. The project is inspired both by the asymmetric dispute of contested boundaries and cartographies, and what is known in urban planning and landscape architecture as “desire paths.” Considering geolocative software is traditionally designed to guide and direct, Score for Here repurposes it as an aleatory compositional principle that inspires divergence.
The score is composed from sound recordings—by local and international collaborators—which resonate with their experience of belonging. The recordings are processed through granular synthesis to create different textures and layers in the score’s composition. The project’s conceptual approach to the site is one of composting: the composition process breaks down and recombines the sound recordings, ridding them of their original formal qualities. Through recomposition of the sound elements, the sonic experience invites the visitors to consider boundaries and mobility. Acknowledging the site’s contested history—located on the land of the Tongva people, waves of displacement and real estate development―the composition is a proposed way of approaching the site with sounds that reverberate through layers of violence and erasure.
The app will remain available on-site indefinitely and will change over time while the database of audio samples continues to grow. Rather than a seamless, finished artwork for consumption, the work is a morphing proposition, a catalyst for speculation and potential transformation. More at the project website.
Use the map above to guide you in your visit to Score For Here.
Los Angeles State Historic Park: 1245 N Spring St, Los Angeles, CA 90012
Scan the QR code to download the companion app for Score for Here.
ABOUT THE ARTIST
Jimena Sarno is a multidisciplinary artist and educator from Buenos Aires, Argentina. With a focus on spatial and sonic experience she works across a range of media including installation, sound, video, text and sculpture. Her work has been exhibited in solo and group exhibitions at MASS MoCA, 18th Street Arts Center, LACE, Visitor Welcome Center, Grand Central Art Center, The Museum of Latin American Art, The Mistake Room, Human Resources, PØST, UCI Contemporary Art Center, Control Room, San Diego Art Institute, The Luminary, Centro Galego de Arte Contemporánea de Santiago De Compostela, Fellows of Contemporary Art, Calico Gallery and Small Editions among others. A recipient of the 2021 California Arts Council Individual Fellowship, the 2015 California Community Foundation Fellowship for Visual Artists, the 2017 Foundation for Contemporary Art Emergency Grant and the 2019 Rema Hort Mann ACE Grant, Jimena Sarno is a 2019-2022 Lucas Artist Fellow in Visual Arts at Montalvo Art Center.
SUPPORT
Score for Here is generously supported by our community of Clockshop donors and the Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts. It is part of Clockshop’s Open Call project series, which included commissions from artists Eddie Rodolfo Aparicio, Ignacio Perez Menuane, and Carmen Argote.
Collaborating artists: Tasneem Bishara (Palestine), Ivana Dama (Serbia/US), Joaquin Gutierrez Hadid (Argentina), Tanatsei Gambura (Zimbabwe/Scotland), Iris Yirei Hu (US), Jorge Espinosa (Ecuador/US), Marianna Hovhannisyan (Armenia), Coffee Kang (China/US), Mona Kareem (Kuwait/US), Gelare Khoshgozaran (Iran/US), Una Lee (Korea/Ireland), YoungEun Kim (Korea/US), Mani Nilchiani (Iran/US), Liew Niyomkarn (Thailand/Belgium), Ignacio Perez Meruane (Chile/US), Nooshin Rostami (Iran/US), Mhamad Safa (Lebanon/UK), Hande Sever (Turkey/US), Shima Tajbakhsh (Iran/US).
