Artist Zekarias Musele Thompson will be joined by an ensemble of collaborators to continue a ritual practice of situating ourselves in space together to welcome dialogue. The program will feature a performance of the meeting place, a musical composition with 16mm film projection, followed by a conversation with 2024-2025 Emerging Artist Program Awardee Zekarias Musele Thompson, moderated by Professor James Gordon Williams.

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The Meeting Place Ensemble

Phillip Laurent - drums

Benjamin Rodgers - synthesizers

Zack Parinella - 16 mm film loops

Cory Todd - bass

Zekarias Musele Thompson - alto saxophone and electronics, synthesizers, vocals

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This program is presented in conjunction with Emerging Artist Program Awardee Zekarias Musele Thompson's exhibition The Meeting Place, on view July 24-September 1, 2024.

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About the Exhibition

The Meeting Place explores the possibilities of agency for the individual and the collective, within our conceptual, physiological, and geographical landscapes. Diptychs of photographic landscapes embellished with oil paint correspond with eight musical compositions playing continuously in the room, which are translated into a visual score of oil on canvas, while sculptures double as seating are arranged to create opportunities for group listening and observation. The relationships created by these overlapping disparate-seeming gestures intervene with entrenched ideas about the nature and interpretation of the art object, its authorship, and its viewership. Zekarias Musele Thompson utilizes sonic composition, spatial facilitation, photography, collaborative group practice & performance, writing, and mark-making to intervene with entrenched historical narratives around individual and collective self-deception and embodied trauma. They have presented work at venues including the Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive, The Lab, Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, Museum of the African Diaspora, and Eternal Now in the Bay area, as well as Associate Gallery and Open in Reykjavik, Iceland.

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About the Presenters

Zekarias Musele Thompson (@zekarias) (b. 1983, they/them/their) is an artist based in Oakland, CA, and Reykjavik, IS often working in sonic composition, mark-making, photography, collaborative group practice & performance, and writing. Their practice is concerned with humanity’s conceptual and emotional organizational structures—and how we bring them into material form. They have presented work at venues including the Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive, The Lab, Museum of the African Diaspora, Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, Land and Sea, and Eternal Now in the Bay area — as well as Associate Gallery, Ásmundasalur, and Open in Reykjavík, Iceland. They have performed and collaborated with artists such as Oysterknife, Salimatu Amabebe, Zack Parrinella, Pétur Eggertson, Phillip Laurent, Lonnie Holley, Zachary James Watkins, Claire Fleming Staples, Laraaji, Miles Lassi, Jessica Ackerley, and more.

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Zekarias is an instigator of the Musele Project, a sound, image, performance, and facilitation practice that encourages deep, empathic listening, and a co-founder of Working Name Studios, a collectively owned and organized arts institution with the mission of building institutional stability and equity for underrepresented creative practices, ideas, and people. They are currently an MFA candidate in the Department of Art Practice at UC Berkeley.

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‍James Gordon Williams (@jgwmusa) is a transdisciplinary composer, pianist, and cultural theorist. He has collaborated with artists Crystal Z. Campbell, Maria Gaspar, Fred Moten, Moor Mother, Cauleen Smith, and Suné Woods. He has performed, and or recorded with, Terri Lyne Carrington, Anthony Davis, Mark Dresser, Joseph Jarman, Charli Persips’ Supersound band, Gregory Porter, George E. Lewis, saxophonist Greg Osby, Charenée Wade as well as other musical luminaries. He has also performed at Birdland, El Museo del Barrio, the Institute of Arts and Sciences, Lenox Lounge, Knitting Factory, San Jose Museum of Art, Symphony Space, Village Vanguard, UC Santa Cruz Music Recital Hall, and music festivals in France, Italy, and Malta. He was commissioned to write music for Syracuse Stage’s staging of playwright Kyle Bass’s salt/city/blues. He is the author of Crossing Bar Lines: The Politics and Practices of Black Musical Space (2021) published by University Press of Mississippi. His peer-reviewed articles have appeared in Ethnomusicology Review, Jazz & Culture, Jazz Research Journal, Journal of African American Studies, Liquid Blackness Journal of Aesthetics, and Black Studies. He is an Assistant Professor of Composition at the UC Santa Cruz Music Department, and an affiliate faculty member in the Visualizing Abolition certificate program and the History of Consciousness program. He holds a Ph.D. in Integrative Studies (Music) from the University of California, San Diego. You can view his performances at  https://vimeo.com/jamesgordonwilliams.

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Phillip Laurent (@psychicsagree) is an Haitian American artist living and working in San Francisco. He works in multiple disciplines including music, visual art, and storytelling. Laurent approaches his practice as an inquiry into ethnogenesis and the mediation of identity as asserted by oneself and that which is observed by others. Laurent's work has been featured at the Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive (BAMPFA), The Lab SF, and alongside contemporary dance performances at Mills College, SAFEhouse Arts, Dance Mission SF, and Performance Space New York.

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Benjamin Rodgers is a musician, cook, and graphic designer based in Oakland.  His numerous, wide ranging musical collaborations evince a deep commitment to collective music-making as an instrument of connection and community-building.  He is the primary instigator and organiser of cosmic electronic band Agnes Martian and a member of The Musele Project, as well as a co-founder and curator of the Live in The Green Room series of exploratory and experimental sounds.  His musical sensibility has been shaped by years of formal classical training, by a restless, insatiable appetite for discovering new sounds and modes of sonic expression, and by music’s transportive and transcendent potential.

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Zack Parrinella is a filmmaker currently based in Oakland, California. He works primarily making 16mm single channel films as well as multi projector performances and installations. His work often explores dissonance and anxiety, and it attempts to interpret our disjointed world.

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cory todd (@george_corytodd) is an engineer & artist currently based in berkeley, ca. he has collaborated and released work in a multitude of settings, from electronic music & audio/visual installations to film & video game scoring to extensive studio work. he’s currently on staff at tiny telephone and san francisco conservatory. his projects have been featured in npr, pitchfork, bandcamp daily, the quietus, nts radio, dublab, and more.

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